Minority Rights in the Middle East

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Castellino Joshua ◽  
Cavanaugh Kathleen A
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Critical Questioning

This, the third book of the OUP Series on Minority Rights Law, focusses on minorities in the Middle East. Written at a time of great turmoil and also hope in the region, the book seeks to examine important minority questions that are central to the events that have unfolded across the region from 2011 to date. The Middle East is a region that raises contentious political, legal, and historical debates. Coming closer to a contemporary understanding of the region challenges, confuses, and demands the critical questioning of numerous assumptions in the public realm. Our analysis is contained in six chapters divided in two parts. The first part examines fundamental underpinning concepts to the discussion and provides an overview of the region, while the second offers a detailed analysis of the history, identity, legal provisions, and remedies available to minorities in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. In offering this analysis we suggest not one, but multiple geographies, and not a fixed, immovable space, but one which, through its historical social formation, has been continually transformed, in more recent centuries through the invidious interference from outside. In examining the shifting constructions of religious, linguistic, and ethnic minorities in the region, the focus of this book lies on two primary questions; first, how the sociopolitical groups definable as minorities engage (or are excluded from) sites of power and, secondly, how state practice on minorities intersects and informs modern constitutionalism and international law.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Castellino Joshua ◽  
Cavanaugh Kathleen A
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Groups

The Introduction lays out the primary task for this book; to examine the shifting constructions of religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East with a focus on two primary questions: how the socio-political groups that we define as minorities engage (or are excluded from) various sites of power and, secondly how state practices with regard to minorities (and ostensibly based on Islamic authority) intersect and inform modern constitutionalism and international law. In undertaking this task, we outline a number of challenges, first amongst these is to avoid a limited and reductionist view of the Middle East and, as we fix our focus on minority rights in the Middle East, we set out a second challenge; to ensure that we do not graft a conceptual concept on to a society or, as White argues, we risk ‘losing sight of how the social and political groups these categories describe appeared and developed’.

Territorial Dimensions of Self-Determination

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-468
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
The Third ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
Middle East Conflict ◽  
International Court ◽  
Generous Support

Professor Yaël Ronen introduced the workshop as the fourth in a series of events on legal aspects of the Middle East conflict. The first two events concerned the Palestine Mandate of 1922. The third focused on the 1948 refugee issue. All these events have and are being held with the generous support of the Knapp Family Foundation and under the auspices of the International Law Forum of the Faculty of Law. Also, as part of the Shabtai Rosenne International Law Center Initiative, the first session was dedicated to the commemoration of the work of the late Shabtai Rosenne, whose scholarship spanned a host of international law issues but who is most renowned for his work on the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Conditions of the Right to Erasure

2020 ◽  
pp. 196-274
Author(s):  
Jef Ausloos
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Legal Obligation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Data Subject

This chapter zooms in on Article 17 GDPR, on the right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’). It meticulously dissects the three paragraphs of this provision. The first paragraph lists six rights-to-erasure triggers which can be summarized as: (a) purpose expiration; (b) withdrawal of consent; (c) right to object; (d) unlawful processing; (e) legal obligation; and (f) withdrawal of consent by minors in the online environment. The second paragraph comprises an odd extension of the right to erasure, enabling data subjects to request that controllers who have made the personal data public, communicate potential erasure to anyone else processing that same personal data. The third paragraph lists five exemptions to the right to erasure, summarized as: (a) freedom of expression and information; (b) legal obligation or task carried out in the public interest or official authority; (c) public interest in the area of public health; (d) public interest archiving, scientific and historical research, or statistical purposes; and (e) legal claims. What becomes clear right away is how both the right-to-erasure’s triggers and exemptions all refer to other legal provisions in and outside the GDPR. As such, the right to erasure can be seen as a central hub in the GDPR, bringing together key data protection principles from the perspective of data subject empowerment.

scholarly journals The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea: the 1976 New York Sessions

1977 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard H. Oxman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
State Practice ◽  
The Law

The law of the sea has changed, for good or for ill. The Revised Single Negotiating Text (hereinafter RSNT) issued in the spring of 1976 may prove to be the single most important document regarding the law of the sea since the 1958 Geneva Conventions in terms of its influence on state practice, whether by way of an ultimate treaty or otherwise. Important differences will exist regarding the extent to which portions of the text are declaratory of emerging customary international law and regarding the extent to which the text must be changed to be acceptable as a universal treaty or as customary law. Indeed, difficult questions of implementation of its principles in bilateral and other arrangements are already arising. Positions taken at multilateral conferences may differ from the positions taken in other contexts. But the text will not be ignored.

scholarly journals Metaphor in International Law: Language, Imagination and Normative Inquiry

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-195
Author(s):  
Maks Del Mar
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
State Practice

