Human rights in the EU’s common security and defence policy

Author(s):  
Carmen Márquez Carrasco

This chapter examines the European Union’s (EU´s) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and discusses how the EU’s commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights and support to democracy and rule of law are included in this foreign policy area. It begins with an analysis of the origins, evolution, and structures of CSDP. It then considers the legal and policy framework on the protection and respect for human rights in CSDP missions and operations, and continues by identifying and discussing the opportunities and challenges at the conceptual, legal, and operational levels, and in the ambit of policy discourse, that the integration of human rights into crises management operations raises. The chapter provides some recommendations to improve the EU approach to human rights issues when establishing and deploying its crisis management missions and operations. It concludes by asserting that if the EU does not live up to its own proclaimed standards of human rights protection, it would not only jeopardise the success of its missions and operations but, it would also weaken its credibility as an international security actor, capable of losing its international legitimacy in the long run.

2021 ◽  

Regional human rights mechanism are now in place covering nearly all five continents with the notable exception of Australia. Regional and international human rights protection are not meant to thwart each other. On the contrary, the regional protection of human rights is intended to back up and strengthen the international one by translating human rights into local languages and supporting them with additional protective mechanisms like commissions and courts that enforce regional human rights documents. In this volume, five experts from various continents will introduce regional human rights protection systems in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australia providing an overview of the regional protections vis-à-vis the international one and then contextualising it in specific country context.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 513
Author(s):  
Pradikta Andi Alvat

This study aims to know how political development of legal protection of human rights in Indonesia and political objectives of the legal protection of human rights itself. The research method using normative juridical approach. Specification of the research is descriptive. Provide an overview and critical analysis and conclusions of the research object. Source data using secondary data sources through books and legislation. The data collection method through the study of literature. Analysis of data using qualitative approach. The results showed that the political development of the legal protection of human rights has undergone discourse tight since the formulation of the Constitution and found basic juridical-constitutional is ideal since the reform era with the birth of Chapter XA in the constitution on human rights, born Law of Human Rights, and the formation of the court of HAM. The purpose of a political human rights protection law contains three dimensions, namely the dimensions of philosophical, sociological dimension and juridical dimension.Keywords: Protection Of Human Rights; Political Law; State Law.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Tabernacka

The ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence in Poland was preceded by a heated debate. From the very beginning it was be object of political battles between the conservative and liberal circles. Culturally and socially conditioned position of women has influenced its operation and the scope of its implementation. The Convention is a universally binding tool which guarantees the protection of human rights in events of violence against the woman and children. The case of this Convention in Poland proofs the existence of a universal European understanding of human rights protection standards. The Convention thus has a protective function not only for individuals but also, in a broader context, for the common European cultural identity.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Sorial

In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas articulates a system of rights, including human rights, within the democratic constitutional state. For Habermas, while human rights, like other subjective rights have moral content, they do not structurally belong to a moral system; nor should they be grounded in one. Instead, human rights belong to a positive and coercive legal order upon which individuals can make actionable legal claims. Habermas extends this argument to include international human rights, which are realised within the context of a cosmopolitan legal order. The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of law as a mechanism for securing human rights protection. I argue that positive law does make a material difference to securing individual human rights and to cultivating and augmenting a general rights culture both nationally and globally. I suggest that Habermas' model of law presents the most viable way of negotiating the tensions that human rights discourse gives rise to: the tensions between morality and law, between legality and politics, and between the national and international contexts of human rights protection.


Author(s):  
Francisca Costa Reis ◽  
Weiyuan Gao ◽  
Vineet Hegde

With a mandate under the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union (EU) has been engaging with foreign powers like Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) nations on human rights issues. Despite the common and shared goals, the BRICS set-up is not institutionalised, which prompts the EU to engage with each country on a bilateral basis. Such collaborations have occurred in bilateral dialogues, multilateral fora, through developmental assistance, and negotiations in economic partnership agreements. The scope and content of the discussions and cooperation vary due to the difference in the political structures of the countries. While the EU and the BRICS may share some common goals politically and economically, pursuing shared objectives related to democracy and human rights promotion remains challenging. These countries may believe in human rights protection, but the understandings and the approaches vary drastically, as visible when issues of sovereignty and non-intervention are raised to resist comprehensive discussions. Although the BRICS are emerging as an interconnected group and have begun to cooperate more closely in multilateral fora, the EU may also have to consider dealing with it in its institutional capacity. It could be more challenging to fulfill the mandate of the Lisbon Treaty for the EU while dealing with this cohesive group that has different understandings on human rights protection within their own states.


