Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Solidarity Spectrum: De-Solidarity, Anti-Solidarity, And Resistance, Obiora C. Okafor, Gabriella Sanchez, Sarah Soto

Articles & Book Chapters

In this essay, we examine legal and political challenges to solidarity with and among migrants. We begin by describing the disturbing and powerful turn toward de-solidarity, particularly in some Global North countries, that threatens to undermine the global refugee and migration law regime. Politicians seek to capitalize upon racial fears of migrants from the Global South to reject solidarity (with the latter group) as a concept and pursue anti-immigrant laws and policies. We next examine anti-solidarity, as shown by the criminalization of humanitarian assistance as migrant smuggling. Both de-solidarity and anti-solidarity operate through law and race to constrain human mobility …

Anti-Discrimination At The Icj: Ukraine, Palestine And The Freedom To Advocate For Human Rights In Canada, Faisal Bhabha

Articles & Book Chapters

In 2024, the ICJ released two judgments that dealt, at least in part, with the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (“ICERD”). This is an opportune moment to (1) examine doctrinal developments in international law pertaining to racial discrimination arising from these two judgments; and (2) consider the possible practical implications of these developments. The question that is considered in this paper is whether the ICJ rulings can offer a legal counter-weight to the domestic political pressures that prevent Canada from being clear, credible and consistent in opposing all international human rights abuses.

Social Conflict And Indigenous Consent In Mining: A Primer On Csr, Esg And Social Disclosures To Investors, Shin Imai

All Papers

The transnational corporate structure of mining companies makes it challenging to conduct independent investigations of allegations of social or environmental harm. A parent company can hide behind a multitude of subsidiaries in a multitude of jurisdictions to avoid liability. This article explores one way to bypass these corporate structures through the disclosure requirements of securities legislation. When a parent company fails to disclose social conflict or lack of Indigenous consent at a project, investors may be harmed when the stock price falls. This article describes six empirical studies, supported by extensive macro studies, which show that when social conflict or …

“Humanizing” Economic Sanctions? Lessons From International Humanitarian Law, Nathanael Tilahun, Obiora C. Okafor

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Colonial Genocide In Intercultural And Interdisciplinary Perspective / Génocide Colonial Dans Une Perspective Interculturelle Et Interdisciplinaire, John Doyle-Raso, Christophe Davis, Veronica Lockyer, Didar Shwan

Reports

Scholars from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds have made recent contributions to debates about colonial genocide, conceptualizing this issue in widely divergent ways. Yet, most research syntheses regarding colonial genocide are over a decade old and therefore exclude influential research such as prominent government reports. This synthesis focuses on two themes: forms of genocide, and accountability mechanisms. Adopting a transnational approach, it incorporates three case studies – Canada, Namibia, and Rwanda – each differing in terms of its temporal relationships with colonial governments, forms of genocide, and accountability mechanisms.

This project compares debates about multiple forms of genocide in the …

Masthead & Table Of Contents, Uchechukwu Ngwaba

The Transnational Human Rights Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review - Oreva Olakpe, South-South Migrations And The Law From Below: Case Studies On China And Nigeria, Uchechukwu Ngwaba

The Transnational Human Rights Review

I begin my review of Oreva Olakpe’s book, South-South Migrations and the Law from Below: Case Studies on China and Nigeria, by observing that occasionally, a story comes along that needs to be written. One such story is Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Achebe was a conduit by which the powerful account in Things Fall Apart was written. The story was one that had to be written at some point because it filled a gap in the bookshelf. During an interview, Achebe stated that he felt something needed to be done. At the time, European authors wrote most of the …

Conference Proceedings - Symposium Insights And Implications: Advancing Regional Health Governance In The Inter-American System, Uchechukwu Ngwaba, A. M. Viens, Carlos Bernal, Karline Wilson-Mitchell, Michelle Amri, Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, Lisa Forman, Roojin Habibi, Mathieu Poirier, Oghenowede Eyawo, Sarah Fixon-Owoo, Innocent Ntaganira, Aeda Salim, Aminah Haghighi, Saumya Rai, Sandeep Kaur, Samrawit Kebreab, Sekinat Owoyemi, Kateryna Fomina

