ABSTRACT
The Indian economist and Nobel Prize recipient Amartya Kumar Sen has been a forceful voice against the neoliberal economic position on human and labor rights. This chapter argues that globalization threatens established rights of labor through its undermining of state capacity to guarantee those rights. Amnesty International has a tradition of emphasizing the responsibilities of national governments, to “deliver” rights, to protect rights, to rectify violations. The relevance of the deprivation of basic political freedoms or civil rights, for an adequate understanding of development, does not have to be established through their indirect contribution to other features of development. The chapter considers the following types of instrumental freedoms: political freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective security. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s eloquent trial speech, “On Environmental Rights of the Ogoni People of Nigeria”, dramatized the struggle for economic development and environmental rights against the power of a global corporation to manipulate the policies of states.
