Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations (Ngos) In Improving Human Rights In Iraq, Naser A. Yahya

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Iraq has had a long history of human rights violations since its inception as a modern state in 1921. This is true especially under the personalistic dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Under his regime, the Iraqi people suffered a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including political imprisonment, torture, and summary and arbitrary executions. This regime used a variety of mechanisms to squelch political dissent, including house-to-house searches; arbitrary arrests, often in large numbers; surveillance; harassment and questioning of family members; detention of targeted individuals, such as those returning to Iraq pursuant to amnesties, at unknown locations; …

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Linda A. Malone

Linda A. Malone

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Movements In The Middle East: Global Norms And Regional Particularities, Catherine Baylin Duryea

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The Middle East is often portrayed as an outlier when it comes to human rights, but rights are an important part of the political, diplomatic, and social fabric of the region. This chapter summarises regional trends in human rights advocacy at both the international and domestic levels. Popular movements for independence, equality for women, and protections for workers have deep roots in the region. When the United Nations began to enshrine these values into law after World War II, representatives from the Middle East were at the centre of the debates. In the following two decades, human rights largely …

The Failure Of International Law In Palestine, Svetlana Sumina, Steven Gilmore

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

No Place To Call Home: The Iraqi Kurds Under The Ba’Ath, Saddam Hussein, And Isis, Craig Douglas Albert Ph.D.

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Kurds are the world’s largest ethnonational group without their own state. They have often been the target of ethnic strife and discrimination. Even within their semi-autonomous territory, Iraqi Kurds have faced humiliation and oppression. This essay argues that the Kurds in Iraq have been deprived of their property and dignity and hence have been subjected to “dignity takings.” This occurred in three distinct phases: the 1970s under “Ba’athification,” the 1980s under Saddam Hussein, and at present under the Islamic State (ISIS). During each phase, the Kurds have suffered involuntary property loss through forced relocations and the destruction of homes …

Access Denied—Using Procedure To Restrict Tort Litigation: The Israeli-Palestinian Experience, Gilat J. Bachar

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Procedural barriers which limit individuals’ ability to bring lawsuits—like conditioning litigation upon the provision of a bond—are a subtle way to reduce the volume of tort litigation. The use of such procedural doctrines often spares legislatures from the need to debate the substance of legal rights, especially when those rights are politically controversial. This Article presents a case study of this phenomenon which has escaped scholarly attention, in the intriguing context of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. On the books, a unique mechanism enables non-Israeli citizen Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to bring civil actions for damages against Israel …

Talking Foreign Policy: Jesner V. Arab Bank, Milena Sterio, Thomas Buergenthal, Carsten Stahn, Avidan Cover, Timothy Webster, Michael P. Scharf

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Talking Foreign Policy is a one-hour radio program, hosted by Case Western Reserve University School of Law Co-Dean Michael Scharf, in which experts discuss the salient foreign policy issues of the day. Dean Scharf created Talking Foreign Policy to break down complex foreign policy topics that are prominent in the day-to-day news cycles yet difficult to understand.

This broadcast featured:

• Judge Thomas Buergenthal, the youngest survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, who went on to become the Dean of American University Law School, to serve for twelve years as a judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and then …

Material Support Laws And Critical Race Theory, Nichole M. Pace

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

The paper examines terrorism designation and material support laws for structural racism using Critical Race Theory. Legislation concerning terrorist organizations continues to limit efforts of humanitarian organizations and refugee applicants. The impact of such legislation extends beyond the designated terrorist organizations to the communities and countries they inhabit. This article describes the legal statutes and issues related to terrorist designation and material support laws before defining Critical Race Theory. The article seeks to understand the structural racism involved in the defined statutes and procedures. Using Critical Race Theory, the article defines how material support laws and terrorist designation procedures are …

Refugees Without Borders: Legal Implications Of The Refugee Crisis In The Schengen Zone, Bridget Carr

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note will first examine current practices utilized by Member States and their strategic partners outside the Zone to manage flows of third-country nationals from the Middle East and North Africa. It will then explore how these practices are not compatible with principles of protection from degrading and inhuman treatment, non-refoulement, and non-discrimination as codified in the Schengen Borders Code, European Convention on Human Rights, and the Refugee Convention, among others. Finally, this Note will propose targeted reforms for the Schengen Zone’s internal and external border management aimed at protecting the human rights of displaced persons and modifying incentive structures …

The Power Of The Body: Analyzing The Corporeal Logic Of Law And Social Change In The Arab Spring, Zeina Jallad, Zeina Jallad

Zeina Jallad

The Power of the Body:

Analyzing the Logic of Law and Social Change in the Arab Spring

Abstract:

Under conditions of extreme social and political injustice - when human rights are under the most threat - rational arguments rooted in the language of human rights are often unlikely to spur reform or to ensure government adherence to citizens’ rights. When those entrusted with securing human dignity, rights, and freedoms fail to do so, and when other actors—such as human rights activists, international institutions, and social movements—fail to engage the levers of power to eliminate injustice, then oppressed and even quotidian …

Human Rights Legislation In The Arab World: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Mohamed Y. Mattar

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the Arab World, human rights legislation has not always enhanced human rights. In fact, many national laws have been adopted that restrict human rights. Some countries' laws regulating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) do not allow NGOs to receive funding from foreign entities. Media laws impose various limitations on the press. Jordan is the only Arab nation to enforce a comprehensive law on combating violence against women. Jordan is also the only country that has a law on access to information. Despite these gaps in human rights legislation, many Arab countries have passed comprehensive laws to combat human trafficking since the …

September Roundtable: "The Syrian Spring" And Human Rights, Introduction, Raslan Ibrahim

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The UN Security Council's Pro-Syrian 'Defiance Coalition' Crumbles”. By Raghida Dergham. Huffington Post, August 2011.

