Showing papers on "International human rights law published in 1999"

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent

Abstract: In his 1941 State of the Union message President Franklin Roosevelt called for the protection worldwide of four essential freedoms: "the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear". Roosevelt's enunciation of these freedoms was part of a movement that gathered strength in the 1940s and strived to make the protection of human rights part of the conditions for peace at the end of World War II. In 1947 Eleanor Roosevelt was elected to be the chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights that was charged to produce a separate document for this purpose.The resulting Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, has become the moral backbone of more than two hundred human rights instruments that are now a part of our world. The document has been a source of hope and inspiration to thousands of groups and millions of oppressed individuals.Johannes Morsink offers a behind-the-scenes account of the Declaration's origins and development. He reports on the detailed discussions that took place in the United Nations, tells us which countries argued for or against each provision of the Declaration, explains why certain important amendments were rejected, and shows how common revulsion toward the Holocaust provided the consensus needed to adopt this universal code of ethics.

The Power of Human Rights: The socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction

Abstract: Fifty years ago, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). At the time, the delegates clearly noted that the Declaration was not a binding treaty, but rather a statement of principles. Eleanor Roosevelt said that the Declaration “set up a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations,” and “might well become an international Magna Carta of all mankind” (Humphrey 1984). On the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration, it seems appropriate to evaluate the impact of these norms, now embodied in diverse international agreements and treaties. Have the principles articulated in the Declaration had any effect at all on the actual behavior of states towards their citizens? What are the conditions under which international human rights norms are internalized in domestic practices? In other words, what accounts for the variation in the degree to which human rights norms are implemented? And what can we learn from this case about why, how, and under what conditions international norms in general influence the actions of states? This book tries to tackle these questions. Our project relates to broader theoretical debates in the social sciences and law about the influence of ideas and norms on the behavior of individuals and states. Scholars of international relations are increasingly interested in studying norms and ideas, but few have yet demonstrated the actual impact that international norms can have on domestic politics. Using case studies that explore the linkages between international human rights norms and changing human rights practices, we develop and present a theory of the stages and mechanisms through which international norms can lead to changes in behavior.

Law and Disagreement

Abstract: When people disagree about justice and about individual rights, how should political decisions be made among them? How should they decide about issues like tax policy, welfare provision, criminal procedure, discrimination law, hate speech, pornography, political dissent and the limits of religious toleration? The most familiar answer is that these decisions should be made democratically, by majority voting among the people or their representatives. Often, however, this answer is qualified by adding ' providing that the majority decision does not violate individual rights.' In this book Jeremy Waldron has revisited and thoroughly revised thirteen of his most recent essays. He argues that the familiar answer is correct, but that the qualification about individual rights is incoherent. If rights are the very things we disagree about, then we are quarrelling precisely about what that qualification should amount to. At best, what it means is that disagreements about rights should be resolved by some other procedure, for example, by majority voting, not among the people or their representatives, but among judges in a court. This proposal - although initially attractive - seems much less agreeable when we consider that the judges too disagree about rights, and they disagree about them along exactly the same lines as the citizens. This book offers a comprehensive critique of the idea of the judicial review of legislation. The author argues that a belief in rights is not the same as a commitment to a Bill of Rights. He shows the flaws and difficulties in many common defences of the 'democratic' character of judicial review. And he argues for an alternative approach to the problem of disagreement: when disagreements about rights arise, the respectful way to resolve them is by decision-making among the right-holders on a basis that reflects an equal respect for them as the holders of views about rights. This respect for ordinary right-holders, he argues, has been sadly lacking in the theories of justice, rights, and constitutionalism put forward in recent years by philosophers such as John Rawls and Donald Dworkin. But the book is not only about judicial review. The first tranche of essays is devoted to a theory of legislation, a theory which highlights the size, the scale and the diversity of modern legislative assemblies. Although legislation is often denigrated as a source of law, Waldron seeks to restore its tattered dignity. He deprecates the tendency to disparage legislatures and argues that such disparagement is often a way of bolstering the legitimacy of the courts, as if we had to transform our parliaments into something like the American Congress to justify importing American-style judicial reviews. Law and Disagreement redresses the balances in modern jurisprudence. It presents legislation by a representative assembly as a form of law making which is especially apt for a society whose members disagree with one another about fundamental issues of principle, for it is a form of law making that does not attempt to conceal the fact that our decisions are made and claim their authority in the midst of, not in spite of, our political and moral disagreements. This timely rights-based defence of majoritarian legislation will be welcomed by scholars of legal and political philosophy throughout the world.

