Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Limits Of Inviolability: The Parameters For Protection Of United Nations Facilities During Armed Conflict, Laurie R. Blank

International Law Studies

This article examines the international legal protections for United Nations humanitarian assistance and other civilian facilities during armed conflict, including under general international law, setting forth the immunities of the United Nations, and the law of armed conflict (LOAC), the relevant legal framework during wartime. Recent conflicts highlight three primary issues: (1) collateral damage to UN facilities as a consequence of strikes on military objectives nearby and military operations in the immediate vicinity; (2) the misuse of UN facilities for military purposes; and (3) direct attacks on fighters, weapons or other equipment that cause damage to such facilities. To identify …

Corporate Codes As Private Co-Regulatory Instruments In Corporate Governance And Responsibility And Their Enforcement, Jan Eijsbouts

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) codes have gained a prominent role as tools in self-regulation for companies to establish their basic values, norms, and rules that condition the conduct of directors, managers, employees, and-increasingly-of suppliers. This development must be seen in the light of two important paradigmatic changes in the concepts both of CSR and corporate governance. The former is no longer purely voluntary and the latter has become inclusive of CSR, each with far-reaching consequences for the raison d'itre and the place and function of the codes in the smart regulatory mix governing corporations. While the codes were based originally …

Civil War Or Genocide? The United Nations Commission Of Experts’ Misunderstanding Of The Third Balkan War Of The 1990s, Matthew G. Morley

Grand Valley Journal of History

When the country of Yugoslavia disintegrated into war, the United Nations created a research commission, the Yugoslav Commission of Experts, to document war crimes. This commission, led by Cherif M. Bassiouni, depicted the conflict as a perpetual problem with historical roots and also as having victims on both sides, which presented a legal-definitional paradox to the Security Council, requiring litigation of principles, categorization of conflicts, and discussion of further involvement - if applicable. This paper traces the essentialist understandings of the Commission of Experts and the International Human Rights Law Institute – two groups that otherwise had good intentions to …

Chemical Weapons And Other Atrocities: Contrasting Responses To The Syrian Crisis, Tim Mccormack

International Law Studies

Why has the use of chemical weapons in Syria engendered such a substantive multilateral response in stark contrast to almost every other egregious international law violation perpetrated against the civilian population? Various theories have been offered but the explanation has little to do with humanitarian concerns for Syrian victims and is more readily explicable by unusual (in the Syrian context) alignment of U.S. and Russian national interests. Bashar al-Assad was convinced to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention, to surrender his stockpiles of chemical weapons and to co-operate with international investigators deployed under UN Security Council auspices amid a cacophony …

The Modern Treaty-Executing Power: Constitutional Complexities In Contemporary Global Governance, Carlo Felizardo

Northwestern University Law Review

Treaties have evolved significantly since the ratification of the United States Constitution, leading to uncertainty as to the constitutional limits on their domestic execution. This Note adapts existing constitutional doctrine on treaty execution to two distinct complications arising in the contemporary treaty regime. First, voluntary treaties imposing aspirational obligations on signatories raise the issue of the extent of obligations that Congress may domestically enforce by federal statute. Second, originating treaties which create international organizations and authorize them to adopt rule- and adjudication-type post-treaty pronouncements bring up a question of when, if ever, to incorporate those pronouncements into U.S. law, and …

The Failure Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Jacob Dolinger

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

The UN Human Rights Commission dedicated over two years to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was approved by the General Assembly in 1948.

The underlying reason for the Declaration was the genocide executed by Hitler’s Nazi Germany against the Jewish people throughout Europe during the Second World War. The fundamental mistake of the Commission was that the persecution by the Nazis was not directed against individual persons, but against an entire people, whereas the Declaration deals exclusively with the rights of the individual human being, no reference whatsoever made in the document to collectivities.

