This study explores the concepts of vulnerability, agency, and actors with relation to the capability development and deprivation of women with physical disabilities in Lusaka, Zambia. Based in the human development paradigm and Sen and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach, it seeks to critically explore what impact being born, raised, and living as a woman with a physical disability in a developing country has on the development of capabilities. It also seeks to identify and analyze the involved processes, actors, and environmental factors. A main finding is that capability deprivation for women with physical disabilities is not simply caused by disability, or by gender, but by a multitude of factors. These include: the environment, social contexts, and relative poverty in which the women live; the particular cultural repertoires that surround them; and the actors with whom they interact. However, disability can, and often does, exacerbate the complex life situations in which the women find themselves.

Poderiam os direitos humanos, em vista das limitações que envolvem tanto a sua titularidade como o seu fundamento nuclear - a dignidade humana e dos desafios que permeiam a sua implementação, se valer de linguagens alternativas que contribuam para o seu avanço? Com fundamento nos estudos de Martha Nussbaum, o presente trabalho explora a viabilidade de aplicação da abordagem das capacidades como ferramenta para qualificação do discurso dos direitos humanos. / Could it be possible for human rights, in view of the limitations regarding the idea of being entitled to and its foundation the human dignity and also the challenges that surround its implementation, to make use of alternative languages that contribute to its achievement? Based upon Martha Nussbaums studies, the present work explores the possibility of using the capabilities approach as a tool to qualify human rights discourse.

This study explores the concepts of vulnerability, agency, and actors with relation to the capability development and deprivation of women with physical disabilities in Lusaka, Zambia. Based in the human development paradigm and Sen and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach, it seeks to critically explore what impact being born, raised, and living as a woman with a physical disability in a developing country has on the development of capabilities. It also seeks to identify and analyze the involved processes, actors, and environmental factors. A main finding is that capability deprivation for women with physical disabilities is not simply caused by disability, or by gender, but by a multitude of factors. These include: the environment, social contexts, and relative poverty in which the women live; the particular cultural repertoires that surround them; and the actors with whom they interact. However, disability can, and often does, exacerbate the complex life situations in which the women find themselves.

Poderiam os direitos humanos, em vista das limitações que envolvem tanto a sua titularidade como o seu fundamento nuclear - a dignidade humana e dos desafios que permeiam a sua implementação, se valer de linguagens alternativas que contribuam para o seu avanço? Com fundamento nos estudos de Martha Nussbaum, o presente trabalho explora a viabilidade de aplicação da abordagem das capacidades como ferramenta para qualificação do discurso dos direitos humanos. / Could it be possible for human rights, in view of the limitations regarding the idea of being entitled to and its foundation the human dignity and also the challenges that surround its implementation, to make use of alternative languages that contribute to its achievement? Based upon Martha Nussbaums studies, the present work explores the possibility of using the capabilities approach as a tool to qualify human rights discourse.

This study explores the concepts of vulnerability, agency, and actors with relation to the capability development and deprivation of women with physical disabilities in Lusaka, Zambia. Based in the human development paradigm and Sen and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach, it seeks to critically explore what impact being born, raised, and living as a woman with a physical disability in a developing country has on the development of capabilities. It also seeks to identify and analyze the involved processes, actors, and environmental factors. A main finding is that capability deprivation for women with physical disabilities is not simply caused by disability, or by gender, but by a multitude of factors. These include: the environment, social contexts, and relative poverty in which the women live; the particular cultural repertoires that surround them; and the actors with whom they interact. However, disability can, and often does, exacerbate the complex life situations in which the women find themselves.

Human rights advocates have expressed their concern about the marginalisation of human rights principles and the actual or potential human rights implications of WTO agreements. The international economic law and human rights law have been developed as two parallel regimes, yet trade and economics have been at the centre of most developing agendas in modern time. There has been a persistent desire to achieve a universal multilateral trading system by both Global North and Global South. The Agenda 2030 is not an exception to emphasise the importance of such a trading system as one of its targets calls for a ‘universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory, and equitable multilateral trading system’. Furthermore, the desired multilateral trading system is presumed to facilitate other development goals of the Agenda. Although peoples’ living standards are increasing worldwide, substantial inequalities remain between and within countries. If we only focus on legal rights and freedoms, people may live on the verge of an adequate standard of living and are thus not able to improve one’s well-being beyond that and lead the life one has reason to value. Hence, this study aims to go beyond the legislative protection of human rights by applying Amartya Sen’s capability approach which focuses on the ethical notion of human rights. Additionally, the approach focuses on the expansion of peoples’ capabilities and freedoms to achieve what one value doing and being. If a universal multilateral trading system is assumed to be beneficial for trade, economy, and to achieve development goals, will the outcomes of such system be beneficial for all peoples’ capabilities to lead the lives they have reason to value? The main findings of this study suggest that the political economy of world trade facilitates a subordination of countries in which some are benefitted, while others are stuck with the production of goods associated with low wages and unhealthy work conditions. This may affect the distribution of intergenerational equity and sustainability, affecting capabilities of many generations to come. One significant conclusion of this study is that legislative protection of human rights is not enough to target detrimental structures and to ensure everyone the kind of life and living standards one has reason to value.

