scholarly journals Instrumental or intrinsic? Human rights alignment in intergovernmental organizations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Benjamin Weyrauch ◽  
Christoph Valentin Steinert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Norm Diffusion ◽  
Physical Integrity ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Normative Standards ◽  
State Preferences

AbstractWhy do states’ human rights records converge with co-members in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)? This study provides new insights on whether interactions in IGOs have the capacity to genuinely transform state preferences or whether norm diffusion is a consequence of instrumental processes. We leverage information about the timing of human rights alignment to disentangle intrinsic from instrumental motives. We hypothesize that instrumental motives find expression in pre-membership alignment and reversions to original normative standards after IGO exits. Intrinsic motives lead to gradual alignment during IGO membership and result in stable normative changes beyond IGO exits. Using varying-slopes, varying intercepts models, we investigate the distance on human rights indices between individual states and IGO means. While we find evidence for systematic convergence during IGO membership, no significant changes occur before and after IGO membership. Testing alignment of different physical integrity rights, we find no evidence for instrumental shifts to clandestine repression during IGO membership. Overall, the results suggest that norm alignment in IGOs is at least not exclusively instrumentally motivated. Our findings support constructivist arguments on state interests and suggest that IGOs are capable of transforming states’ human rights related preferences.

The Institutional Future of the Covenants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felice D Gaer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Body System ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
Treaty Monitoring ◽  
Treaty Body ◽  
International Human ◽  
Normative Standards ◽  
Individual Petition

Longstanding proposals to strengthen implementation of the international human rights treaties have often focused on procedural reforms such as harmonizing methods of work or consolidating ten treaty monitoring bodies into one. This article reviews past reform efforts and then considers proposals to create stronger individual petition mechanisms—including a ‘world court’—as a way of strengthening human rights implementation. After discussing these proposals, the author offers additional ways to make the system more effective and efficient. She rejects the oft-suggested proposal to create a ‘world court’ for human rights, noting legal, organizational, logistical, and financial obstacles. Rather than rushing to tear down the current treaty body system, the author offers a proposal for determining how consolidation of petition proceedings might affect normative standards.

LAW, RELIGION, AND THE POLITICIZATION OF SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP IN KENYA

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-129
Author(s):  
Damaris Seleina Parsitau
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
Before And After

AbstractIn Kenya, debates about sexual orientation have assumed center stage at several points in recent years, but particularly before and after the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya in 2010. These debates have been fueled by religious clergy and by politicians who want to align themselves with religious organizations for respectability and legitimation, particularly by seeking to influence the nation's legal norms around sexuality. I argue that through their responses and attempts to influence legal norms, the religious and political leaders are not only responsible for the nonacceptance of same-sex relationships in Africa, but have also ensured that sexuality and embodiment have become a cultural and religious battleground. These same clergy and politicians seek to frame homosexuality as un-African, unacceptable, a threat to African moral and cultural sensibilities and sensitivities, and an affront to African moral and family values. Consequently, the perception is that homosexuals do not belong in Africa—that they cannot be entertained, accommodated, tolerated, or even understood. Ultimately, I argue that the politicization and religionization of same-sex relationships in Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, has masked human rights debates and stifled serious academic and pragmatic engagements with important issues around sexual difference and sexual orientation while fueling negative attitudes toward people with different sexual orientations.

scholarly journals Les vulnérables : evaluating the vulnerability criterion in Article 14 cases by the European Court of Human Rights

Legal Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
So Yeon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Group Affiliation ◽  
European Court ◽  
Before And After ◽  
New Criterion

Abstract The European Court of Human Rights (the Court) has been invoking the vulnerability criterion to overcome the drawbacks of cases concerning Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the prohibition of discrimination. This new criterion, allowing the Court to favour the applicants, highlights the applicants’ group affiliation. However, whether this criterion is effective in protecting vulnerable applicants against discrimination is doubtful. To examine this, I divide the Court's approach to Article 14 before and after the application of the vulnerability criterion. I argue that vulnerability criterion was used to fix the drawbacks of Article 14, but eventually backfired. The concept of vulnerability has been ambiguous, inconsistently used by the Court, and paternalistic. I suggest the Court focus on individual autonomy rather than grouping the applicants to improve their legal reasoning of Article 14.

Da Oviedo a Parigi: la vulnerabilità prima e dopo l’autonomia / From Oviedo to Paris: vulnerability before and after autonomy

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 779-792
Author(s):  
Claudio Sartea
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Guiding Principles

Il presente contributo riflette sulla Convenzione di Oviedo in prospettiva diacronica, analizzando l’evoluzione dei principi guida della bioetica e della biogiuridica nel passaggio di millennio. Vengono prese come pietre miliari la Convenzione medesima e la Dichiarazione UNESCO di Parigi del 2005 su Diritti Umani e Bioetica. L’emersione progressiva del principio di vulnerabilità viene interpretata come frutto dell’influsso del pensiero femminile nel dibattito e come lento ma consistente affermarsi di una concezione della giustizia meno liberal-individualistica e sempre più solidale e relazionale. ---------- This article thinks about the Oviedo Convention in a diachronic perspective, analyzing the evolution of the guiding principles of bioethics and biolaw in the millennium. The same convention and the 2005 Paris UNESCO Declaration on Human Rights and Bioethics are taken as milestones. The progressive emergence of the principle of vulnerability is interpreted as the result of the influence of women’s thinking in the debate and as slow but consistently affirming a less liberal-individualistic conception of justice and more and more relational conception.

The Protection of Mothers in British and German Constitutional Law: A Comparative Analysis and a Contribution to the Implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Domestic Legal Area

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-57
Author(s):  
Diana Zacharias
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Regional Systems ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Social Security Benefits ◽  
German Constitutional Law ◽  
Special Protection

The universal and regional systems of human rights protection recognize that mothers find themselves in situations which require special protection. For instance, Article 10 para. 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stipulates that special protection should be accorded to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth and that during such period working mothers should be accorded paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits.

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