Human Rights Law Commons^™

Repression And Punishment In North Korea: Survey Evidence Of Prison Camp Experiences, Stephan Haggard, Marcus Noland

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The penal system has played a central role in the North Korean government’s response to the country’s profound economic and social changes. Two refugee surveys—one conducted in China, one in South Korea—document its changing role. The regime disproportionately targets politically suspect groups, particularly those involved in market-oriented economic activities. Levels of violence and deprivation do not appear to differ substantially between the infamous political prison camps, penitentiaries for felons, and labor camps used to incarcerate individuals for misdemeanors, including economic crimes. Substantial numbers of those incarcerated report experiencing deprivation with respect to food as well as public executions and other …

Revisiting Germany's Residenzpflicht In Light Of Modern E.U. Asylum Law, Paul Mcdonough

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note explores whether the E.C. treaties, nonetheless, provide the European Court of Justice (ECJ) sufficient competence to use the Reception Directive as a vehicle to assess the Residenzpflicht in relation to the Refugee Convention. It concludes that, through the Residenzpflicht, Germany denies refugees lawfully present their Convention right to free movement within its territory, and that the ECJ can order the restoration of this right.

Human Security And The Rights Of Refugees: Transcending Territorial And Disciplinary Borders, Alice Edwards

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay examines the concept of human security through the lens of refugee protection. In particular, the author asks whether the concept of human security could add anything to the international protection regime for refugees and asylum seekers under international law. Before international lawyers can reject the notion of human security on the basis of its non-legal, and therefore nonbinding, character, it is necessary to examine the gaps in the existing legal framework, into which policy discourse, including security discourse, may step in as an important player.

Domestic Violence And Gender-Based Persecution: How Refugee Adjudicators Judge Women Seeking Refuge From Spousal Violence – And Why Reform Is Needed, Constance Macintosh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This report is an effort to address information gaps regarding how gendered claims are addressed by adjudicators at Canada’s Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (the RPD). It looks at one specific type of gendered claim: persecution through domestic or intimate violence. The study considers all the RPD decisions from 2004 to 2009 and judicial reviews from 2005 to 2009 that were reported in the Quicklaw LexisNexis service. These decisions are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.

This report finds adjudicators consistently identify domestic violence as a form of gendered persecution that can form a nexus …

She...Refuses To Deliver Up Herself As The Slave Of Your Petitioner': Émigrés, Enslavement, And The 1808 Louisiana Digest Of The Civil Laws (Symposium On The Bicentennial Of The Digest Of 1808--Collected Papers), Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

Philosophically and juridically, the construct of a slave-a "person with a price"--contains multiple ambiguities. Placing the category of slave among the distinctions of persons "established by law," the 1808 Digest of the Civil Laws Now in Force in the Termtoiy of Orleans recognized that "slave" is not a natural category, inhering in human beings. It is an agreement among other human beings to treat one of their fellows as property. But the Digest did not specify how such a property right came into existence in a given instance. The definition of a slave was simply ostensive, pointing toward rather than …

Reinventar La Esclavitud, Garantizar La Libertad: De Saint-Domingue A Santiago A Nueva Orleáns, 1803-1809, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

From French and Creole to Spanish, the domain of the Napoleonic Empire to the king of Spain, crossing the strait separating the French colony of Saint-Domingue and the Spanish colony of Cuba entailed a change of language and government. Some 18,000 people made that transition between the spring and summer of 1803 during the Revolutionary War in Saint-Dominque. Six years later, many crossed the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba to New Orleans and the recently acquired Louisiana Territory under the authority of a territorial governor and the United States Congress. What would these crossings lead to for those who had …