A road to human rights, or what happened on the way to a moratorium?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen M. Omoto
Keyword(s):  
2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burcu Togral Koca

Turkey has followed an “open door” policy towards refugees from Syria since the March 2011 outbreak of the devastating civil war in Syria. This “liberal” policy has been accompanied by a “humanitarian discourse” regarding the admission and accommodation of the refugees. In such a context, it is widely claimed that Turkey has not adopted a securitization strategy in its dealings with the refugees. However, this article argues that the stated “open door” approach and its limitations have gone largely unexamined. The assertion is, here, refugees fleeing Syria have been integrated into a security framework embedding exclusionary, militarized and technologized border practices. Drawing on the critical border studies, the article deconstructs these practices and the way they are violating the principle of non-refoulement in particular and human rights of refugees in general. 


Author(s):  
Richard Caplan

States – Western ones, at least – have given increased weight to human rights and humanitarian norms as matters of international concern, with the authorization of legally binding enforcement measures to tackle humanitarian crises under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. These concerns were also developed outside the UN Security Council framework, following Tony Blair’s Chicago speech and the contemporaneous NATO action over Kosovo. This gave rise to international commissions and resulted, among other things, in the emergence of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) doctrine. The adoption of this doctrine coincided with a period in which there appeared to be a general decline in mass atrocities. Yet R2P had little real effect – it cannot be shown to have caused the fall in mass atrocities, only to have echoed it. Thus, the promise of R2P and an age of humanitarianism failed to emerge, even if the way was paved for future development.


Author(s):  
Shai Dothan

There is a consensus about the existence of an international right to vote in democratic elections. Yet states disagree about the limits of this right when it comes to the case of prisoners’ disenfranchisement. Some states allow all prisoners to vote, some disenfranchise all prisoners, and others allow only some prisoners to vote. This chapter argues that national courts view the international right to vote in three fundamentally different ways: some view it as an inalienable right that cannot be taken away, some view it merely as a privilege that doesn’t belong to the citizens, and others view it as a revocable right that can be taken away under certain conditions. The differences in the way states conceive the right to vote imply that attempts by the European Court of Human Rights to follow the policies of the majority of European states by using the Emerging Consensus doctrine are problematic.


Author(s):  
Lisa Rodgers

‘Ordinary’ employment contracts—including those of domestic servants—have been deemed to attract diplomatic immunity because they fall within the scope of diplomatic functions. This chapter highlights the potential for conflict between these forms of immunity and the rights of the employees, and reflects on cases in which personal servants of diplomatic agents have challenged both the existence of immunity and the scope of its application. The chapter examines claims that the exercise of diplomatic immunity might violate the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the way in which courts have dealt with these issues. The chapter analyses diplomats’ own employment claims and notes that they are usually blocked by the assertion of immunity, but also reflects on more recent developments in which claims had been considered which were incidental to diplomatic employment (eg Nigeria v Ogbonna [2012]).


Author(s):  
Jennie Edlund ◽  
Václav Stehlík

The paper analyses the protection granted under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights for different immigration cases. The way the European Court of Human Rights determines compliance with Article 8 for settled migrants differs from the way the Court determines compliance for foreign nationals seeking entry or requesting to regularize their irregular migration status. The paper argues that the European Court of Human Rights application of different principles when determining a States’ positive and negative obligations is contradicting its own case law. It also argues that the absence of justification grounds for the refusal of foreign nationals who are seeking entry lacks legitimacy. By treating all immigration cases under Article 8(2) the paper suggests that the differentiation between cases should be based on how a refusal of entry or an expulsion would impact on the family life. The paper also suggests that more consideration should be given towards the insiders interests when balancing the individual rights against the state's interests. These changes would lead to a more consistent and fair case law and generate a more convergent practice by the states which will increase the precedent value of the Court's judgements.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 127-144
Author(s):  
Paul A. Chambers