The Transnational Human Rights Review

This paper presents insights and implications from a two-day research symposium organized by the Regional Health Governance Study (RHGS) in 2024. The symposium examined how a regional approach to health governance within the Inter-American System, which comprises the Commission, the Court and the Pan-American Health Organization, can support the development of an equitable pandemic management system. It also examines the limitations of WHO-led pandemic response measures, identifies regional governance mechanisms, and offers policy recommendations to strengthen pandemic preparedness in the Americas. A qualitative thematic analysis using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was employed to assess barriers, facilitators, and …

Enforcing International Human Rights Law Against Corporations, Barnali Choudhury

All Papers

International human rights law is generally thought to apply directly to states, not to corporations since the latter is not a subject of international law. Some domestic courts are, however, enforcing these norms against corporations in domestic settings. Canadian courts have, for instance, recognized that corporations can be liable for breach of customary international law norms while UK courts have enforced international human rights norms indirectly against corporations relying on a combination of domestic corporate and tort law.

At the same time, some states are choosing to enforce international human rights norms against corporations using regulatory initiatives. These initiatives, known …

Legal Infrastructure For Inclusive Tech Development: Artificial Intelligence In The Global South, Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, Kingsley Eze, Victor Ufot

The Transnational Human Rights Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting economic and legal orders, yet its benefits and burdens remain unevenly distributed. This paper asks whether, and under what institutional and material conditions, the Global South can secure equitable participation in the AI economy. It advances a normative claim grounded in distributive justice, drawing on Rawls, the capabilities approach, and TWAIL critiques, arguing that bridging the AI divide is not a matter of charity but a duty of international cooperation under ICESCR Articles 2(1) and 15. Methodologically, the paper combines doctrinal analysis of international human rights law with comparative assessment across six constraint domains: energy, …

Commentary - Much Ado About Nothing? The Importance Of A Decolonial Framing Of The Withdrawal Of The United States Of America From The World Health Organization, Omowamiwa Kolawole

The Transnational Human Rights Review

The withdrawal of the Unites States from the World Health Organization (WHO) has been decried as bad for global health governance and the financing of the WHO. While there are legitimate concerns around the implications of this withdrawal, it is important that the action is framed through a decolonial lens. I argue that global health scholars must not replicate paradigms that problematize the withdrawal as a loss of the global north’s leadership in global health. I argue that the withdrawal offers an opportunity to interrogate the terms upon which global solidarity is built, and to push for the normative primacy …

Introduction To The Statement Of Claim And Ontario Judgment In The Civil Claim Brought Against The Government Of Canada For The Death By Torture Of Shidane Arone In Somalia, With Appendices, Craig Scott

All Papers

This piece is a brief note introducing two documents, the statement of claim for and the sole judgment in Abukar Arone Rage and Dahabo Omar Samow by their Litigation Guardian Abdullahi Godah Barre v. The Attorney General of Canada (unreported, 6 July 1999, Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Cunningham J). The case concerns the efforts by family of Shidane Arone to sue the Government of Canada for civil damages for the torture and then death from torture of Arone at the hands of Canadian soldiers operating in Somalia as part of a UN mission. The case remains unreported by …

An Imperial History Of Race-Religion In International Law, Rabiat Akande

Articles & Book Chapters

More than half a century after the UN’s adoption of the International Convention on the Prohibition of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a debate has emerged over whether to extend the Convention’s protections to religious discrimination. This Article uses history to intervene in the debate. It argues that racial and religious othering were mutually co-constitutive in the colonial encounter and foundational to the making of modern international law. Moreover, the contemporary proposal to address the interplay of racial and religious othering is hardly new; iterations of that demand surfaced in the earlier twentieth century, as well. By illuminating the centrality …

Writing And Resisting Colonial Genocide, Heidi Matthews, Luann Good Gingrich, Joel Ong

Articles & Book Chapters

Canada has pursued policies of Indigenous assimilation and annihilation, many of which continue today. Among others, these include ‘Indian residential schools’, the Indian Act, welfare-state child removals, the Sixties Scoop, the prohibition of cultural practices, forced sterilization and environmental destruction. We are scholars co-leading a large interdisciplinary programme of research studying ‘colonial genocide’. Our research seeks to understand how historic colonialism and its contemporary manifestations rely on genocidal logic for power and profit. While we begin in Turtle Island, our work has global application. The act of naming is a powerful analytical and political tool, and ‘genocide’ is one of …

Corporate Law’S Threat To Human Rights: Why Human Rights Due Diligence Might Not Be Enough, Barnali Choudhury

