International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

The Search For Protection For Stateless Refugees In The Middle East: Palestinians And Kurds In Lebanon And Jordan, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

Most Arab countries have not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention/1967 Protocol or the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness has no ratifications in the Middle East. While regional conventions dealing with refugees in the Arab world have been developed, they have been honoured primarily in the breach. Further, many Arab countries do not have domestic laws governing the status of refugees or stateless persons per se, but have applied ad hoc policies to the waves of refugees that have entered and stayed – some for decades – in …

Discriminatory Nationality Laws Must Be Eliminated In Order To Eradicate Statelessness, Neda Shaheen

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Undocumented Crime Victims: Unheard, Unnumbered, And Unprotected, Pauline Portillo

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

Abstract forthcoming

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

Due Process And The Right To Legal Counsel For Unaccompanied Minors, Marielos G. Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unaccompanied minors arriving to the United States fleeing violence and seeking protection are apprehended, detained in facilities, and placed in removal proceedings in accordance with U.S. immigration laws. Like adults, these children have to appear in immigration court to fight deportation and must apply for any form of legal relief for which they may be eligible. However, removal proceedings work as a civil and not a criminal process, and immigration laws have established that while noncitizens have the right to an attorney, they are not entitled to legal counsel at the government’s expense. This thesis examines how the denial of …

Shattered Jade, Broken Shoe: Foreign Economic Development And The Sexual Exploitation Of Women In China, Elizabeth Spahn

Maine Law Review

Predicting the ways in which feminisms might develop in the next century is unfortunately well beyond my own capabilities. In the next decade or two, however, one thing I believe we might want to think about are the relationships between feminisms and global free market capitalisms. The question I am asking, simply stated, is the extent to which economic development (free-market global capitalism) advances, is neutral toward, or harms women. One traditional American way of viewing the global free market is to tout economic development as a panacea for the problems facing the world's poorest and most violated group, women. …

Fulfilling U.S. Commitment To Refugee Resettlement: Protecting Refugees, Preserving National Security, & Building The U.S. Economy Through Refugee Admissions, Harvard Immigration And Refugee Clinical Program

Texas A&M Law Review

At a time when the U.S. refugee admissions program is under serious threat and the world’s displaced population is at its highest, this Report sets forth extensive recommendations regarding the United States’ role in protecting vulnerable refugees and compliance with its commitments under domestic and international law that together safeguard people fleeing persecution and fearing return to torture. The Report also identifies key national security reasons for supporting and enhancing the refugee program in keeping with U.S. foreign policy priorities. Additionally, the Report provides an in-depth discussion of the robust, multistep security-assessment mechanisms already in place for screening refugees; offers …

The End Of Special Treatment For Cubans In The U.S. Immigration System: Consequences And Solutions For Cubans With Final Orders Of Removal, Lindsay Daniels

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In January 2016, former President Obama announced the end of the “Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot” Policy, which granted special immigration benefits to Cuban migrants. As part of the agreement to end this policy, the Cuban government agreed to take back its citizens with final orders of removal for criminal convictions, an action that it had refused to take for decades. This Comment will begin by exploring past and present immigration policies between the United States and Cuba, including recent developments like the normalization of relations and the impact of President Trump’s immigration policies.

This Comment will then explore possible avenues of relief …

Undocumented Citizens Of The United States: The Repercussions Of Denying Birth Certificates, Anna L. Lichtenberger

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

The Socialization Of Human Rights As An Inroad To Protect Sacred Space, Leonard Hammer

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Serious problems exist for cultural heritage protection, and these problems are even more serious when accounting for the protection of sacred space and holy places. The lack of effectiveness of the majority of existing international norms and institutions will be reviewed in this paper, which shall then turn to potential sources for entrenching protection of scared space within states.

The paper shall rely on the human right to freedom of religion or belief as the basis for upholding sacred space given an emerging broader understanding of the right within the human rights framework.

The paper shall principally focus on the …

Remembering An Abolitionist, Ambassador John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017), Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

A memorial for Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017). Ambassador Miller believed modern-day slavery, encompassing sex trafficking and forced labor, requires a principled global offensive that the United States is morally obligated to lead. In the four formative years he led the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, 2002 to 2006, John Miller set the office’s course as diplomatically aggressive and programmatically creative. He made the annual Trafficking in Persons report more than a bureaucratic submission, putting daring heroes at the center, and insisting on compelling …

What If The International Criminal Court Could Prosecute President Al-Assad For The Chemical Weapon Attacks In Ghouta?, Paul Cho

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Human Rights Law And Racial Hate Speech Regulation In Australia: Reform And Replace?, Dr. Alan Berman

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Complexity Analysis: A Preliminary Step Toward A General Systems Theory Of International Law, James L. Hildebrand

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Rape And Sexual Violence: Questionable Inevitability And Moral Responsibility In Armed Conflict, Katherine W. Bogen

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Wartime sexual violence is a critical human rights issue that usurps the autonomy of its victims as well as their physical and psychological safety. It occurs in both ethnic and non-ethnic wars, across geographic regions, against both men and women, and regardless of the “official” position of commanders, states, and armed groups on the use of rape as tactic of war. This problem is current, pervasive, and global in spite of the status of wartime sexual violence perpetration as a crime against humanity and the capacity of the international criminal court to indict offenders. Though some scholars have argued that …

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

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Sub-Saharan Africa: The Right Of Intervention In The Name Of Humanity, R. H. Payne

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Trafficking Smuggled Migrants: An Issue Of Vulnerability, Rachel A. Hews