Although there has been increasing research on HIV/AIDS and children, albeit mostly outside the school environment, most research in the area tends to view 'children as objects' (Christensen and James, 1999) in the research process whereby the change in the child is what is being observed. This view lessens the role of the child and as such means that the results are inadequate - mostly the researcher's perspective is represented. In Zimbabwe, with an estimated 1.1 million AIDS orphans and 115,000 children under 14 living with HIV/AIDS, not much empirical research has been conducted in school settings where they spend most of their time; the complexities of infected and affected students' experiences within the school-home-community spheres are mostly inferred due to lack of empirical research. Using Bronfenbrenner's Ecological System's Theory and the Capability Approach to adopt a holistic psychosocio-cultural lens, the research aims to understand the experiences of infected and affected students from their perspectives within their school, home and community environments. Added to observations, in-depth interviews based on data collected using photography, drawings, timelines, sociograms and student diaries were conducted with 65 boys and 27 girls aged 10 -13 years from a rural primary school during the months of August to December 2011. In-depth interviews were also conducted with 161 parents and caregivers. Also interviewed were 13 stakeholders comprising of a Senior Research Officer within the Ministry of Education, District Education Officer, 5 Teachers and their Principal, a District Councilor, the Chief, a village head, a local Baptist Minister and a research staff person from, FACT, a local NGO that works with AIDS orphans. Among children, findings point to dilapidating issues of stigma, abandonment, unaddressed emotional and physical needs; children relied on each other's advice more than that of teachers and caregivers. Among the adult community, the education authorities and community leaders who are custodians of their education, ignorance about infected and affected children is astounding. An ageing population of caregivers is barely able to deal with the complexities of infected children. Religion has a powerful negative influence on addressing HIV/AIDS issues. Teachers, citing taboo issues about sex and the fact that HIV/AIDS is not an exam at the school, refused to broach the subject. Education Officials at the time clearly pointed out that there has been no research nor any plans yet to address this population and their needs. Further research will need to be conducted for educational planning that will be most effective in implementing meaningful changes for this group and other rural primary school children.

The intended contribution of this work is to systematically discuss a selection of methodological topics and some of the empirical and technical issues that have been driving the measurement of inequality in Mexico so far. This discussion has two strands: firstly, the general case, and second, the particular case of Mexico. The general case include some philosophical concerns, along with a review of the traditional inequality measurement, the most common operational decisions in empirical calculations, and the recent methodological contribution of development literature that is mostly centered around the capability approach of Sen (1985b). The philosophical part contrasted with other approaches and rejected the Marxist view of economic inequality, which is mostly viewed as an outcome of exploitation. The distributional judgments are compared with more ancient schools of thought in regards to justice. Another methodological issue is such that social inequality, approximated by income inequality, might be considered as an additional functioning that measures the degree of social cohesion in the country, this finding is an implication that comes from the definition of functionings within the capability approach; then, social inequality is a functioning that is different in nature from other measures of destitution, and it is also different from the destitution that is captured by absolute poverty measurement. Our general case includes a review of the most popular ways to measure inequality, such as normative and pragmatic inequality measures that are mentioned with their properties, with their rankings of the distributions provided by the use of stochastic dominance and quantile comparisons, and the construction of statistical models and some graphic representations of income economic inequality; the approach of inequality concerns included in the measurement of relative poverty is rejected for the sake of clarity. Then this general view would guide us to a better understanding of the Mexican literature for the consideration of income distribution. The measurement of destitution provided by governmental offices is necessary to discuss, because there might be some lack of coherence between the design of the measurement and the complex legal system in Mexico. We also consider a set of regulatory concerns that might not be unique to the Mexican law, but may be generalized for developing countries as a whole. Some of the methodological discussions that show how the Mexican research has been influenced by the international literature about human destitution will be good to clarify, looking at the value judgments that have been automatically accepted by the researchers. A sensitivity analysis was performed to the empirical calculation of inequality in Mexico, so the measurement showed to be different in regards to a variety of operational concerns: the recipient unit, the different data from income and consumption-expenditure surveys, various non-responses and underreported biases, the inclusion of a regional price index, among other things. In this work was also covered the reasons why it might be the case that destitution and poverty assessment was studied more deeply than inequality itself, so the possible ambiguity of inequality with poverty measurement is challenged in this work with a variety of theoretical remarks and empirical arguments. The final topic for the particular case of Mexico is to shed light in regards to the context of the capability approach and the use of equivalence scales, because these methodological approaches consider respectively directly and indirectly the assessment of distributional judgments. This discussion is followed by an empirical assessment of inequality measures that is related with a set of functionings and services, where a direct relationship of measures of inequality with other measures of destitution is made clear.

It is widely acknowledged that poverty has declined globally over the last few years. In fact, this idea has become so ingrained in our society that it is almost taken for granted and assumed as an incontestable fact. The question that remains unanswered is where all the poor are now. Are they living a prosperous life or are they tinkering on the edge of poverty? This research study focuses on the precarious non-poor, who are the people surviving just above Upper Bound Poverty Line used by Statistics within South Africa. Although they are not ‘officially poor’ they are still a group that is often overlooked or ignored within the global development community since they are not poor enough to warrant intervention yet not secure enough to demand action. As the research study will show through using a mixed-method approach, they are far from being prosperous and in fact, still struggling to survive. The quantitative findings are based on a statistical analysis of the General Household Survey (2011) that overlaps with the latest Income and Expenditure Survey (2011). It gives valuable background to the problem that was also used during the qualitative phase of the research study to inform the sample choice and interview guide. The quantitative analysis shows that the precarious non-poor is not a unique problem, and as a group, they are found across South Africa. The qualitative findings are based on in-depth interviews conducted in Cape Town, Western Cape and Newcastle, KwaZulu Natal. Framed by the capability approach, set out by Amartya Sen, and a focus on basic capabilities such as employment, education and housing, the results show that the precarious non-poor lack access and choice in terms of capabilities and the opportunity to realise them into functionings. The precarious non-poor in this study are mostly employed within insecure, uncertain or underpaying jobs, underpinned by a social support program, living in neighbourhoods where they feel unsafe while trying to secure a better future for themselves and especially their children. In fact, they are probably no better off than their poor counterparts with prosperity remaining out of reach. / Sociology / Ph. D. (Sociology)