Sustainable Development Goals and Human Rights

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Markus Kaltenborn, Markus Krajewski, Heike Kuhn

   Pages 1-9Open Access

3. How Can a Human Rights-Based Approach Contribute to Poverty Reduction? The Relevance of Human Rights to Sustainable Development Goal One

   • Hans-Otto Sano

   Pages 11-27Open Access

4. The Human Rights Framework for Establishing Social Protection Floors and Achieving Universal Health Coverage

   • Markus Kaltenborn

   Pages 29-51Open Access

5. People and Their Health Systems: The Right to Universal Health Coverage and the SDGs in Africa

   • Delanyo Dovlo

   Pages 53-71Open Access

6. Freedom from Violence, Full Access to Resources, Equal Participation, and Empowerment: The Relevance of CEDAW for the Implementation of the SDGs

   • Beate Rudolf

   Pages 73-94Open Access

7. SDGs, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: What Prospects for Delivery?

   • Josephine A. Odera, Judy Mulusa

   Pages 95-118Open Access

8. Superfluous Workers: Why SDG 8 Will Remain Elusive

   • Christoph Scherrer

   Pages 119-135Open Access

9. Reducing Inequality Within and Among Countries: Realizing SDG 10—A Developmental Perspective

   • Heike Kuhn

   Pages 137-153Open Access

10. Securitizing Sustainable Development? The Coercive Sting in SDG 16

    • Liora Lazarus

    Pages 155-169Open Access

11. Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Human Rights

    • Alan Boyle

    Pages 171-189Open Access

12. Reflecting on the Right to Development from the Perspective of Global Environmental Change and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

    • Imme Scholz

    Pages 191-206Open Access

13. The Role of Public and Private Actors and Means in Implementing the SDGs: Reclaiming the Public Policy Space for Sustainable Development and Human Rights

    • Jens Martens

    Pages 207-220Open Access

14. Towards a Division of Labour for Sustainable Development: Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations

    • Wouter Vandenhole

    Pages 221-239Open Access

This open access book analyses the interplay of sustainable development and human rights from different perspectives including fight against poverty, health, gender equality, working conditions, climate change and the role of private actors. Each aspect is addressed from a more human rights-focused angle and a development-policy angle. This allows comparisons between the different approaches but also seeks to close gaps which would remain if only one perspective would be at the center of the discussions.

Specifically, the book shows the strong connections between human rights and the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Already the preamble of this document explicitly states that “the 17 Sustainable Development Goals ... seek to realise the human rights of all”. Moreover, several goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda correspond to already existing individual human rights obligations. The contributions of this volume therefore also address how the implementation of human rights and SDGs can reinforce each other, but also point to critical shortcomings of the different approaches.

• Sustainable development goals
• Human rights
• Extreme poverty
• Gender equality
• Global health
• Decent work
• Climate change
• Open Access
• SDG 16
• development policy
• climate change impacts

“Each chapter serves as a multi-relational resource for further study in each topic area, with hyperlinked footnotes and references for easy access to a wealth of secondary resource materials. … This full collection of essays provides a timely synthesis of research and inquiry introducing the reader to the critical issues that the U.N. Agenda 2030 intends to address on a global scale.” (Victoria M. Breting-Garcia, Human Rights Review, Vol. 22, 2021)

• Faculty of Law, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

  Markus Kaltenborn

• Faculty of Law, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

  Markus Krajewski

• Division Human Rights, Gender Equality, Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities, Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Bonn, Germany

  Heike Kuhn

Markus Kaltenborn is Professor of Public Law at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Faculty of Law. He is Director of the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy (IEE) at Ruhr University Bochum, member of the German Institute for Human Rights (DIMR e.V.) and of the supervisory board of Oxfam Germany e.V; in recent years he has also been Visiting Lecturer at the Institute for Social Development of the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town). His main areas of research are Health Law, Social Protection Law, the Law of Development Cooperation and Human Rights Law. He is (together with Katja Bender and Christian Pfleiderer) editor of the book Social Protection in Developing Countries. Reforming Systems (Routledge 2013) as well as (together with Philipp Dann und Stefan Kadelbach) of the edited volume Entwicklung und Recht (Development and Law, Nomos 2014). Furthermore he is the author of a study on Social Rights and International Development (Springer 2015). 

Markus Krajewski holds the Chair in Public Law and Public International Law at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research focusses on international economic law, human rights, European external relations and the law of public services. He heads the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN) and is one of the programme directors of the Master programme in Human Rights at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. He also chairs the Board of Trustees of the German Institute for Human Rights and is Secretary-General of the German Branch of the International Law Association. 

Heike Kuhn is Head of Division “Human Rights, gender equality, inclusion of persons with disabilities” at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Bonn/Berlin). She has a background of more than 25 years in European and multilateral development cooperation, human rights, financing and programming. Ms. Kuhn has long-standing experience in leading and managing multilateral negotiations at European and UN-level, lately as Executive Board Director to the International Fund of Agricultural Development and Alternate Representative at the Permanent Representation of the Federal Republic of Germany to the International Organizations in Rome/Italy. Ms. Kuhn holds a Ph.D. in Administrative Sciences from the University of Speyer (Germany) on “The social dimension of the European Community”. She is a fully qualified lawyer, having studied in Marburg and Freiburg/Germany, Moscow/USSR, Los Angeles/USA and Genoa/Italy.