Global Tides

This paper analyzes why the UN’s efforts against the sex trafficking of smuggled migrants, specifically regarding the Palermo and Smuggling Protocols, have been inadequate in preventing migrant smuggling. It concludes that the crime-based focus on prosecution overshadows prevention of the crime and protection of the victims, and that a human rights approach addressing the vulnerability of smuggled migrants would be more effective in reducing migrant smuggling long-term. Proposed solutions include decreasing both the “push” and “pull” factors of migration by ratifying existing legislation regarding basic human rights, implementing national policies that increase migrant rights in destination countries, and shifting further …

The Art Of Nailing Jell-O To The Wall: Reassessing The Political Power Of The Internet, Bryan Druzin, Jessica Li

Journal of Law and Policy

Political observers commonly argue that, given the unique characteristics of the Internet, democratization is an inevitability of its widespread use. The critical role that social media played in the wave of demonstrations, protests, and revolutions that swept across the Arab world in 2011 cemented this perception in the minds of many. Yet China defies this simplistic paradigm—China has been stunningly successful at constraining the political power of its Internet. We argue that the political importance of Internet technology has been overstated, particularly with respect to China. As support for this thesis, we cite recent political events in Hong Kong known …

Competing For Refugees: A Market-Based Solution To A Humanitarian Crisis, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The current refugee crisis demands novel legal solutions, and new ways of summoning the political will to implement them. As a matter of national incentives, the goal must be to design mechanisms that discourage countries of origin from creating refugees, and encourage host countries to welcome them. One way to achieve this would be to recognize that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance. Modifications to the international apparatus would be necessary, but the basic legal elements of this proposal already …

Forced Migration, The Human Face Of A Health Crisis, Lawrence O. Gostin, Anna E. Roberts

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Nearly 60 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled their homes in 2014, predominately from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. The global response to assisting this vulnerable group has been wholly incommensurate with the need given the profound health hazards faced by forced migrants at each stage of their journey. The majority of forced migrants are housed in lower-income countries that do not have the infrastructure to assist the significant numbers of individuals who are crossing their borders and the humanitarian organizations who seek to assist in the response are grossly underfunded and under-resourced.

Countries have varying responsibilities …

The Impasse Of Tibetan Justice: Spain's Exercise Of Universal Jurisdiction In Prosecuting Chinese Genocide, Craig Peters

Seattle University Law Review

Universal jurisdiction is the progressive and contentious legal principle that courts have competence to adjudicate cases involving alleged violations of international law regardless of the nation in which those crimes occurred, the nationality of the victim, or the nationality of the perpetrator. While the limits of more conventional theories of jurisdiction are defined by sovereignty, territory, and nationality, the exercise of universal jurisdiction is based solely on the nature of the crime alleged. That is, when a crime is so serious that it violates peremptory norms of international law, courts are entitled, or even obliged, to hear those cases regardless …

Human Rights At The Border: European-Union—Moroccan Relations In The Wake Of The 2013 Migratory Policy, Anashua Dutta

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Morocco’s border with the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla has brought the country into direct relations with the European Union (EU) on the issues of border control and migration. In response to the growing human rights violations towards migrants and refugees enumerated in the Conseil Nationale des Droits de l’Homme’s (CNDH) 2013 report, King Muhammad VI passed a migratory policy that emphasized preservation of human rights within Morocco’s borders. This study examines the effects of Morocco’s relationship with the EU on the implementation of the human-rights aspects of Morocco’s 2013 migratory policy. Using the semi-structured interview approach, I will …

Ending Bacha Bazi: Boy Sex Slavery And The Responsibility To Protect Doctrine, 25 Ind. Int'l. & Comp. L. Rev. 63 (2015), Samuel Vincent Jones

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This essay challenges the conventional wisdom that prohibitions against government-condoned child-sex slavery have attained non- derogable, peremptory status under international law. Much to the utter shock of field investigators and human rights experts, boy sex slavery has evolved into a constitutive and central feature of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (Afghanistan) because of a customary practice commonly referred to as bacha bazi.

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 …

Rethinking Resistance: Reflections On The Cultural Lives Of Property, Collective Identity, And Intellectual Property, 47 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1349 (2014), Caroline Joan Picart

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Region Codes And Human Rights, Molly Land

Faculty Articles and Papers

This essay considers what Professor Peter Yu’s article on DVD region coding, “Region Codes and the Territorial Mess,” illustrates about the challenges associated with using human rights law to respond to limitations on access to knowledge. The kind of activity that Professor Yu points to — the decisions of corporate actors pursuing their own interests that have significant unanticipated effects on individual rights — presents a recurring and thorny problem for those concerned about expression and culture today. At what point do these burdens constitute a human rights violation that can and should be regulated by the state? The essay …

Women, Vulnerability, And Humanitarian Emergencies, Fionnuala Ni Aolain

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The catastrophic dimensions of humanitarian emergencies are increasingly understood and more visible to states and international institutions. There is greater appreciation for the social, economic and political effects that follow in the short to long term from the devastating consequences of humanitarian emergencies. There is also recognition of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in policy and institutional contexts. It is generally acknowledged that women are overrepresented in the refugee and internally displaced communities that typically result from many humanitarian crises. Women bear acute care responsibilities in most societies and also disproportionately bear familial and communal care responsibilities in communities …

Unveiling The Complexities Surrounding The Right To Take Part In Cultural Life: The Effect Of General Comment No. 21 On The Legality Of The French Burqa Ban Under The Icescr, Alison Dean

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Adoption: A Way Forward, Elizabeth Bartholet

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.