Print
E-mail © Università degli Studi di Padova - Credits: HCE Web agency
Ludovica Aricò
Edges of the international fight against Child Labour:
Analysing asymmetries in multilevel governance
The ILO Convention on Minimum Age of 1973, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, and the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour of 1999 are the highest point of multilevel governance’s work to tackle child labour. The flexible rigidity of these documents has ensured universal acceptance and an unprecedented global engagement.
Nevertheless, evidence shows that these instruments have not been entirely effective in the Global South. Nowadays, more than 160 million children, aged between 5 and 17, are employed in worst forms of child labour, with a major incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The weaknesses of the approach might be traced in the very founding moment of the international fight against child labour. Precisely, the research assumes that the economic interests and ideologies of Western states prevailed over those of the Global South in international debates, exploiting power asymmetries to their advantage. Therefore, the constructed approach does not entirely represent the needs of the countries with the highest incidence of child labour, proving ineffective in the long run.
This doctoral research seeks to prove that child labour persists in the Global South because Western states have derailed international debates to protect their interests and to enforce their ideologies. The analysis should highlight how power asymmetries have facilitated these dynamics. Eventually, the research might provide critical elements that might be used to rethink and to re-design the actual approach to pursue the best interest of the child.
To achieve this goal, the research will examine the evolution of international and national debates on child labour from the beginning of 1970s to the end of 1990s, through in-depth investigation at the historical archives of the most relevant intergovernmental organisations, such as the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations. This should provide a clear picture of the dynamics and a clear overview of the main aspects of the issue: the key moments of the debate, the main actors, the specific aspects around which the debate has gradually evolved (e.g. defining child labour, identifying a fair minimum age, inserting a specific conditionality in economic agreements, etc…).
Erika Iacona
Freedom of self-determination is one of the main cornerstones of Inalienable Human Rights and the Italian Constitution. Law 219/2017, inspired by these two normative horizons, applies this principle to the sphere of health and end-of-life choices.
Freedom of self-determination is one of the main cornerstones of Inalienable Human Rights and the Italian Constitution. Law 219/2017, inspired by these two normative horizons, applies this principle to the sphere of health and end-of-life choices.
The relationship between the sick person and healthcare system, decision-making autonomy, shared planning of the therapeutic plan and palliative care, and Advance Directives Treatment are some of the nodes that the law regulates.
Despite being a device aimed at extending the individual's right to sovereignty over their own body, little is known about this freedom, and the risk is that its innovative scope will be undermined.
The main critical issues for the application of the law and its dissemination, also highlighted in the literature, therefore concern:
- lack of knowledge of the law on the part of the population
- lack of knowledge of the law on the part of health professionals
- lack of doctor-patient communication on finitude
- censorship of the subject of death
My research will concern the study of how the service for Advance Directives Treatment will function within municipalities.
Together with the main actors involved in the collection of Advance Directives Treatment, I will survey the criticalities they perceive in the application of the law, the technical difficulties encountered, the requests and doubts advanced by citizens and any critical incidents, suggestions and advice to encourage awareness of the law among citizens. This to define which type of personnel can be considered suitable for the implementation of initiatives promoting the application of the law.
In this phase, the qualitative method with participant observation and action research involving participants in the pursuit of the research/intervention objectives will be used. This will be followed by thematic analysis of the observational material collected with interviews and focus groups. Continuities and discontinuities with the health service, the national database and citizenship are noted.
Finally, the activation of community death education paths for citizenship will be accomplished, thanks to the collaboration between the municipal administration and the university. These courses will aim to reduce anxiety towards death through activities that facilitate acceptance and promote understanding of death. It is also intended to find out about fears and resistance regarding the drafting of Advance Treatment Directives, the obstacles encountered in drafting them, and the perceived knowledge of the law.
The surveys will make it possible to identify the main difficulties encountered in using the device and based on that, to create suitable practices and models to help all the actors involved in the process.
Furthermore, they will make it possible to identify the most effective strategies for implementing Death Education paths that highlight how the law concerns a fundamental human right.
T. N. Anh Nguyen
Cyberviolence against women: Toward the human rights due diligence of multinational internet intermediaries. Legal feasibility of mandatory human rights due diligence evolution
Cyberviolence against women is a new dimension of gender-based violence that is deeply rooted in the inequality between women and men that persists in our society. Such violence is carried out utilising various digital technologies, most of which are operated and governed by multinational internet intermediaries or service providers. However, the fact that internet intermediaries are not treated as subjects of international law has created a loophole in the governance of human rights online. The actions (or inactions) of service providers have gone beyond the reach of international human rights law. Nevertheless, it is argued that the very nature of human rights requires that businesses be included in the human rights sphere because the realisation and materialisation of these rights also need the protection of non-state actors. The need for a binding treaty on due diligence of private actors has attracted a certain amount of research in recent years, centring around the sessions of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group. Yet scholars have not paid attention to the digital platforms and the specific characteristics of the Internet architecture in which they govern our rights. Although the need for mandatory responsibilities of internet intermediaries is emerging, its scholarly understanding is still in the early stage, with the potential to extend the research further.
