Showing papers on "International human rights law published in 2015"

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Abstract: As previously discussed, Reyhner and Eder (1989) have divided the history of American Indian educational policy, and indeed Indian policy generally, into six distinct periods or eras, culminating in our current state of Self-Determination. While this seems to be an accurate assessment of the present day, the authors would like to suggest that recent global developments have created considerable impetus for change in Indian Country. The authors believe that Indigenous populations may well be on the cusp of a new day in Indian policy in America, if proper consideration is given to this global imperative.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

Abstract: In accordance with Article 14, paragraph 1 of the Council Regulation (EC) No 168/2007 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Regulation’) of 15 February 2007 establishing a European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights () (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Agency’), the Management Board of the Agency shall appoint a Scientific Committee which shall be comprised of eleven independent persons, highly qualified in the field of fundamental rights.

Mind the Gap: State Capacity and the Implementation of Human Rights Treaties

Abstract: According to recent studies, international human rights treaties are ineffective, counterproductive, or else beneficial for only those countries that tend to respect human rights regardless of treaty membership. Analysts often attribute gaps between human rights principles and practices to willful disobedience, self-interested defection, and ineffective enforcement. Using two-stage regression models to analyze compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, I examine whether countries' inability (as opposed to unwillingness) to implement treaty terms is also responsible for the gap between commitment and compliance. I find that one dimension of state capacity in particular—bureaucratic efficacy—enhances levels of compliance with civil, political, and physical integrity rights provisions. These findings lend credence to an important aspect of the managerial approach—that noncompliance is often inadvertent and conditioned by a state's ability to implement treaty terms.

Do Constitutional Rights Make a Difference

Abstract: Although the question of whether constitutional rights matter is of great theoretical and practical importance, little is known about whether constitutional rights impact government behavior. In this paper, we test the effectiveness of six political rights. We hypothesize that there exists a difference between organizational rights – most notably, the rights to unionize and form political parties – and individual rights. Specifically, we suggest that organizational rights increase de facto rights protection, because they create organizations with the incentives and means to protect the underlying right, which renders these rights self-enforcing. Such organizations are not necessarily present to protect individual rights, which could make individual rights less effective. We test our theory using a variety of statistical methods on a dataset of constitutional rights for 186 countries. The results support our theory: organizational rights are associated with increased de facto rights protection.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Canada

Abstract: A Celebration of the Noble Peace Prize Nominations of James Anaya for His Work as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The Human Right to Dominate

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction: Human Rights as Domination Chapter 1: The Paradox of Human Rights Chapter 2: The Threat of Human Rights Chapter 3: The Human Right to Kill Chapter 4: The Human Right to Colonize Conclusion: What Remains of Human Rights? Notes Bibliography Index

European Union Health Law: Themes and Implications

Abstract: Part I. Introduction: 1. Introduction 2. What is health law? 3. What is European Union health law? Part II. EU Internal Health Law: The Individual Focus: 4. Consumerism: the moving patient 5. Consumerism: the moving health product or service 6. Consumerism: the moving health care professional 7. Rights: health rights as human rights 8. Rights: mobile patients' rights as human rights Part III. EU Internal Health Law: The Systemic Focus: 9. Competition, solidarity, equality: health insurance 10. Competition, solidarity, equality: health institutions and professions 11. Competition, solidarity, equality: the pharmaceuticals, medical devices and medical equipment industries 12. Risk: clinical trials 13. Risk: health system products - pharmaceuticals 14. Risk: health system products - human blood, tissue and cells, organs medical devices 15. Risk: tobacco, food, alcohol Part IV. EU External Health Law: 16. The global context: institutions and instruments 17. The global context: consumerism, rights, justice and equality: human organs and access to essential medicines 18. The global context: opportunities and threats: health knowledge, communicable diseases, global food and tobacco law Part V. Conclusions: 19. Conclusion.

The development of disability rights under international law: from charity to human rights [Book Review]

Abstract: Disabled people are the world’s largest growing minority, yet until very recently they were invisible in international human rights law. Disabled people are not listed among the groups explicitly p...