Articles & Book Chapters

The take-up of mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD) initiatives by states is continuously gaining momentum. There are now numerous states adopting some form of HRDD laws. While corporations being duly diligent in respecting human rights is a positive step towards addressing problems of business and human rights, these HRDD initiatives on their own may only be a form of window-dressing, that is, enabling states to put a smart spin on their efforts to address business and human rights issues without addressing some of the root causes of that predicament. As a result, HRDD laws are likely to be a …

Neutralizing Secularism: Religious Antiliberalism And The Twentieth-Century Global Ecumenical Project, Rabiat Akande

Articles & Book Chapters

A marked feature of the contemporary U.S. constitutional landscape is the campaign by an Evangelical- Catholic coalition against the idea of secularism, understood by this alliance to mean the exclusion of religion from the state and its progressive marginalization from social life. Departing from the tendency to treat this project as a national phenomenon, this article places it within a longer global genealogy of an earlier international Christian ecumenical effort to combat secularism. The triumph of that campaign culminated in the making of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now considered the paradigmatic international legal provision on …

Centring The Black Muslimah: Interrogating Gendered, Anti-Black Islamophobia, Rabiat Akande

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Renewing Freedom Of Expression, Part Two: From The Contextual Approach To Proportionality Balancing, Jamie Cameron

All Papers

This article continues the project to renew the Charter’s methodology of expressive freedom in two parts. Part One explained that the Court’s approach to s.2(b) decision making is skewed against expressive freedom and must be addressed holistically, under ss.2(b) and s.1. (see J. Cameron, “Resetting the Foundations: Renewing Freedom of Expression under Section 2(b) of the Charter”, in B. Bird and D. Ross, eds., Forgotten Foundations of the Canadian Constitution. (LexisNexis Canada, 2022). Part One provided a critique of the current methodology, addressed the meaning of freedom under s.2(b), proposed a revised standard of breach, and sketched a …

Transgender Erasure: Barriers Facing Transgender Refugees In Canada, Sean Rehaag, Alexandra Verman

All Papers

This paper explores the experiences of transgender refugee claimants in Canada’s refugee status determination system, using mixed methods: quantitative analysis of data obtained from the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), reviews of published and unpublished decisions, country condition documentation packages and IRB guidelines, as well as interviews with refugee lawyers. Using these methods, we explore how credibility arises in transgender refugee claims, noting the impact of medicalization and country conditions materials on transgender claims, and drawing parallels between medical gatekeeping and credibility assessments in refugee claims. We identify potential explanations for low recorded numbers of transgender claims as rooted in …

Written Submission To The House Of Commons’ Justice And Human Rights Committee On Bill C-9: An Act To Amend The Judges Act, Craig M. Scott

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

This is a brief entered into evidence before the Canadian House of Commons’ Justice and Human Rights Committee during its consideration of Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Judges Act. Bill C-9 was introduced on First reading by the Government of Canada on December 16, 2021. The amendments in Bill C-9 concern the procedures by which the Canadian Judicial Council handles complaints of judicial misconduct. The brief argues that the Bill C-9 presents problems of transparency that undermine accountability of the judiciary in the face of concerns of misconduct. It seeks to demonstrate that Bill C-9’s effort to hide …

Submission Of The Citizen Lab (Munk School Of Global Affairs, University Of Toronto) To The United Nations Working Group On Enforced Or Involuntary Disappearances, Siena Anstis, Ronald J. Deibert, Émilie Laflèche, Jonathon W. Penney

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

No abstract provided.

Overview Of Encampments Across Canada: A Right To Housing Approach, Alexandra Flynn, Joe Herner, Caroline Leblanc, Sue-Ann Macdonald, Kaitlin Schwan, Estair Van Wagner

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

Homeless encampments constitute one of the most serious right-to-housing issues in Canada today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of shelter spaces decreased, indoor congregate settings became increasingly unsafe, and individuals lost their livelihoods. This has led to a rise in homeless encampments across the country. The lack of comprehensive data on this urgent crisis is distressing. Even so, we know that many individuals had little choice but to turn to living in tents or informal shelters to survive the confluence of historic crises in health, housing, climate change, colonial violence, and unemployment. As articulated by the UN Special Rapporteur …

Canada–Au Human Rights Engagements: A Twail Perspective, Sylvia Bawa, Obiora C. Okafor