This study, therefore, critically analyses how the existing regulative frameworks govern internet intermediaries in the case of cyberviolence against women vertically between international and national level of governments, and geographically between different states and regions. The policies and measures of service providers are also evaluated to examine the human rights gap, whereby the delegation of human rights enforcement to private actors undermines not only international human rights legislation, but also domestic laws and constitutions.
Following this approach, the core of the thesis is to explore how a legally binding instrument can possibly evolve to govern, in international human rights law, the due diligence of service providers regarding cyberviolence against women. The outcome will contribute to the debate about how to hold state and non-state actors accountable for finding meaningful ways to tackle all forms of violence and protect our human rights in the digital sphere.
Lamia Yasin
Identity and citizenship in a conflict-ridden and divided society: the impact of the educational system on the Israeli-Palestinian minority
This research proposal stems from the belief that the common recognition of a collective identity, citizenship, and the unconditional support to, and defense of, equal rights of all members of the national community are necessary to build a society of peace. The notion of identity is rooted and exploited in strongly divided societies and thus, is deeply connected to citizenship, whose meaning has changed throughout time and different societies. The universally recognized right to education is deemed to be one of the essential pillars of each modern society. In the majority of countries, the provision of this right is mainly delivered as a public service and is often entangled with politics: an appointment of the Ministry of Education plays a strategic role for the policies pursued by the government in office and its politics. Notably, the inclusion or exclusion of sensitive topics in educational state programs depends on the political orientation of the government and parliament majority. Additionally, governments can affect the rightful delivery of educational services through an increase or decrease of funds allocated to education. This is even more prominent in strongly divided societies where public education has a heavy weight in the political agenda and propaganda, as the case for the State of Israel. The latter is a society that faces a structural necessity to define its identity, it be it’s recognition as a Jewish or democratic state. Throughout time, the State of Israel has witnessed an increasingly marked internal division, which has evolved into a severe ethnic and religious segregation.
The conceptual framework provides a perspective on the connection between the educational system and the notion of citizenship in Israel, essential to analyse the right to education and its accessibility. On these grounds, the framed research question aims at analysing whether the school system contributes to the identity formation of the Palestinian minority in Israel. The design of this research will include qualitative and quantitative data analysis, as well as a temporal analysis, conducted through the incorporation of textual analysis as a tool to examine nationally adopted textbooks and interviews.
Isabella Valbusa
Fostering inclusive contexts: The role of human rights and inclusive skills to foster Inclusion in children
This research project aims to foster knowledge of human and children’s rights associated with inclusion and evaluate the effectiveness of a training program in school contexts. It also aims to improve social participation and quality of life in children.
As suggested by researchers such as Shogren and by internal organizations such as the United Nations, inclusion involves all children with no distinction and regards the respect of fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the Convention on the rights of the child. From here the importance of promoting inclusive skills, through the respect of human rights, as a basis for inclusive behaviours. Promoting children’s inclusive skills could affect also psychological growth not only in individualistic terms but also from a social perspective because, as suggested by scholars such as Kennedy, it could improve the social contexts of all people will involve such as parents and teachers, contributing to the building of inclusive living contexts.
Over the last decades, studies and meta-analyses have identified strategies that can result in more positive attitudes toward Inclusion, generally based on Allport's contact theory. This theory assumed that interacting with people who are perceived as different from oneself fosters positive attitudes towards them and reduces prejudices through positive social contact with others. An especially promising strategy is imagined contact. It consists in imagining a positive and successful interaction with an unknown person and it has been used to foster defensive behaviours toward social exclusion.
Based on these theoretical premises, the project aims at developing, implementing, and verifying the effectiveness of a training program to promote school inclusion in elementary and middle school students. Specifically, it aims to foster the knowledge of human and children's rights associated with Inclusion and participation in school contexts and improve inclusive skills functional to build peer relationships and friendships with others based on respect for human and children's rights. Specific activities and the strategy of imagined contact will be used to increase knowledge about human and children's rights, positive social relations between peers and overall inclusive attitudes towards others to initiate relationships of collaboration/reciprocal help and to react in the face of discrimination/social exclusion and in situations where human rights, and especially children's ones, are violated.
Designing and evaluating the effectiveness of this training program could be relevant for the training of teachers that could implement this intervention program in the future to foster inclusion and attention to human rights. In summary, this study could favour a complex idea of inclusion that provides for the involvement of everyone and more social consciousness of human rights and inclusion to get out of an individualistic perspective and thinking from a social point of view for a better quality of life for all.