Democracy and Human Rights

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgements. 1. Defining and Justifying Democracy. Some Conditions for Democracy. 2. Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Democratization. 3. Market Economy and Democratic Polity. 4. Conditions for Democratic Consolidation. Democracy and Human Rights. 5. Human Rights and Democracy: a Multi--faceted Relationship. 6. What future for Economic and Social Rights?. 7. Human Rights as a Model for Cosmopolitan Democracy. Auditing Democracy. 8. Key Principles and Indices for a Democratic Audit. 9. Democratic Criteria for Electoral Systems. Notes. Index.

The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Does It Make a Difference in Human Rights Behavior?

Abstract: Formal acceptance of international agreements on human rights has progressed to the point where currently over three-quarters of the UN member states are parties to the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights. In fact, becoming a party to this covenant seems to be concomitant with joining the UN. Of the newly independent states in Eastern Europe and in the region of the former Soviet Union, only Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, and Macedonia have not joined the treaty. This article tests empirically whether becoming a party to this international treaty (and its optional protocol) has an observable impact on the state party's actual behavior. The hypothesis is tested across 178 countries over an eighteen-year period (1976-93) and across four different measures of state human rights behavior. Initial bivariate analyses demonstrate some statistically significant differences between the behavior of states parties and the behavior of non-party states. However, this difference does not appear in th...

The General Principles of EU Law

Abstract: Table of Cases Table of Legislation 1. The General Principles of Law in the European Union Legal Order 2. The Principle of Equality 3. The Principle of Proportionality: Review of Community Measures 4. The Principle of Proportionality: Relationship with Competence and Subsidiarity 5. The Principle of Proportionality: Review of National Measures 6. Legal Certainty and Protection of Legiutimate Expectations 7. Fundamental Rights 8. The Rights of Defence 9. The Principle of Effectiveness 10. The Liability of Community Institutions 11. State Liability for Breach of EU Law 12. Conclusions Bibliography Index

Pathologies of power: rethinking health and human rights.

Abstract: The field of health and human rights has grown quickly, but its boundaries have yet to be traced. Fifty-one years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, consensus regarding the most promising directions for the future is lacking; however, outcome-oriented assessments lead us to question approaches that rely solely on recourse to formal legal and civil rights. Similarly unpromising are approaches that rely overmuch on appeals to governments: careful study reveals that state power has been responsible for most human rights violations and that most violations are embedded in "structural violence"--social and economic inequities that determine who will be at risk for assaults and who will be shielded. This article advances an agenda for research and action grounded in the struggle for social and economic rights, an agenda suited to public health and medicine, whose central contributions to future progress in human rights will be linked to the equitable distribution of the fruits of scientific advanc...

United States Human Rights Policy and Foreign Assistance

Abstract: This study furthers the inquiry into the relationship between human rights and U.S. bilateral foreign aid. We build the most comprehensive data set to date, extending the time period (1976–1995) and enlarging the number of countries under review (140). Rhetoric aside, human rights considerations did play a role in determining whether or not a state received military aid during the Reagan and Bush administrations, but not for the Carter or Clinton administration. With the exception of the Clinton administration, human rights was a determinant factor in the decision to grant economic aid, albeit of secondary importance. To the question “Does a state's human rights record affect the amount of U.S. bilateral aid it receives?” we answer yes for economic aid, but no for military aid. Human rights considerations are neither the only nor the primary consideration in aid allocation.

An 'ever closer union' in need of a human rights policy : the European union and human rights

Abstract: While the EU is a staunch defender of human rights in both its internal and external policies, it lacks a comprehensive or coherent policy at either level. This discrepancy is even less sustainable in 1999 than it was just a few years ago. Monetary union, enlargement, a need to match growing powers with effective human rights scrutiny, and various other developments all necessitate a far more developed human rights policy. Existing institutional arrangements are especially unsatisfactory and the article puts forward a wide range of measures that should be explored in relation to the role of the Council, Commission, Parliament and Court, as well as Member States.

Human Rights, Democracy, and Development

Abstract: In the past decade, development, democracy, and human rights have become hegemonic political ideals. Regimes that do not at least claim to pursue rapid and sustained economic growth ("development"), popular political participation ("democracy"), and respect for the rights of their citizens ("human rights")' place their national and international legitimacy at risk.2 Without denying important practical and theoretical linkages, this article focuses on tensions between the logics of human rights, democracy, and development. In doing so, this article challenges the comfortable contemporary assumption that, as the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (adopted by the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights) put it,

Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics

Abstract: Contents Preface Acknowledgments 1 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East Background: Legal Hybridity in the Middle East Misperceptions About Applying International Human Rights Law as Serving Imperialism Cultural Relativism Muslims Challenge Cultural Relativism Actual Human Rights Concerns in the Middle East The Emergence of International Human Rights Law Muslims' Responses to and Involvement in the UN Human Rights System Summary 2 Human Rights in International and Middle Eastern Systems: Sources and Contexts International Human Rights: Background Islamic Human Rights: Sources The Impact of Islamization on Constitutions and Justice The Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan and Its Aftermath Saudi Arabia Confronts Pressures for Reforms and Liberalization Summary 3 Islamic Tradition and Muslim Reactions to Human Rights The Premodern Islamic Heritage Muslim Reactions to Western Constitutionalism The Persistence of Traditional Priorities and Values Consequences of Insecure Philosophical Foundations Islamic Human Rights and Cultural Nationalism Ambivalent Attitudes on Human Rights Summary 4 Islamic Restrictions on Human Rights Permissible Qualifications of Rights in International Law Islamic Formulas Limiting Rights Restrictions in the Iranian Constitution Restrictions in the UIDHR Restrictions in Other Islamic Human Rights Schemes Islam and Human Rights in the New Constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq Summary 5 Discrimination Against Women and Non-Muslims Equality in the Islamic Legal Tradition Equality in Islamic Human Rights Schemes Equal Protection in US and International Law Equal Protection in Islamic Human Rights Schemes Equality in the New Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions Summary 6 Restrictions on the Rights of Women Background Islamic Law and Women's Rights Muslim Countries' Reactions to the Women's Convention Tabandeh's Ideas Mawdudi's Ideas The UIDHR Islamization in Iran and the Iranian Constitution The al-Azhar Draft Constitution The Cairo Declaration and the Saudi Basic Law Women's Rights in Pakistan The New Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions The Influence of Sex Stereotyping Summary 7 Islamic Human Rights Schemes and Religious Minorities The Historical Background of Current Issues Facing Religious Minorities International Standards Prohibiting Religious Discrimination Shari'a Law and the Rights of Non-Muslims Tabandeh's Ideas The UIDHR The Iranian Constitution Mawdudi and Pakistan's Ahmadi Minority The Cairo Declaration, the Saudi Basic Law, and the al-Azhar Draft Constitution US Policies on Religious Minorities and Developments in Afghanistan and Iraq Summary 8 The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Muslim States Resist Human Rights for Sexual Minorities Background Sexual Minorities in the Middle East Contested Islamic Authority Tensions with the West over the Treatment of Sexual Minorities Muslim States' Objections to New UN Initiatives Summary 9 Freedom of Religion in Islamic Human Rights Schemes Controversies Regarding the Shari'a Rule on Apostasy Muslim Countries Confront Freedom of Religion The Contemporary Significance of Apostasy Tabandeh's Ideas The UIDHR The al-Azhar Draft Constitution The Iranian Constitution Sudan Under Islamization Mawdudi and Pakistani Law Affecting Religious Freedom The Cairo Declaration and the Saudi Basic Law The Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions US Interventions in the Domain of Religious Freedom Expanding the Reach of Laws Criminalizing Insults to Islam: From the Rushdie Affair to the Danish Cartoons Controversy Summary 10 An Assessment of Islamic Human Rights Schemes Appendix A: Excerpts from the Iranian Constitution Appendix B: The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam Appendix C: 2009 Resolution on Combating Defamation of Religions Glossary Bibliography Notes Index

A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Abstract: This book provides a commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 20 November 1989. Part One contains a general introduction to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and deals with matters such as the drafting history, the contents, direct application, horizontal effects, limitations, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention's final provisions. Part Two contains an article-by-article commentary, the aim of which is not to give an interpretation of the precise nature and scope of States parties' obligations but, rather, to identify the materials, or sources, which provide guidance in that regard. In the identification of such materials, attention has been paid to the general rules of treaty interpretation, as set forth in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

The Power of Human Rights: International human rights norms and domestic change: conclusions

Abstract: Introduction In adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10,1948, the delegates to the United Nations General Assembly established a common set of principles against which the human rights practices of individual member states could be measured. Although these principles were not initially binding on UN member states, they included the seeds of an international legal system in the realm of human rights. In the meantime and following the Universal Declaration, a global human rights regime has emerged consisting of numerous international conventions, specific international organizations to monitor compliance, and regional human rights arrangements (see Alston 1992; Donnelly 1986; Forsythe 1991). Moreover, the global human rights regime has led to the emergence of a huge network of transnationally operating advocacy coalitions and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs; see Brysk forthcoming; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997; Smith, Pagnucco, and Lopez 1998). As a result, some have argued that human rights have increasingly become part of the shared knowledge and collective understandings informing a “world polity” (Boli and Thomas 1997, 1998). International human rights, thus, have become constitutive elements of modern and “civilized” statehood. But it is one thing to argue that there is a global human rights polity composed of international regimes, organizations, and supportive advocacy coalitions. It is quite another to claim that these global norms have made a real difference in the daily practices of national governments toward their citizens. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration, we thought it appropriate to evaluate the processes by which human rights principles and norms found their way from the international into the domestic political arena.