The European Convention on Human Rights: A Commentary

Abstract: Part One: Introduction Part Two: The European Convention on Human Rights Part Three: Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights Part Four: Protocol No. 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights securing certain rights and freedoms other than those already included in the Convention and in the First Protocol thereto Part Five: Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the abolition of the death penalty Part Six: Protocol No. 7 to the European Convention on Human Rights Part Seven: Protocol No. 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights Part Eight: Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances Part Nine: Protocol No 16 to the European Convention on Human Rights

Navigating the ‘Flashing Amber Lights’ of the Right to Legal Capacity in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Responding to Major Concerns

Abstract: In recent years, the enumeration of the right to legal capacity in the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has caused considerable controversy. The adoption of General Comment No. 1 by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (‘CRPD Committee’) in April 2014 sheds new light on major debates in the field, particularly regarding implementation measures to fulfill the obligation of States Parties to provide people with disabilities with ‘support to exercise legal capacity’ on an equal basis with others. This interpretive guidance builds upon the CRPD framework for achieving equal recognition before the law for people with disabilities. Yet commentators have criticised both the CRPD Committee’s interpretation and the enumeration of Article 12 in the CRPD itself, as wanting in key respects. This article draws on the General Comment No. 1 to list and respond to major concerns raised about the obligation of States Parties to provide people with disabilities the support they may require in exercising their legal capacity. The list of concerns and counter-arguments are set against a broad range of implementation measures from domestic law and policy from around the world.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on Extractive Industries and Indigenous Peoples

Abstract: A Celebration of the Noble Peace Prize Nominations of James Anaya for His Work as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Practicing Rights: Human rights-based approaches to social work practice

Abstract: 1. The Relevance of Human Rights to Social Work 2. A Framework for Rights-based Practice 3. Human Rights-based Approaches to Poverty 4. Human Rights-based Approaches to Child Welfare 5. Human Rights-based Approaches with Older Adults 6. Human Rights-based Approaches to Health 7. Human Rights-based Approaches to Mental Health 8. Perils and Prospects of Human Rights-based Approaches to Social Work

'It's the Autonomy, Stupid!' A Modest Defense of Opinion 2/13 on EU Accession to the ECHR, and the Way Forward

Abstract: Opinion 2/13 of the Court of Justice of the European Union (striking down the Draft Agreement on accession to the European Convention on Human Rights) has evoked widespread “outrage.” The Court’s Opinion is generally derided as “unsubstantiated,” purely “self-interested,” and “playground politics.” This Article disagrees with that assessment. The Article provides the first comprehensive legal analysis and constitutional reconstruction of the Opinion’s many objections to show why the Court’s concerns are mostly warranted. At the same time, however, the Article explains why accession to the ECHR is not only important for human rights, but also vital to save the European Union itself. Finally, the Article points the way forward by identifying the changes that must be, and can be, made to allow accession to proceed.

Human rights education: educating about, through and for human rights

Abstract: The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (2011) is the first instrument in which international standards for human rights education are officially proclaimed by the United Nations. Most importantly, it contains a framework of key components necessary for the provision of holistic human rights education – education about, through and for human rights. This article highlights the usefulness of this framework for assessing and comparing state practice in the provision of human rights education. But it argues that comprehensive and effective national strategies for human rights education are likely to follow only from more detailed guidance and support for states at the international level.

Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement: Reclaiming control

Abstract: Our global food system is undergoing rapid change. Since the global food crisis of 2007-2008, a range of new issues have come to public attention, such as land grabbing, food prices volatility, agrofuels and climate change. Peasant social movements are trying to respond to these challenges by organizing from the local to the global to demand food sovereignty. As the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina celebrates its 20th anniversary, this book takes stock of the movement’s achievements and reflects on challenges for the future. It provides an in-depth analysis of the movement’s vision and strategies, and shows how it has contributed not only to the emergence of an alternative development paradigm but also of an alternative conception of human rights. The book explores why La Via Campesina was successful in mobilizing a human rights discourse in its struggle against neoliberalism, and assesses efforts by the movement to achieve the international recognition of new human rights for peasants at the international level, namely the «right to food sovereignty» and «peasants’ rights». It also explores the limitations and potential pitfalls of using the human rights framework. The book shows that, to inject subversive potential in their rights-based claims, La Via Campesina activists a) developed an alternative conception of rights, that is more plural, less statist, less individualistic, and more multi-cultural than dominant conceptions of human rights; b) deployed a combination of institutional (from above) and extrainstitutional (from below) strategies to demand new rights and reinforce grassroots mobilization through rights.