Moreover, …

The International Court And South West Africa: Latest Phase, Antony J.M. Zuijdwijk

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Discussion On Ideology And The Use Of Force, Larman C. Wilson, John Howell, Leslie Road

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Recommending Transparency In Land-Based Investment: A Summary Of Relevant Guidelines And Principles, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

An emerging consensus on the need for greater transparency in land-based investment is increasingly evident across various forums. This document consolidates recommendations regarding transparency featured in guidelines and principles published by international organizations, government agencies, and multilateral or multi-stakeholder groups. Viewed together, these recommendations offer insight on the evolving narrative on transparency in land-based investment, assist stakeholders in addressing the issue of transparency, and provide an informed starting point for further analysis.

The United Nations: The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Zahra R. Syed

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The main objective of this research paper is to analyze the international effects the Syrian Conflict has had to the global community. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared this conflict to be the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Millions of Syrians have fled their home country to avoid unjust persecution and are looking to not only neighboring countries, but the European Union for assistance in resettlement.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, more than 220,000 people have been massacred, leaving fifty percent of the population in unrest due to home displacement. According …

The Human Rights Of Sea Pirates: Will The European Court Of Human Rights Decisions Get More Killed?, Barry Hart Dubner, Brian Othero

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Children, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This chapter, which appears in The Cambridge Companion to International Criminal Law (William A. Schabas ed. 2016), discusses how international criminal law instruments and institutions address crimes against and affecting children. It contrasts the absence of express attention in the post-World War II era with the multiple provisions pertaining to children in the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court. The chapter examines key judgments in that court and in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, as well as the ICC’s current, comprehensive approach to the effects that crimes within its jurisdiction have on children. The chapter concludes with a …

Securing Child Rights In Time Of Conflict, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Each term in the title of this essay seems simple, yet provides much food for analytical thought. The essay thus explores: what is “conflict,” and whether there is a “time” when it is not present; who is a “child”; whether and to what extent children enjoy “rights”; and, finally, how local, national, and international regimes go about “securing” those rights. The essay – based on a talk given at the 2015 International Law Weekend in New York – concludes with a glance at a new potential avenue for child security: the Sustainable Development Goals which the U.N. General Assembly adopted …

Decentering Human Rights From The International Order Of States: The Alignment And Interaction Of Transnational Policy Channels, Radu G. Mares

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article accounts for recent developments in corporate social responsibility, international trade and investment law, international human rights law, development aid, and the laws of home states reaching extraterritorially in order to advance a regulatory perspective on commerce and human rights. While these developments are remarkable, the analysis documents the prevalence of softer strategies and a corresponding scarcity of coercive legalization strategies. The question, then, is how to reason about these recent developments and their genuine potential for human rights protection. The article proposes two elements-a root-cause orientation and the interaction of policy channels-as indispensable for a regulatory and systemic …

After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner

Michigan Journal of International Law

It is a great honor for me to be here to deliver the John Humphrey Lecture. Humphrey led one of those lives within the UN that shaped what the organization has become today—as one of the first generation of UN civil servants, he was to human rights what Ralph Bunche was to peacekeeping, or Brian Urquhart to UN mediation. To read his diaries, so beautifully edited by John Hobbins, is to see a world that has in many ways vanished, a nearly entirely male club, mostly of Westerners, that hammered out new treaties and mechanisms over fine wine and cigars …

United Nations Peacekeeping Operations And Security And Reconstruction, Muna Ndulo

Akron Law Review

This Article is in part based on a memorial lecture delivered by Muna Ndulo at The University of Akron School of Law in honor of the late Justice Tawia Modibo Ocran...In August 2000, a famous UN report, the Brahimi Report, acknowledged the shortcomings of the UN peacekeeping efforts and recommended wide-ranging reforms aimed at strengthening the operations and making them more effective. Since then there have been numerous other reports aimed at implementing reforms to strengthen UN PKOs...This Article builds on that report and discusses the broad challenges facing UN peacekeeping missions today and the role of the UN PKOs …

End Sexual Exploitation By Peacekeepers, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

