This article studies the economic and social rights of people with disabilities in times of armed conflict. While hostilities prevent them from accessing the essential goods and services that they rely on to enjoy these rights, the topic has attracted little attention to date. Calling upon international human rights law, the article applies the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with a view to complementing the provisions of international humanitarian law. It focuses on the requirements above the provision of medical care and examines the legal obligations attached to economic and social rights.

Dependent older people are predominantly cared for by family members, mostly partners and children, but not every parent in need is cared for by a child, and intergenerational care varies widely across Europe. Previous studies have used care regimes to explain these differences, but because of the lack of large comparative surveys, the prevalence of intergenerational care has rarely been related directly to the institutional and cultural context, including state care provision, legal obligations between family members, and societal opinion about the role of the state in elderly care. This paper reports an analysis of variations in intergenerational care among European countries and the reasons for these differences using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Results from logistic multilevel models show that care by children is influenced by the individual characteristics of both parents and children, and by family structures, welfare-state institutions and cultural norms. Intergenerational care is more prevalent in southern and central European countries, where children are legally obligated to support parents in need, and care is perceived as a responsibility of the family, whereas in northern Europe, the wider availability of formal care services enable adult children, particularly daughters, have more choice about their activities and use of time.

The interruption of life support poses different problems for he who interrogates himself regarding the possible juridical role of omissible behaviour or activities by part of the physician when dealing with end-of-life interventions within the boundary of life and death. The present contribution proposes to trace the coordinates necessary to answer the main query regarding the obligations which may be incumbent on the physician. For this reason, the necessity to interpret the legal sanctions in a technical key is highlighted. This is performed in sight of a progressive and inevitable adaptation to problems which are the result of a social evolution, and to the conception of values which consitute an object responsibility, as renewed by the constitution. The laws that discipline crimes against life and individual integrity must be interpreted while keeping in mind that the objective of maintaining the patient in life must be integrated with the control of suffering and the guarantee of a dignified death. When identifying the principles which have to inspire the decisions during ‘borderline or boundary situations’, it is highlighted the way the physician has to resort to a just equilibrium between benefit, which can be reasonably expected, and sacrifice, which should be imposed, taking into consideration the criteria of good clinical practice, among which attention to the patient’s will must be taken into consideration.