Cultural rights versus human rights: A critical analysis of the trokosi practice in Ghana and the role of civil society

Abstract: In this article, I examine critically the culture versus human rights debate, and the crucial role and tactics of civil society organisations, drawing on insights from transnational advocacy networking, in the struggle to extend human rights to vulnerable people with reference to the trokosi practice in Ghana. This trokosi system turns virgin girls into slaves of the gods to atone for crimes committed by their family members. Theoretically, universal human rights must take precedence over any demand for cultural rights. In practice, however, the actual enforcement of human rights laws that conflict with other cultural values and practices can be more messy and complex than it is often conceptualised. Essentially, universal human rights accommodate, recognise and promote cultural rights; however, the latter ends at a point where its observance is likely to result in the violation of the fundamental human rights of others. I conclude that, although the call for cultural pluralism and the need to celebrate and respect the diversity of cultures sound legitimate, this demand cannot be allowed to trump the minimum package of the fundamental human rights that protect human dignity, wellbeing and integrity within the context of human rights protocols that state parties already have ratified. Yet, for this to materialise, stronger civil society organisations with a solid broad-based networking capacity and tenacity of purpose are crucial. This article helps to extend our current knowledge of human rights struggles and the implications these have for the furtherance of universal human rights.

Realising women’s human rights in Malaysia : the EMPOWER report

Abstract: Why do activist groups representing some of society’s most marginalised employ legalistic forms of “rights talk” when the reality of securing rights via the judicial system is almost unimaginable? The article considers this question in relation to the work of the Malaysian non-governmental organisation (NGO) EMPOWER which, in 2012, produced the Malaysian women’s human rights report focusing attention on the rights of informal sector workers, refugees and sexual minorities, and women’s rights under non-Islamic family law. The engagement of a legalistic human rights perspective is important to this group – the existence of some constitutional guarantees for socioeconomic rights and Malaysia’s commitments to CEDAW do, after all, provide scope for activism. Yet such activities take shape within the context of rising Islamic conservatism within the political and legal system, commitments to an economic development model in which the interests of labour are subordinated to those of capital, and state au...

The Influence of History on States’ Compliance with Human Rights Obligations

Abstract: There is considerable variation in countries’ respect for human rights. Scholars have tried to explain this variation on the basis of current conditions in countries—such as democracy and civil war—and events from the recent past, such as ratification of human rights treaties. This literature has ignored the influence that geographic factors and historical events may have on human rights performance. Drawing on the literature on economic development, which has shown that institutions, events, and conditions from the distant past heavily influence the rate of economic growth across countries today, we argue that scholars should study whether the same factors have influenced modern human rights performance. Our exploratory look at the data suggests that respect for human rights today may be related to the geographic location of affected populations centuries ago, the nature of the institutions that emerged at that time, and cultural traits that have been passed down from generation to generation. These preliminary results suggest that human rights scholars could make substantial progress by building on the work of development economics.

Vernacular rights cultures and the ‘Right to Have Rights’

Abstract: We use a case study of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Via Campesina network of which they are part to develop the concept of ‘vernacular rights cultures’. Vernacular rights cultures calls attention to the way in which demands for the right to have rights call on particular cultures, histories and political contexts in a manner that can transform the rights inscribed in constitutions and political imaginaries. What Ranciere (1999) and Balibar (2002) call the democratisation of democracy, we therefore argue, does not just involve a logic of equality and inclusion through which dispossessed groups demand already existing rights. Rather, it also occurs as mobilisations alter the means through which rights are delivered and transform the content and meaning of the rights demanded.

The Changing Standard of Accountability and the Positive Relationship between Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Compliance

Abstract: Researchers have puzzled over the finding that countries that ratify UN human rights treaties such as the Convention Against Torture are more likely to abuse human rights than non-ratifiers over time. I present evidence that the changing standard of accountability --- the set of expectations that monitoring agencies use to hold states responsible for repressive actions --- conceals real improvements to the level of respect for human rights in data derived from monitoring reports. Using a novel dataset that corrects for systematic changes to human rights reports over time, I demonstrate that the ratification of human rights treaties is empirically associated with higher levels of respect for human rights over time and across countries. This positive relationship is robust to a variety of measurement strategies and model specifications. Overall, a new picture emerges of improving levels of respect for human rights, which coincides in time with an increasing number of countries ratifying an increasing number of the international human rights treaties.