The Right To Health As A Human Right In International Law

Abstract: Despite acknowledgement of the right to health in existing human rights instruments, understanding of the scope and significance of the right is limited. This book addresses issues of the individual entitlements created by the right to health, the resulting obligations on the part of the States and the susceptibility of the right to judicial review. The extensive evaluation of reporting practices illuminates the implementation practices of treaty monitoring bodies. An elaborate description of international and national case law is used to tackle the question of justifiability. This study is based on material from a wide range of sources: the United Nations (including the World Health Organisation); non-governmental organizations, national and international jurisprudence; and human rights doctrine. It contributes to the international discussion about the character and significance of economic, social and cultural human rights, and substantiates their independence and their equality with civil and political rights. The School of Human Rights Research series explores the nature and meaning of international standards in the field of human rights, their application and promotion in the national legal order, their interplay with national standards and the international supervision of such application.

The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States

Abstract: In the summer of 1996, the Nike Corporation was buffeted by claims that it mistreated its workers in Asian countries. This was part of a string of such complaints all against corporations with headquarters in the United States, Canada, or western Europe but with work forces stretching around the globe. Nike responded by agreeing to sit down at the White House and negotiate international labor standards. Sitting at the negotiating table were representatives from Nike, other clothing manufacturers, the Clinton administration, and international labor unions. Also present were representatives from two human rights organizations: the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Center for Human Rights of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center. While the setting as a whole is worth an essay, I want here to draw your attention to the human rights groups. Why were representatives of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights or the Kennedy center, without a dollar of their own capital in play and unelected by anyone in the whole sweet world, sitting at the table of what potentially were some of the most important international negotiations of the day?1 The answer has to do with the emergence of a politics of human rights in the last third of the twentieth century. For the first time since the early 1900s, a set of private organizations has been founded to reshape global practices. And this international civil society is not only interested in the labor policies of corporations like Nike. Human rights claims now challenge the exclusive control of nations over immigration policy. They have been instrumental in reawakening the world to the continued practice of torture. They have been used to attack customs such as female circumcision. Human rights claims have contributed to the delegitimation of Communist East Europe, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's Iran, and South American military dictatorships. By shifting the focus from the sovereignty of the people to the rights of individuals "regardless of nationality," Saskia Sassen notes, human rights are becoming "a force

Confronting the Impunity of Non-State Actors: New Fields for the Promotion of Human Rights

Abstract: The end of the Cold War represented a seminal moment for the human rights movement. In less than three decades of active campaigning, non-governmental advocates had made human rights a common and powerful language and could claim no small part in the widespread attention to civil liberties and democratic reforms in countries throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. But if the expansion of freedom and democracy represented a victory for human rights, it also underscores the dangers of equating civil and political rights with human dignity. The enduring and pervasive poverty suffered by well over a billion people across the globe stands as an inescapable rebuke to those ready to celebrate the "age of rights."' The human rights movement has much to offer the struggle against poverty, but it must first move beyond its unnecessarily narrow vision of human rights. The domination of Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and governments has produced a model of human rights advocacy that is limited to civil liberties and state action.2 While the narrow focus on

the social constRuction of inteRnational human Rights

Abstract: This chapter, revised and updated in early 2011, examines how human rights have been built and integrated into the international policy agenda since the mid-twentieth century. This analysis seeks to contextualize some of the recent discussions in the area of human rights. It proposes that one may understand the role of human rights as an instrument for defending human dignity against the practices and agents that threaten it. In this sense it is possible, now and in the future, to claim the complete validity of human rights based purely on their status as a social construct, whose nature is contingent, and is linked to the ways in which human dignity is understood, and the state’s role as the main guarantor and source of threat to individual human rights.

‘Women's rights as human rights’: Feminist practices, global feminism, and human rights regimes in transnationality 1

Abstract: This paper argues that the recent calls for articulating women's rights as human rights can be successful only by misrecognition of the geopolitical context of human rights internationalism and the nationalisms that are sustained by it. Arguing that it is only on the level of universalized constructions of ‘women’ as a category and the generalized invocations of oppression by ‘global feminism's’ ‘American’ practitioners that such discourses of rights become powerful, this paper argues that policy and action require addressing localized and transnational specificities that created gendered inequalities. Even in national contexts such as in India, generalized invocations of women's human rights have not been useful since hegemonic forms of religion and culture have also been oppressive to women in minority communities. Concepts of economic and social justice rather than rights may work better in many such cases.