Author(s):  
Nigel Rodley

This chapter considers the background to, and current developments concerning the manner in which international law has engaged with the protection of human rights, including both civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights. It looks at historical, philosophical, and political factors which have shaped our understanding of human rights and the current systems of international protection. It focuses on the systems of protection developed by and through the United Nations through the ‘International Bill of Rights’, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN human rights treaties and treaty bodies, and the UN Special Procedures as well as the work of the Human Rights Council. It also looks at the systems of regional human rights protection which have been established.


2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 611-623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among the women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture.What is so fundamental in terms of the protection of human rights in Europe that it requires the same standards for all countries and what, by contrast, would be better dealt with by each State's organs in line with verbigratia Michael Walzer's-related notion of “thick morality”?. Where should the line be drawn between unity and diversity notwithstanding the resulting risk of human rights cultural relativism associated to the latter?. On what grounds could the axiomatic universality of human rights possibly be connoted in a continent which prides itself on possessing the most developed regional system for the protection of human rights world-wide in view of the resulting risk of legal contagion to other systems for the protection of human rights and, even, to general international law that such a practice can trigger?. At the end of the day, these are the sort of questions that the study of the margin-of- appreciation doctrine raises. The Trojan Horse-like character of the Strasbourg's judge-made margin-of-appreciation doctrine within the European human rights protection system has long since bothered human rights lawyers. Cases of reliance on this review doctrine have been generally criticised as denials of justice for individuals, abdications by the Court of its duty of adjudication in difficult or sensitive issues or as a judicial diluting technique of the strict conditions laid down in the European Convention of Human Rights. This line of criticism, aimed at what from the viewpoint of some occupants of the bench is seen as “a well established and legitimate part of the convention's jurisprudence”, has been reinforced by the entry of 21 new Eastern and Central European contracting parties to the Council of Europe following the 1989-1991 events. With a current membership of 46 States, all of which have ratified the 1950 Rome Convention, it is further feared that the doctrine will increasingly become an open door for abusive limitations in the exercise of human rights in states who traditionally leaned towards human rights cultural relativism. Against this background, I will briefly look into the technical criteria used by Strasbourg's judicial interpreters to factually implement this “much maligned notion” or, as one commentator has put it, this “manière pseudo-technique d'évoquer le pouvoir discrétionnaire que les organes de Strasbourg ont estimé reconnu aux Etats par la Convention dans certains cas”. I will, secondly, provide a basic overview of the general doctrinal positions one can adopt regarding this long debated question.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Júlia Mink

Abstract The principal objective of the article is to examine the EU legal framework and international law parameters of legal harmonisation processes in a specific field of human rights protection: asylum legislation. In particular, it is to provide an in-depth analysis of the compatibility of EU asylum legislation with existing international norms in relation to the principle of non-refoulement and the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment. It also aims at exploring the correspondence and controversies of relevant legal principles and norms under international law. Similarly, it attempts to provide an analysis of the incomplete and inefficient implementation of these international norms and principles by EU asylum law as well.


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 53-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sionaidh Douglas-Scott

AbstractThe EU’s ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’ is a hugely important area covering criminal law, terrorism, immigration, visa control and civil justice, as well as the massive area of free movement of persons. What is clear, however, is that measures which fall within its scope have the capacity to alienate EU citizens rather than making them feel aware of their European identity in a positive sense. This chapter examines some of the measures taken by the EU in this broad field which cause particular concern, namely a lack of democratic and legal accountability as well as inadequate regard to human rights. It focuses in particular on two areas in which human rights protection in the EU has been undermined. The first is in the field of data protection. The second is in the field of suspects’ rights, particularly in the context of the European arrest warrant. The chapter concludes by considering why so many restrictions on freedom have been allowed to come about and suggests some possible solutions.


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