Three days in December: Jewish human rights between the United Nations and the middle east in 1948

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
James Loeffler

Abstract The twin birth of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Genocide Convention in 1948 have received enormous scholarly attention in recent years. Yet historians have largely ignored how these legal projects intersected with that year’s war in Israel/Palestine. In this article, I push these two stories back into a single frame by examining the year-long efforts of one early human rights organization, the World Jewish Congress, to advance rights-claims on behalf of Middle Eastern Jewish communities imperiled by the regional repercussions of the war. The WJC’s record of activities affords us a direct window into contemporaneous activist understandings of the ties between the Holocaust and the Nakba, human rights and genocide, and international law and politics. More broadly, it reveals the intrinsic limits of early human rights advocacy in an emerging global system exclusively structured around nation states.

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán I. Búzás

AbstractThe most important international human rights norms are legalized or codified in international treaty law. Yet pernicious practices at odds with these norms endure and sometimes even increase after legalization. According to conventional wisdom, this is because agents commit to but do not comply with international law and the underlying norms. I develop a theory of evasion to explain why norm violations persist even when states technically comply with the law. Because legalization transposes social norms into international law imperfectly, it creates gaps between laws and underlying norms. Because of these norm-law gaps, legality and normative appropriateness will diverge. States caught between opposing pressures from pro-violation and pro-compliance groups exploit this gap through what I call evasion—the intentional minimization of normative obligations that technically complies with international law but violates underlying norms. I demonstrate the theory's empirical purchase in the cases of the French expulsion of Roma immigrants and the Czech school segregation of Roma children. Under the cover of technical compliance with the law, these states violated the norm of racial equality. The argument cautions that the good news about law compliance is not necessarily good news about norm compliance, broadens our understanding of norm violators' agency, and has practical implications for human rights advocacy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 195 ◽  
pp. 239-294

239State responsibility — Attribution — United Nations peacekeeping troops — Dutch battalion contingent of United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (“Dutchbat”) — Responsibility for conduct of Dutchbat — Acts of Dutchbat taking place up until 23.00 on 11 July 1995 under UN flag — Whether attributable to Netherlands — Whether Netherlands having effective control over acts — UN International Law Commission Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts 2001, Articles 4(1) and 8 — Dutchbat United Nations organ — Whether Dutchbat’s conduct taking place under direction or control of Netherlands — Effective control standard — Whether Netherlands responsible for Dutchbat’s conduct at relevant timeInternational organizations — Responsibility — United Nations — Peacekeeping troops — Dutchbat — Dutchbat United Nations organ — Responsibility for conduct of Dutchbat — Acts of Dutchbat taking place up until 23.00 on 11 July 1995 under UN flag — Ultra vires conduct — Attribution to UN — UN International Law Commission Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations 2011, Article 8Treaties — Interpretation — Application — Effect — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 — Article I — Obligation to prevent genocide — Interpretation of provision in accordance with Articles 31-3 of Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969 — Text of Genocide Convention — Legislative history of Genocide Convention — Whether Contracting Parties intending obligation to have direct effect — Whether terms of provision sufficiently precise to be applied directly — Whether obligation having direct effect in proceedings between civilians and NetherlandsRelationship of international law and municipal law — Treaties — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 — Article I — Obligation to prevent genocide — Whether Article I of Genocide Convention having direct effect within meaning of Articles 93 and 94 of Constitution of the Netherlands — Interpretation of provision in accordance with Articles 31-3 of Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969 — Text of Genocide Convention — Legislative history of Genocide Convention — Whether Contracting Parties intending obligation to have direct effect — Whether terms of provision sufficiently 240precise to be applied directly — Whether obligation having direct effect in proceedings between civilians and NetherlandsInternational criminal law — Genocide — Whether Netherlands failing to prevent genocide perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs — Obligation to prevent genocide in Article I of Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 — Whether Netherlands violating Article I of Genocide Convention — Whether Article I having direct effect in proceedings between civilians and NetherlandsRelationship of international law and municipal law — Treaties — European Convention on Human Rights, 1950, Articles 2 and 3 — International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 — Protection of rights to life and physical integrity — Whether Dutchbat’s acts wrongful to be assessed under Dutch law — Applicable standard — Article 6:162 of Dutch Civil Code — Duty of care — Standards derived from Articles 2 and 3 of European Convention inherent in duty of care — Whether Court of Appeal applying correct standardHuman rights — Rights to life and physical integrity — Treaties — Standards — European Convention on Human Rights, 1950, Articles 2 and 3 — War situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina — Evacuation of refugees — Rights of male refugees — Violation of rights by Bosnian Serbs — Whether Dutchbat’s command knew, or reasonably ought to have known, at time of evacuation of real risk of violation of those rights — Whether Dutchbat acting wrongfully — Whether wrongful for Dutchbat to continue to cooperate in evacuation of refugees located in safe area outside compound — Whether wrongful for Dutchbat not to offer male refugees the choice of remaining in compound — Whether real chance that male refugees could have escaped Bosnian Serbs if remaining in compound — Estimation of chanceDamages — Claim for damages — Whether Netherlands to pay compensation — Whether order of Court of Appeal for compensation to be paid — Whether based on incorrect interpretation of law — Whether incomprehensible — Whether claim for damages could only be lodged by surviving relatives of male refugees evacuated from compound on 13 July 1995 — Whether Mothers of Srebrenica Association could claim damages — The law of the Netherlands