We Do Indeed Reap What We Sow, Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When violence first broke out in Tunisia in January 2011, few observers would have predicted that waves of unrest would engulf North Africa and the Arab world. When demonstrations swiftly spread to Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Jordan, observers hastened to place bets on which regime would be the next to fall. That Hosni Mubarak would be felled next came perhaps as no surprise; Egypt had for years been on a knife’s edge, liberalizing and modernizing society while closing all space for political and social participation. Most analysts then turned their attention to Sudan, Yemen, and Bahrain, predicting that …

We Live In A Country Of Unhcr: The Un Surrogate State And Refugee Policy In The Middle East, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Many gaps in the protection of refugees can be connected to a de facto transfer of responsibility for managing refugee policy from sovereign states to United Nations agencies. This phenomenon can be seen in dozens of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) manage refugee camps, register newly arrived asylum-seekers, carry out refugee status determination, and administer education, health, livelihood and other social welfare programs.

In carrying out these functions, the UN acts to a great …

The Materialization Of Human Trafficking In The Middle East And Impediments To Its Eradication, Mindy Mann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As a continental hub that connects Asia, Africa, and Europe, the Middle East offers a strategic location for the trafficking of persons from poor to richer states. Extreme poverty, coupled with the corporate and royal wealth of the Gulf States, creates a regional dichotomy in which Middle Eastern states serve as ‘source,’ ‘transit,’ and ‘destination’ countries for human trafficking. Discrepancies in defining human trafficking within the region, as well as the controversial and illicit nature of the practice, cause research to be sparse and with very few first-hand sources. Nevertheless, this paper examines available literature on the subject and addresses …

Introduction: Human Rights In The Middle East And North Africa (Mena), Raslan Ibrahim

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The wave of revolutions and popular uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at the dawn of 2011 highlights the inescapable relevance and impact of human rights on the region’s politics and security. The Arab regimes’ violations of human rights and lack of respect to the human dignity of their citizens are in fact the seeds of the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia, the rebellion of the Egyptian people against Mubarak regime, as well as the ongoing uprisings across the rest of MENA. The women and men who are protesting in the streets of Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen, …

Dying For Love: Homosexuality In The Middle East, Heather Simmons

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Today in the United States, the most frequent references to the Middle East are concerned with the War on Terrorism. However, there is another, hidden battle being waged: the war for human rights on the basis of sexuality. Homosexuality is a crime in many of the Middle Eastern states and is punishable by death in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iran (Ungar 2002). Chronic abuses and horrific incidences such as the 2009 systematic murders of hundreds of “gay” men in Iraq are seldom reported in the international media. Speculation as to why this population is hidden includes the …

Human Trafficking In The Middle East And North Africa Region, Schuyler Dudley

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The Middle East and North Africa region is not the first area to come to mind when discussing human trafficking in the world. Yet this region certainly has human trafficking problems. To clarify, the geographic region referred to in this essay, the Middle East, extends as far west as Mauritania, as far south as Sudan, as far east as Oman, and as far north as Syria. This region is also known as MENA (Middle East and North Africa), but will be referred to as the Middle East in this essay. Discrepancies in defining the Middle East, as well as inaccurate …

Allen Keiswetter On Women In The Middle East: Past And Present By Nikki R. Keddie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 416pp., Allen Keiswetter

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Women in the Middle East: Past and Present by Nikki R. Keddie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 416pp.

Destructive Ambiguity: Enemy Nationals And The Legal Enabling Of Ethnic Conflict In The Middle East, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

In the course of the Middle East conflict since 1948, both the Arab states and Israel have tended to take harsh measures against civilians based on their national, ethnic, and religious origins. This practice has been partially legitimized by a norm in international law that permits states to infringe the liberty and property interests of enemy nationals during armed conflict. Middle Eastern governments have misused the logic behind this theoretically exceptional rule to justify far-reaching measures that undermine the “principle of distinction” between civilians and combatants and erode the principle of non-discrimination that lies at the center of human rights …

J. Eric Dibbern On Forbidden Families: Family Unification And Child Registration In East Jerusalem By Yael Stein. Hamoked: Center For The Defense Of The Individual, 2004. 41pp., J. Eric Dibbern

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Forbidden Families: Family Unification and Child Registration in East Jerusalem by Yael Stein. HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, 2004. 41pp.

Sonia Cardenas On Human Rights In The Arab World: Independent Voices. Edited By Anthony Chase And Amr Hamzawy. Philadelphia: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 336 Pp., Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Rights in the Arab World: Independent Voices. Edited by Anthony Chase and Amr Hamzawy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 336 pp.

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.