Articles & Book Chapters

Despite the problematique of Global North/South relationships, human rights require transnational collaboration to successfully protect vulnerable people in the world. In particular, human rights engagements between Africa and the West are cemented in legacies of colonialism and mediated by development discourses that portray the continent as a paragon of poverty, corruption and backwardness. Within this context, we explore how an African Union (AU) human rights instrument could impact or transform Africa’s transnational human rights engagements. Specifically, we use Canada–Africa human rights engagements as a starting point and basis for analysing the nature, orientation and impacts of such engagements (especially over …

On The Modest Impact Of West Africa’S International Human Rights Court On The Executive Branch Of Government In Nigeria, Obiora C. Okafor, Udoka Ndidiamaka Owie, Okechukwu Emmanuel Effoduh, Rahina Bukar Zarma

Articles & Book Chapters

Some scholars have criticized international courts in Africa as ineffective given their limited success in compelling or cajoling state behavior. Others have since argued that there are additional ways in which these courts have mattered to state and society in Africa. This Article applies the “correspondence theory” on the domestic impact of international human rights institutions. This Article analyzes evidence of the broader ways, compliance included, in which West Africa’s international human rights court, the Economic Community of West African States’ Community Court of Justice (the “ECOWAS Court”), has had a significant, if sub-optimal, impact on executive branch decision-making and …

20 Years Later, Walkerton Inquiry Members Discuss Impact Of Recommendations With Wcwc Staff, Colin Burrowes, Gus Van Harten

Editorials and Commentaries

No abstract provided.

International Solidarity, Human Rights And Life On The African Continent ‘After’ The Pandemic, Obiora C. Okafor

Articles & Book Chapters

The COVID-19 pandemic has left a massive amount of disease, death, fear and despair in its stride, and will continue to seriously trouble the world even in its wake. To be sure, Africa has not been spared any of these maladies. In the result, the pandemic has posed a formidable threat to the enjoyment of human rights around the world. More specifically, as is widely recognised, the pandemic (and many of the measures taken to end it) have seriously threatened or harmed the enjoyment by billions of people across the world, the continent included, of the human rights to health, …

The Grounds Of Human Rights, Brian Slattery

All Papers

What is the rational foundation for the doctrine of universal human rights? Some philosophers, such as Alan Gewirth, argue that it may be discovered simply by reflection on certain essential features of the human constitution. However this approach has significant problems, achieving its ends by smuggling certain tacit premises into the argument. A better approach is one that appeals to the communal practices and traditions within which doctrines of human rights have evolved historically. It is here that Alasdair MacIntyre's work becomes relevant, because it maintains that traditions have a rationality of their own, and that all rationality is in …

A Comparison Of Gender-Based Violence Laws In Canada: A Report For The National Action Plan On Gender-Based Violence Working Group On Responsive Legal And Justice Systems, Jennifer Koshan, Janet Mosher, Wanda Wiegers

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

This report undertakes a comparison of laws related to gender-based violence across Canada with a view to identifying promising practices. We use the definition of gender-based violence from the United Nations as our frame, analyzing laws relating to “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” While the UN definition includes both intimate partner violence and sexual violence, our focus is largely on violence in the …

The African Human Rights System As ‘Norm Leader’: Three Case Studies, Obiora C. Okafor, Godwin E.K. Dzah

Articles & Book Chapters

Africa (including its human rights system) is rarely imagined or considered an originator, agent and purveyor of ideas, including in the human rights sphere. On this occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights which founded the African human rights system, it is only fitting that its contributions or otherwise to global human rights praxis, over these four decades, be examined from this perspective. Utilising the theory of the norm life cycle, developed by scholars of international relations who work within ‘strategic social constructivism’, this article examines how the African …

Experimenting With Credibility In Refugee Adjudication: Gaydar, Sean Rehaag, Hilary Evans Cameron

Articles & Book Chapters

Canada offers refugee protection to sexual minorities facing persecution abroad. While success rates for sexual minority refugee claims have generally been higher than the overall average at Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, hundreds of such claims are nonetheless turned down each year. The most common reason for denying these claims is that assertions about the claimants’ sexual orientations are determined not to be credible. Scholars have raised concerns about how such credibility determinations are made. This article contributes to the critical literature in this area by exploring sexual minority refugee claim credibility assessments through an experimental study involving simulated refugee …