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Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …

Workshop Report: Sustainable Mining, International Law, And The Rights Of Women And Girls, Sara Seck, Kirsten Md Stefanik

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Canada is a leading player in mining exploration and development both domestically, in communities across Canada, and internationally, with mining operations around the world. The Canadian Government has expressed a commitment to corporate social responsibility and sustainable development in international extractive operations.

This Workshop aimed to begin a conversation between academics and civil society working on the rights of women and girls and the extractive sector. The objective was to build an enriched understanding amongst attendees and bridge gaps between the work of organizations interacting directly with affected women and communities and the work of academics who research international national …

“Ya Me Canse”: How The Iguala Mass Kidnapping Demonstrates Mexico’S Continued Failure To Adhere To Its International Human Rights Obligations, Justin A. Behravesh

Justin A. Behravesh

This article addresses the recent kidnapping and disappearance of forty-three college students from Iguala, Mexico (the “Iguala Mass Kidnapping”), under the lens of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (the “Convention”). While Mexico’s reporting documents on its compliance with the Convention paint a positive picture of how that country is adhering to Convention, any notion that the country was in compliance with the Convention was completely shattered through the Iguala Mass Kidnapping. The article concludes that the actions of state officials during the Iguala Mass Kidnapping violated articles one, six, and twenty-three of the …

The Necessity Of A Human Rights Accountabilty For The United Nations, Gerhard Niedrist

Gerhard Niedrist

The United Nations is an exceptional organization that covers nearly all states of the world. The UN has not only contributed greatly to the maintenance of international peace and security, but also has contributed significantly to the development of the present international human rights regime. With the end of the Cold War and the new geopolitical order in the early nineties, the concept of peace maintenance changed more and more to active peace-enforcement. UN operations gradually turned into “peace-making” operations, like those in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. This new type of peacemaking also led to new tasks for the UN, which …

Denying Freedom Rather Than Securing The Country: National Security Is Undermined By Laws Governing Battered Immigrants, Eve Tilley-Coulson

Eve Tilley-Coulson

Relief for battered immigrants is not an obvious national security matter per se, yet remedies are enacted in conjunction with stringent interpretations of immigration law, as though victims pose a security threat. Discrepancies exist between the immigration laws themselves—which attempt to secure the United States from disease, violence, and illegal activity—and the loopholes within remedies under these laws, unnecessarily removing victims and perpetuating a cycle of fear and abuse. By displacing the victim, rather than the abuser, the government allows the cycle of violence to continue, while simultaneously breaking up families and creating disorder and instability. The economic and societal …

Human Rights Conventions And Reservations: An Examination Of A Critical Deficit In The Cedaw, Michael Buenger

Michael Buenger

Human rights agreements like CEDAW contain language that seeks to inspire and establish the legal boundaries of state action with regards to protected rights. Such agreements also contain reservation provisions that enable states to join an agreement and simultaneously exempt themselves from the very substantive goals the agreement seeks to achieve. In the past, the issue of reservation compatibility has been treated as political questions under an objection process. Establishing a mechanism for testing reservation compatibility before the ICJ is a better means of ensuring that states do not nonchalantly exempt themselves from human rights obligations through reservations.

The Human Rights Consent Principle, Vijay Padmanabhan

Vijay M Padmanabhan

One of the most pressing issues facing international human rights law today is when and how to respect the decision of States to consent or decline to international human rights norms. Should human rights treaty monitoring bodies, created to monitor State compliance with treaties, read their respective treaties to create obligations the parties did not contemplate? Is there a core of human rights norms that bind all States irrespective of State dissent? While the answer to these questions has traditionally been no, for the most part, in recent years practice and scholarship have shifted toward yes. The prerogatives of State …

Rationalizing Risks To Cultural Loss In Resource Development, Sari M. Graben

Sari M Graben

Abstract In this article, I consider the implications of culture for valuation of cultural loss in cost benefit analysis. I argue that rational choice models have a difficult time quantifying cultural values because they have yet to grapple with the way experts tasked with cost benefit analysis translate knowledge about cultural worldviews for the purposes of comparison. This translation can alter the valuation of the risk so as to undermine the representation of a loss, rather than identify it. However, instead of rejecting the consideration of cultural loss in cost-benefit analysis outright, I build on dialogical approaches to governance that …

On The Legal Issues (Including Human Rights) Regarding The Prosecution Of Sea Pirates; A Case Of History Repeating Itself?, Barry Dubner, Sara Fredrickson

Barry Dubner

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre recorded 439 incidents of piracy and armed robbery in 2011 (“armed robbery” is an unfortunate definition of “sea piracy” ) compared to 445 in 2010. Worldwide, in 2011, 45 vessels were hijacked, 176 vessels were boarded, 113 vessels were fired upon, and 155 vessels reported attempted attacks. There were a total of 802 crew members taken hostage, ten were kidnapped and eight were killed as a direct result of the incidents. Those are world-wide statistics. Somali pirates accounted for more than half of all attacks in 2011. While the overall number of …