The Colombian government’s noncompliance with the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement’s Labor Action Plan calls into question not only the government’s intentions but also the efficacy of human rights activism and discourse for social resistance to neoliberalism. Colombia has managed to adjust the narrative on human rights and improve its international image, paving the way for U.S. ratification of the free-trade agreement despite the fact that the human rights situation continues to be very serious. Its success in this is due to the way in which the debate on the agreement and human rights was framed—with a very narrow focus on trade unionists’ rights and a discourse that did not link civil and political rights to economic and social rights—and to the ideological affinity between neoliberalism and the dominant liberal discourse on human rights. El incumplimiento del Plan de Acción Laboral por parte del gobierno colombiano, en el marco del TLC con Estados Unidos, pone en tela de juicio no solo las intenciones del gobierno, sino la utilidad y eficacia del activismo y discurso de los derechos humanos para la resistencia social al neoliberalismo. El Estado colombiano ha logrado ajustar la narrativa sobre los derechos humanos y mejorar su imagen internacional, lo que le permitió ser “premiado” con la ratificación del TLC a pesar de que la situación de derechos humanos siguiera siendo grave. Esto se debe a la forma en que se enmarcó el debate sobre el TLC y los derechos humanos—con un enfoque demasiado restringido y un discurso que no integró los derechos civiles y políticos con los derechos económicos y sociales—y a la afinidad ideológica entre el neoliberalismo y el discurso dominante de los derechos humanos.


Sexualities ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 998-1015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sima Shakhsari

Using the ethnographic data from interviews with the Iranian queer and transgender refugee applicants in Turkey, the UNHCR, and NGOs in Istanbul, Ankara, Denizli, Kayseri, and Nevsehir, I explore the way that refugee rights as a temporally and spatially contingent concept normalizes queer and transgender refugee subjects, while managing the lives and deaths of different populations. Through examining the chronopolitics and geopolitics of rights within the refugee discourse, I point to inconsistencies in the universality of human rights and argue that while the designation of an act as “violation of human rights” committed by states or citizens, is arbitrary and contingent on the place and time of the act, the recognition of the refugee in the human rights regimes relies on essentialist and timeless notions of identity that travel in the teleological time of progress. The Iranian queer and trans refugees in Turkey are suspended in an in-between zone of recognition where rightfulness and rightlessness come together in a temporal standstill. The “protection” of trans and queer refugees under the rhetoric of rights in this in-between zone is tied to the management of life and death of populations through the politics of rightful killing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Eric Che Muma

Abstract Since the introduction of democratic reforms in post-independent Africa, most states have been battling corruption to guarantee sustainable peace, human rights and development. Because of the devastating effects of corruption on the realisation of peace, human rights and sustainable development, the world at large and Africa in particular, has strived to fight against corruption with several states adopting national anti-corruption legislation and specialised bodies. Despite international and national efforts to combat corruption, the practice still remains visible in most African states without any effective accountability or transparency in decision-making processes by the various institutions charged with corruption issues. This has further hindered global peace, the effective enjoyment of human rights and sustainable development in the continent. This paper aims to examine the concept of corruption and combating corruption and its impact on peace, human rights and sustainable development in post-independent Africa with a particular focus on Cameroon. It reveals that despite international and national efforts, corruption still remains an obstacle to global peace in Africa requiring a more proactive means among states to achieve economic development. The paper takes into consideration specific socio-economic challenges posed by corruption and the way forward for a united Africa to combat corruption to pull the continent out of poverty, hunger and instability, and to transform it into a better continent for peace, human rights and sustainable development.


Author(s):  
Hartini Selian ◽  
Jumino Suhadi ◽  
M. Manugeren

Abstract This study is about heroism in the novel The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. There are three points of discussion under this title: giving protection, defending rights and gratitude. Defending rights is associated with heroic deeds. A hero is a random citizen that rises to an occasion and performs an action of superhero proportions. Gratitude implies thankfulness or an appreciation of benefits conferred together with a desire, when practicable, to return those benefits. Defending rights is tied to human rights which are universally applicable to one and all. These are the significant components of heroism. One of the relevant and outstanding modern theories of heroism applied here is proposed by Gibbon (2009) stating that hero is just an average man who fights to solve a common problem in today’s society. The study is conducted with Descriptive Qualitative Method proposed by Haughman (2009) in which he states that Qualitative research is a form of social inquiry that focuses on the way people interpret and make sense of their experiences and the world in which they live. Kipling leads children down the jungle path into adventures beyond their day to day imagining and along the way he shows the value of ‘doing for yourself', of 'learning who to trust'. The result shows that heroism is highlighted through the major characters and the conclusive points are some of the significant characters such as Mowgli, Father Wolf, Mother Wolf, Hathi, and Bagheera have done heroic deeds. Their heroism is presented in the forms of giving protection, defending rights and gratitude. Keywords: heroism, human rights, gratitude


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