2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armin von Bogdandy ◽  
Sergio Dellavalle

Social order is the telos of law and politics. This study will present Jürgen Habermas' thought on this topic as one of the most important of the last forty years. By collocating it within the broader discussion on social order, we will highlight the potential, but also some problems of his universalistic proposal in light of challenges at the outset of the 21st century. This article argues that Habermas' communicative paradigm provides a conceptual framework for a universal public law protecting peace and human rights in an effective and legitimate way. It can be understood as a regulative idea, guiding transformative work of scholars, politicians and lawyers, rather than as a theoretical instrument that conceptualises international law in its current institutional setting.


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selma Oliver

AbstractThe physical disappearance of a state's entire territory is an event forecasted to happen as a result of sea-level rise, affecting some of the smallest nation states in the world, primarily islands in the South Pacific. The focus of this article is on the human rights of the inhabitants of the disappearing states when they are forced to relocate.


Author(s):  
Rotem Giladi

Race is one of the more ubiquitous, yet least explored, shifts in twentieth-century international law. From law that was founded in key areas and concepts on racial distinctions, international law quickly came to denounce various manifestations of race theories and racial discrimination. The establishment of the UN reflected a racialized understanding of the international society assumptions of the League of Nations mandate system. The 1948 Universal Declaration addressed entitlement to human rights without distinction of race, yet the Genocide Convention extended protection to racial (identity of) minority groups. In South Africa, race policies provided both the impetus and multiple occasions for formulating claims about a new, de-racialized international law from 1946 onwards. At these struggles against apartheid, binary political confrontations could take form as competing visions of international law, both old and new. This chapter charts the sites of contestation over apartheid and its effects on international law.


Author(s):  
Castellino Joshua ◽  
Keane David

This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of states in the Pacific Basin and how these have received very little attention in international law and politics. It lays out the purpose of this book, which is to study the issue of human rights in the Pacific. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.


2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Laura Tate Kagel

This article investigates Germany's role in CIA "extraordinary renditions" of terrorist suspects, focusing on two cases involving German citizens of Middle Eastern descent (Khaled el-Masri and Mohammed Zammar), and one case of an Egyptian cleric who had resided in Italy and was likely transferred to Egypt via a U.S. military airport in Germany (Abu Omar). Amid recent revelations about the extent of the CIA program for transferring and interrogating terrorism suspects, the question of Germany's potential responsibility under international law has gained public attention. Against the background of international legal rules governing responsibility of assisting states, this article examines what was known in Germany about human rights abuses in the above cases and evaluates official steps taken by the government to prevent or uncover violations. In the conclusion, the article addresses the need for increased institutional safeguards to hinder German involvement in questionable U.S. counterterrorism practices.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 438-456
Author(s):  
Giovanna M. Frisso

This article reflects upon the potential contribution of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (iachr) to international law. This is done through an analysis of the debates related to two aspects of the 2007 judgment of the International Court of Justice (icj) on the application of the Genocide Convention, judgment which has received a great amount of criticism, in part because the approaches adopted by the icj differ from those adopted by human rights courts. The jurisprudence of the iachr has been used to illustrate these differences and to articulate the challenges that they pose to an understanding of the international legal system as a unified system. This article argues that due consideration of the jurisprudence of the iachr could have strengthened the persuasive force of the icj judgment, because it would have required the icj to clearly indicate the arguments relied on for choosing one of the different, and sometimes contradictory, approaches.


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