Social Rights and Human Welfare

Abstract: Part 1: Social Rights in Theory 1. The Social Rights of Citizenship 2. Human Needs and Human Rights 3. Ethics and Social Welfare 4. Critiques of Social Rights Part 2: Social Rights in Practice 5. Social Rights in Global Context 6. Rights to Livelihood 7. Rights to Human Services 8. Rights of Redress Part 3: Re-Thinking Social Rights 9. Social Rights and Social Development 10. The Future of Social Rights

Introduction to the Special Issue: Implementing Human Rights: Civil Society and Migration Policies

Abstract: Immigration issues have gained salience at political agendas of governments and in public discourse in most countries of the global North. Public attention for the presence of immigrants and their ...

Food Sovereignty and the Recognition of New Rights for Peasants at the UN: A Critical Overview of La Via Campesina's Rights Claims over the Last 20 Years

Abstract: This article explores how human rights framing by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) has evolved over the last 20 years. It discusses how the movement has worked towards institutionalizing new categories of rights, such as the ‘right to food sovereignty’ and the ‘rights of peasants’, thereby contributing to the creation of new human rights standards at the United Nations (UN). It also critically addresses some of the challenges the movement has been confronted with when framing its demands in terms of rights. Its overall argument is that LVC has managed to tap the potential of the rhetoric of rights to find common ground, thanks to its innovative use of non-codified rights. This has enabled activists to ‘localize’ human rights and make them meaningful to their various contexts. However, it contends that further advancing the movement's goals will require serious consideration of some of the key limits of the human rights framework.

The ‘Pink Agenda’: Questioning and Challenging European Homonationalist Sexual Citizenship

Abstract: This article introduces the ‘Pink Agenda’ as a set of judicial, social and political instruments employed by both nation-states and international human rights institutions, such as the Council of E...

The domestic effectiveness of international human rights monitoring in established democracies. The case of the UN human rights treaty bodies

Abstract: Although the reporting process under UN human rights treaties is considered one of the most important universal mechanisms to monitor the implementation of human rights, its actual domestic effects have hardly been studied. This is surprising in the light of the rather extensive work involved and resources spent on the reporting process by states and UN human rights treaty bodies. This article attempts to fill the scholarly neglect by examining the effectiveness of this process in three countries, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Finland. It also explores some more general conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues with respect to the definition and measurement of effectiveness of international (human rights) standards at the domestic level. The empirical results, which are based on extensive document analysis as well as 175 interviews, are used to test two hypotheses based on domestic and transnational mobilization as well as reputational and legitimacy-based explanations. The article especially finds support for the liberalist mobilization thesis, while only limited support is found for reputational and legitimacy-based explanations, at least in established liberal democracies.

When Humans Become Migrants: Study of the European Court of Human Rights with an Inter-American Counterpoint

Abstract: This book examines the opposing ways in which the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights treat claims lodged by migrants. It combines legal, sociological, and historical analysis to show that the two courts were the product of different backgrounds, which led to differing attitudes to migrants in their founding texts, and that these differences were reinforced in their developing case law. The book assesses the case law of both courts in detail to argue that they approach migrant cases from fundamentally different perspectives. It asserts that the European Court of Human Rights treats migrants first as aliens, and then - but only in a second step of its reasoning - as human beings. By contrast, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights approaches migrants as human beings in the first instance.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee: Some Reflections of a Former Member

Abstract: Our research reveals an incontrovertible fact: gun violence in the United States has reached crisis proportions. In 2017, the most recent year for which Center for Disease Control (“CDC”) data is available, more than 173,500 people were shot, 39,700 of which died – the highest annual rate in decades. Every day in 2017, on average, nearly 109 people died from guns and 366 suffered nonfatal firearm injuries. This is a complex problem that includes homicides, suicides, and mass shootings, which take place with alarming frequency in schools, places of worship, theaters, and at concerts. Youth, women, and individuals of color are disproportionately victimized by U.S. gun violence. Gun violence also causes psychological stress and mental harm, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, for both the direct victims of violence and the broader public, and the crisis has fostered a general climate of fear and uncertainty that interferes with the enjoyment of fundamental human rights.