A Theory of Customary International Law

Abstract: This article presents a theory of customary international law ("CIL") that seeks to sort out the many well-known difficulties with standard accounts of CIL. The theory uses simple game theoretical concepts to explain how what we call CIL arises, why nations "comply" with CIL as commonly understood, and how CIL changes. This theory differs from the standard account of CIL in several fundamental respects. It rejects the usual explanations of CIL based on opinio juris, legality, morality, and related concepts. States do not comply with norms of CIL because of a sense of moral or legal obligation; rather, their compliance and the norms themselves emerge from the states' pursuit of self interested policies on the international stage. In addition, the behaviors associated with CIL do not reflect a single, unitary logic. Instead, they reflect various and importantly different logical structures played out in discrete, historically contingent contexts. Finally, the theory is skeptical of the existence of multilateral behavioral regularities that are typically thought to constitute CIL. The article tests the theory using case studies from four traditional areas of CIL: neutrality, diplomatic immunity, prize, and maritime jurisdiction. We find that most purported rules of CIL reflect pure coincidence of interest, rather than international cooperation, and that the rest are best explained as the outcome of repeated bilateral prisoner's dilemmas or coercion analogous to the behavior of the monopolist in predatory pricing games. We conclude by examining the implications of our analysis for understanding the role of CIL in domestic constitutional arrangements, the function of international treaties and international organizations, and the status of modern international human rights law.

China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance

Abstract: Nelson Mandela once said, "human rights have become the focal point of international relations" This has certainly become true in American relations with the People's Republic of China Since the early 1980s, and particularly since 1989, by means of vigorous monitoring and the strict maintenance of standards, United Nations human rights organizations have encouraged China to move away from its insistence on the principle of noninterference, to take part in resolutions critical of human rights conditions in other nations, and to accept the applicability to itself of human rights norms and UN procedures Even though China has continued to suppress political dissidents at home, and appears at times resolutely defiant of outside pressure to reform, Ann Kent argues that it has gradually begun to implement some international human rights standardsThe book explores China's evolving human rights policies and the PRC's interaction over time with UN human rights bodies Kent's book documents China's compliance with the norms and rules of international treaties, and serves as a case study of the effectiveness of the international human rights regime, that network of international consensual agreements concerning acceptable treatment of individuals at the hands of nation-states

Reconciling Human Rights and the Public Interest: Conceptual Problems and Doctrinal Uncertainty in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract: The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by the Human Rights Act 1998 raises many interesting questions concerning how deeply it will penetrate the United Kingdom's domestic legal orders.' However, perhaps the most central is how British judges will respond to the interpretive challenges posed by broadly-drafted Convention rights and, in particular, the need to determine limits to those rights. Like most rights documents, the rights conferred by the ECHR are not absolute. All but four2 may be restricted in specified circumstances.3 First, certain rights are subject to what may be termed 'express definitional restrictions', limiting either their content,4 the circumstances in which they apply,5 or the persons who are entitled to them.6 Second, according to Article 15, all except the absolute rights may be suspended 'in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation' provided this is 'strictly required by the exigencies of the situation'. Most controversial, however, are those Articles which contain general exceptions allowing states to interfere with rights in pursuit of other legitimate purposes, primarily of a collective nature.7 This category differs from the other limitations in requiring case-by-case judgments as to whether priority should be given to individual rights or to public interest goals.

Work and Rights

Abstract: Awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998, Sen is a creative author who explores the boundaries between economics and philosophy. In 1975, he wrote a seminal study on employment for the ILO, entitled Employment, technology and development: A study prepared for the ILO within the framework of the World Employment Programme. This work served as the basis for his article “Employment, institutions and technology: Some policy issues”, which was published in the International Labour Review… [more]

Blackstone's Guide to the Human Rights Act 1998

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The Framework of the European Convention on Human Rights 3. The Framework of the Human Rights Act 4. Enforcing the Human Rights Act 5. The Interaction between Convention Principles and European Law 6. The Convention Rights: Absolute Rights 7. The Convention Rights: Limited and Qualified Rights 8. The Convention Protocols 9. Beyond the Domestic Courts: Taking a Case to Strasbourg 10. Researching Human Rights Jurisprudence APPENDIX 1: HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998 (AS AMENDED) APPENDIX 2: EUROPEAN CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS