Elena Pribytkova | European University Institute (original) (raw)

Papers by Elena Pribytkova

Routledge eBooks, Dec 24, 2021

The dissertation provides a systematic analysis of global obligations relating to a decent standa... more The dissertation provides a systematic analysis of global obligations relating to a decent standard of living. Global obligations represent a type of extraterritorial obligations, which does not presuppose any causal link between acts/omissions of global actors and individuals' inability to enjoy their human rights. Global obligations are a key legal tool for empowering the most vulnerable individuals, promoting social justice, and reducing extreme poverty and inequality worldwide. Despite their importance, global obligations have not yet received adequate legal recognition, regulation, and realization. They are the least elucidated and the most unfulfilled type of extraterritorial obligations. Many scholars and practitioners highlight a major discrepancy between globalization and contemporary human rights law: socio-economic rights obligations are still often considered to be applicable only within states' borders (if at all); obligations of intergovernmental organizations and non-state actors are frequently believed to be exhausted by negative duties to respect human rights; and contemporary mechanisms of the implementation of global obligations (for instance, obligations of development cooperation or international assistance) are insufficient, inefficient, and often violate human rights. In this context, the justification, conceptualization, and furtherance of global obligations is a task of paramount importance. The primary goals of the dissertation are, therefore: first, to justify global obligations as human rights obligations of multiple actors; second, to analyze their nature, status, types, content, scope, right-holders, and duty-bearers; and third, to examine contemporary mechanisms used for the realization of global obligations and suggest some measures for their improvement. The research is aimed at proposing a coherent and plausible framework for a reconstruction of human rights law regulating global obligations. The dissertation intends to uncover the interrelation between philosophical [...]

Social Science Research Network, 2021

The United Nations is a complex system exhibiting a number of various approaches to regulating, g... more The United Nations is a complex system exhibiting a number of various approaches to regulating, governing and enforcing extraterritorial obligations (ETOs). This chapter focuses on the activity of five U.N. treaty-based bodies aimed at monitoring the implementation of the core international human rights treaties – the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the manner in which they have reformed international law relating to ETOs. The chapter provides a general overview of the U.N. treaty bodies’ interpretation and classification of ETOs as well as their approach to regulating and enforcing remedial extraterritorial obligations and global obligations, including obligations of extraterritorial cooperation and assistance. Following that, it explores the U.N. treaty bodies’ methods of assigning ETOs to states and non-state actors and their role as accountability mechanisms capable of holding states responsible for breaching their ETOs.

Policy Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2019

This paper analyses the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which gives judic... more This paper analyses the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which gives judicial protection to minimum socio-economic guarantees indispensable for freedom from poverty while addressing civil and political rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). I explore the normative basis, scope, strategies, conditions and effectiveness of the ECtHR’s enforcement of basic socio-economic guarantees, such as access to adequate food, water, sanitation, housing, clothing, health, and social security. The paper examines the virtues and shortcomings of the ECtHR’s approach and discusses legal and political measures necessary to improve judicial protection of the poor in Europe. It shows the necessity of the elaboration of a systematic legal conception clarifying the content and scope of socio-economic guarantees of freedom from poverty protected by the ECHR as well as common standards of their judicial enforcement. At the same time, I advocate for the direct judicial protection of socio-economic rights at the European level. An essential political measure in this sense would be the expansion of the Court’s jurisdiction to the rights enshrined in the European Social Charter and the Revised European Social Charter.

Studies in global justice, 2016

The chapter is devoted to exploring a decent social minimum as a set of guarantees aimed at prote... more The chapter is devoted to exploring a decent social minimum as a set of guarantees aimed at protecting persons from extreme poverty; enabling them to lead a decent life; ensuring their involvement in society and access to shared material and intellectual values; and, in the final analysis, providing the opportunity for their moral and intellectual flourishing. Guarantees of a decent social minimum represent an important instrument of poverty and inequality alleviation. My chapter intends to clarify the most controversial issues surrounding a decent social minimum: its content, scope, elements and relation to principles of social justice and equality. I develop an idea that it is necessary to distinguish between two interpretations of equality – distributive equality and equality of status – and analyze their interdependence. I argue then that it is equality of status that is the key idea of the demand for a decent social minimum and show that the following distributive guarantees necessarily derive from equality of status and form essential components of a decent social minimum: minimum political conditions of a decent life (equal citizenship), minimum socio-economic conditions of a decent life (decent standard of living), and guarantees of protection from extreme inequality (non-dominance and non-discrimination). Finally, while applying the principle of sufficiency conformable to equality of status, I examine the scope of a decent standard of living.