This article investigates the role and value of metaphor in normative inquiry, offering both a general framework and applying it to the theory and practice of customary international law. Metaphor is defined as the practice of supposing relations between images from a perspective. The second part of the article unpacks each of these elements, i.e. supposition, relating, image-making and perspective-taking. It considers what role each of these elements plays in metaphorical cognition and why that role is valuable (epistemically and politically). The third part of the article turns to metaphors in customary international law, focusing on metaphors of the path, ripening and crystallisation. It is argued that the shift in metaphorical practice from that of the path to crystallisation is part of what both constitutes and enables a change from a state-practice heavy approach to an opinio-juris weighted one.

scholarly journals Minorities in Postcolonial Transitions: The Ndebele in Zimbabwe

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-185
Author(s):  
Khanyisela Moyo
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Fundamental Objective

AbstractThis article argues that there is a legal and political basis for attending to concerns of ethnic minorities in postcolonial transitions. If left unattended, this issue may prompt members of minority groups to resort to preservative measures, including violence to the detriment of the security which is a fundamental objective of the transition. This reaction is often generated by an axiomatic fear of assimilation. The case of the Ndebele of Zimbabwe illustrates this. The article’s position is confirmed by post-colonial state practice that implements minority rights and accords affected groups a right to self-determination or autonomy in tandem with liberal democratic reforms.

scholarly journals Cross-Border Evidence Gathering in Transnational Criminal Investigation: Is the Microsoft Ireland Case the “Next Frontier”?

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 63-97
Author(s):  
ROBERT J. CURRIE
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Criminal Prosecution ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Electronic Evidence ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Evidence Gathering ◽  
Appeals Court

AbstractA recent and prominent American appeals court case has revived a controversial international law question: can a state compel a person on its territory to obtain and produce material that the person owns or controls, but which is stored on the territory of a foreign state? The case involved, United States v Microsoft, features electronic data stored offshore that was sought in the context of a criminal prosecution. It highlights the current legal complexity surrounding the cross-border gathering of electronic evidence, which has produced friction and divergent state practice. The author here contends that the problems involved are best understood — and potentially resolved — via an examination through the lens of the public international law of jurisdiction and, specifically, the prohibition of extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction. An analysis of state practice reveals that unsanctioned cross-border evidence gathering is viewed by states as an intrusion on territorial sovereignty, engaging the prohibition, and that this view properly extends to the kind of state activity dealt with in the Microsoft Ireland case.

Between Faith and State

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Kathleen A. Cavanaugh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
International Law ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter examines the politics of law that are mapped out in the various trends of analysis within both Islamic and international law. Disrupting the notion of a "fixedness" in these legal discourses and reimagining each in their political self is a critical first step in addressing the challenge--one that preoccupies much of the literature that looks at Islam and rights--as to how to open a space in the human rights project where faith and reason can be accommodated. In undertaking this task, the chapter discusses how the human rights project engages with religion in the public sphere before turning to how these concepts have been engaged where Islam and human rights intersect generally, and then specifically when applied to states in the Middle East. The second part of the chapter focuses on the plural readings of Islamic formulations of law and details the trends of analysis within political transformations that have unfolded (and continue to unfold) across the MENA region in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring.

The Legitimacy of Minorities' Claim for Autonomy through the Right to Self-Determination

1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Nation States ◽  
State Practice ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Right

AbstractThe grant of autonomous powers to minorities is considered as a threat to the stability of the nation-State system. Nonetheless, many academics and jurists now believe that autonomy can be used to reduce ethnic conflicts, provided that parties to such arrangements are willing to implement them in good faith. In contemporary debate amongst academics it is frequently argued that there is an apparent link between minorities' rights and autonomy. Moreover, some minority rights campaigners stress that minorities' right to autonomy emanates from the right to self-determination. Such claims are, however, contested by most nation-States on the ground that autonomy is not a right in international law. It is only a small number of States that are prepared to experiment with autonomous arrangements to address minorities' concerns within their constitutional structure. Whilst investigating the current developments in United Nations and State practice with regard to autonomy, this article critically analyses whether autonomy gains its legitimacy through the right to self-determination and the extent to which autonomy is being evolved as an integral part of the internal right to self-determination.

Part II The International Law Framework of Investment Protection and Political Risk, 5 History and Development of the Customary International Law of Expropriation and Investment Protection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubins Noah ◽  
Papanastasiou Thomas-Nektarios ◽  
Kinsella N Stephan
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Investment Protection ◽  
Public Purpose ◽  
Current State ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Full Compensation ◽  
Compensation Standard

This chapter discusses the principles of customary international law related to expropriation. It includes an overview of the historical development of the international law of expropriation, as developed in international arbitration decisions, commentators, treaties, and State practice. It also discusses the current state of the customary international law of expropriations, including the various substantive protections established in customary and conventional international law, such as the full compensation standard for expropriation, the public purpose requirement, and the prohibition against discrimination. The chapter concludes that a State may expropriate the property of aliens within its borders, but must compensate the foreigner for full value of the property taken. The primary change in the international law of expropriation since the nineteenth century is that the State may no longer use force against another State to rectify or prevent a taking of property by the host State.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document