State Actors, Humanitarian Intervention And International Law: Reopening Pandora's Box, H. Scott Fairley

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Internal Colonialism And Humanitarian Intervention, M. Sornarajah

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Conscientious Objection To Military Service: A Report To The United Nations Division Of Human Rights, Jonathan M. Engram

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Message Of Hope, Dean Rusk

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And Internal Conflicts: Some Aspects Of The United Nations Approach, Thomas Mccarthy

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Corporate Social Responsibility Versus Business And Human Rights: Bridging The Gap Between Responsibility And Accountability, Anita Ramasastry

Articles

This article explores the evolution of business and human rights (BHR) from a lawyer’s perspective and examines how it is contextually and conceptually different from corporate social responsibility (CSR) in its aims and ambitions. While CSR emphasizes responsible behavior, BHR focuses on a more delineated commitment in the area of human rights. BHR is, in part, a response to CSR and its perceived failure. This has led to a gap with two disciplines or strands of discourse that are diverging rather than converging. This article explores how the quest for accountability shapes a very different narrative for BHR, which takes …

White Paper: Options For A Treaty On Business And Human Rights, Anita Ramasastry, Douglass Cassell

Articles

The United Nations Human Rights Council decided in June 2014 to establish an Intergovernmental Working Group to “elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” The first meeting of the Working Group took take place in Geneva in July 2015. The Council did not further specify what sort of instrument should be drafted. The Center for Human Rights of the American Bar Association and the Law Society of England and Wales asked the present authors to prepare a “White Paper” on possible options for a treaty …

The Post-Postcolonial Woman Or Child, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This essay is based on remarks given as Distinguished Discussant for the 16th annual Grotius Lecture at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law/Biennial Conference of the International Law Association. The essay examines the international law status of women, on the one hand, and children, on the other, through the contemporary lens of the post-postcolonial world and the historical lens of Hugo Grotius and the colonialist era. In so doing, the essay responds to the principal Grotius Lecture, "Women and Children: The Cutting Edge of International Law," which was delivered by Radhika Coomarswamy, NYU Global Professor …

From Commitment To Compliance: Enforceability Of Remedial Orders Of African Human Rights Bodies, Roger-Claude Liwanga

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Over the last seven decades, there has been a global proliferation of international and regional human rights tribunals. But with no coercive power to enforce their judgments, these international tribunals rely either on the good faith of the State parties or on the political process for the implementation of their remedial orders. This nonjudicial approach to enforcement has showed its limits, as most State parties are noncompliant with international judgments to the detriment of human rights victims. This article recommends a new approach involving the judicialization of the post-adjudicative stage of international proceedings as an avenue to increase the enforceability …

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite: The United Nations Declaration Of The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples Fails To Protect Hopi Katsinam From The Auction Block In France, Samantha K. Nikic

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) compels member states to take action in order to protect the rights of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples, including the right to their cultural property. Notwithstanding the UNDRIP’s robust set of protections, its status as a nonbinding piece of international law remains its ultimate and most fatal flaw. France was an enthusiastic supporter of the UNDRIP at ratification, but has effectively abandoned their position. French auction houses and courts have allowed for sales of Native American sacred property to proceed despite the objections of the Hopi Tribe. In …

The Right To No: The Crime Of Marital Rape, Women's Human Rights, And International Law, Melanie Randall, Vasanthi Venkatesh

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

More than half of the world’s countries do not explicitly criminalize sexual assault in marriage. While sexual assault in general is criminalized in these countries, sexual assault perpetrated by a spouse is entirely legal. The human rights violations inhere in acts of violence against women are now well recognized. Yet somehow marital rape is a particular form of gendered violence that has escaped both criminal law sanctions and human rights approbation in a great number of the world’s nations.

This silence in the law creates legal impunity for men who sexually assault or rape the women who are their wives …

The United Nations System For The Protection Of Human Rights, Larry Johnson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

United States Attitudes Toward Ratification Of Human Rights Instruments, Louis B. Sohn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.