Studies in East European Thought, Apr 22, 2009

The problem of the legal person is a central issue in legal philosophy and the theory of law. In ... more The problem of the legal person is a central issue in legal philosophy and the theory of law. In this article I examine the semantic meaning of the concept of the person in Russian philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, considered to be the ''Golden Age'' of Russian legal thought. This provides an overview of the conception of the personality in the context of different legal approaches (theory of natural law, legal positivism, the psychological legal doctrine, and the sociological school of law). I indicate a polemic among the theories of the person and attempts to create an integral concept of the legal subject. In addition I present an analysis of the relation between the concepts of the legal subject and the moral person, which personify fundamental features of law and morality. In order to demarcate the notions of individual and the legal subject, I focus on doctrines of the artificial person or the juridical person. Keywords Legal person Á Legal subject Á Personality Á Moral person Á Juridical person Á Conception of natural law Á Legal positivism Á Psychological legal doctrine Á Sociological school of law Problem and method My intention is to present an overview of the semantic meaning of the concept of the person in Russian philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century. The period is rightfully considered to be the ''Golden Age'' of Russian legal thought. Neverthe-E. Pribytkova (&)

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

This Article focuses on global obligations to assist in realizing socio-economic rights, which re... more This Article focuses on global obligations to assist in realizing socio-economic rights, which represent a missing element in existing international human rights law. They are neither understood correctly in human rights theory and discourse nor acknowledged and implemented in international legal order. Contemporary mechanisms for assistance are insufficient, inefficient, and often violate human rights. Accountability bodies capable of holding multiple actors responsible for their breaches of obligations to assist are lacking. Since global obligations to assist are indispensable for reducing extreme poverty and inequality, as well as empowering the most vulnerable individuals and societies, the justification, conceptualization, and furtherance of such obligations is a task of paramount significance. In a time of pandemic, an efficient global system of assistance is more important than ever. On the basis of normative principles that are defended in contemporary legal and political philosophy and embedded in human rights law, the Article proposes a coherent and plausible framework for reconstructing international human rights law regulating obligations to assist. It develops a legal-philosophical justification and outlines a legal conception of global human rights obligations to assist. Following that, it critically assesses human rights instruments governing obligations of assistance, detects gaps, and suggests improvements. The Article also examines existing mechanisms used to implement obligations to assist and their critique, formulates recommendations on how current institutions and practices of assistance might be fortified, and sketches some important features of a global institutional design necessary for the realization of global obligations to assist.

Absolute Poverty in Europe, 2019

The Routledge Handbook on Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations, 2021

Chicago Journal of International Law, 2020

This Article explores global human rights obligations, which form the least elucidated and the mo... more This Article explores global human rights obligations, which form the least elucidated and the most unfulfilled type of extraterritorial obligations. Global obligations represent a key legal tool for empowering the most vulnerable individuals and social groups, promoting social justice, and reducing extreme poverty and inequality worldwide. Despite their importance, global obligations have not yet received adequate legal recognition, regulation, and realization. The Article outlines the main contours of the conception of global obligations. While defending a human rights-based cosmopolitan concept of justice, it addresses issues surrounding the nature, status, content, scope, and hierarchy of moral duties towards non-compatriots and shows under which conditions and to what extent these duties should be recognized as human rights obligations of multiple actors. The Article aims to demonstrate that global obligations are morally justified human rights obligations that bind all members...

University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 2020

Poverty eradication is a common fundamental goal of the human rights agenda and the sustainable d... more Poverty eradication is a common fundamental goal of the human rights agenda and the sustainable development agenda. International human rights law considers poverty to be a denial of human rights and acknowledges shared global obligations to alleviate poverty and realize socio-economic rights indispensable for leading a decent life universally. In unison with the human rights agenda, sustainable development instruments declare healing the planet from poverty and freeing people from the tyranny of want as a primary goal of the contemporary globalized world. This was reaffirmed by a recent important document—Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. That Agenda declares that “eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.” This Article represents a systematic analysis of the global obligations to eradicate poverty and ensure a decen...