Rights as Security

Author(s):  
Rhonda Powell

The right to security of person is widely recognized but little understood. Courts, legislatures, scholars, and others disagree about how the right to security of person should be defined. This book investigates the meaning of the right to security of person through an analysis of its constituent parts: security and the person. Applying an original conceptual analysis of ‘security’, it is argued that the right to security of person imposes both positive and negative duties. Also, to identify the interests to be protected by the right, we need a theory of personhood or well-being such as Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s ‘capabilities approach’. It is accepted that any existing legal rights to security of person must be artificially delineated in order not to overstep the boundaries of other rights. In recognition of the naturally broad meaning of the right to security of person, it is proposed that human rights law as a whole should be seen as a mechanism to further security of person: rights as security.

2019 ◽  
pp. 152-174
Author(s):  
Rhonda Powell

Chapter 7 considers issues in applying the analysis of the right to security of person put forward in this book as the basis of a single legal right. It is argued that security of person, substantiated through the capabilities approach (or any other adequate theory of personhood), is too broad to be the subject of a single legal right. This contention raises an important normative question about the role which security of person should play in human rights law. It is accepted that existing legal rights to security of person are rightfully delineated, albeit that these delineations are pragmatic rather than principled. However, drawing on the key learning points that can be drawn from the analysis of security of person in this book, Chapter 7 explores an alternative way to understand the relationship between security of person and human rights law. It is argued that human rights law in general could be seen as one of the key ways by which international and national legal systems seek to further security of person. This approach is referred to as ‘rights as security’.


2019 ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Rhonda Powell

Drawing on the analysis of security in Chapter 3 and the capabilities approach in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 provides examples of the interests that the right to security of person protects. It also considers the extent to which human rights law already recognizes a link between those interests and security of person. Five overlapping examples are discussed in turn: life, the means of life, health, privacy and the home, and autonomy. Illustrations are brought primarily from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Canadian Charter, and the South African Bill of Rights jurisprudence. It is argued that protection against material deprivations that threaten a person’s existence are as much part of the right to personal security as protection against physical assaults. The right to security of person effectively overcomes the problematic distinction between civil and political rights and socio-economic rights because it sits in both categories.


Author(s):  
Briddick Catherine ◽  
Stoyanova Vladislava

This chapter assesses the interactions between the international trafficking regime and international refugee and human rights law. In practical terms, refugees and other forced migrants can fall victim to trafficking when they travel irregularly in search of protection, or when they seek livelihoods while lacking legal rights, as may arise when they await the outcome of protracted status determination, or live without the right to work. The chapter takes a feminist approach, highlighting the gendered nature of trafficking and the responses thereto. Women and girls are more likely than men and boys to be trafficked, and are also more likely to be trafficked for particular forms of exploitation. The chapter studies the international trafficking regime, a complex and multilayered regime with diverse legal sources; it explores its links with the suppression of mobility and compares the limited rules that protect some refugees and trafficked persons from criminalization. It also highlights the links between trafficking and refugee recognition and looks at the protections provided to both refugees and trafficking victims by ‘general’ international human rights law and the specialist legal regimes concerned with discrimination and violence against women.


2021 ◽  
pp. 092405192199274
Author(s):  
Cathérine Van de Graaf

Fair procedures have long been a topic of great interest for human rights lawyers. Yet, few authors have drawn on research from other disciplines to enrich the discussion. Social psychological procedural justice research has demonstrated in various applications that, besides the final outcome, the manner in which one’s case is handled matters to people as well. Such research has shown the impact of procedural justice on individuals’ well-being, their acceptance of unfavourable decisions, perceptions of legitimacy and public confidence. The ECtHR has confirmed the desirability of these effects in its fair trial jurisprudence. Thus far, it remains unclear to what extent the guarantees offered by Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to a fair trial) coincide with the findings of empirical procedural justice research. This article aims to rectify this and uncover similarities between the two disciplines.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Romola Adeola ◽  
Frans Viljoen ◽  
Trésor Makunya Muhindo

Abstract In 2019, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted General Comment No 5 on the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: The Right to Freedom of Movement and Residence (Article 12(1)). In this general comment, the commission elaborated on the right to freedom of movement and residence within state borders. This issue, while explicit in international human rights law, is a challenge within various jurisdictions, including in Africa. This article provides a background to and commentary on General Comment No 5, leveraging on the insight of the authors, who participated in its drafting. Unlike the UN Human Rights Committee's earlier general comment, General Comment No 5 provides detailed guidance on the internal dimension of the right to free movement and residence. As “soft law”, its persuasive force depends on a number of factors, including its use at the domestic level, its visibility and its integration into regional human rights jurisprudence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cekli Setya Pratiwi ◽  
Sidik Sunaryo

Abstract Blasphemy law (BL) has become a central issue for the international community in various parts of the world in the last three decades. In almost every case involving the BL, especially in Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, they are always responded with violence or threats of attack that cause many victims, loss of homes, damage to places of worship, evictions, stigma of being heretical, severe punishments, or extra-judicial killings. When international human rights law (IHLR) and declaration of the right to peace are adopted by the international community, at the same time, the number of violence related to the application of BL continues to increase. This paper aims to examine the ambiguity of the concept of the BL in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and how its lead to the weak of enforcement that creates social injustice and inequality. Then, referring to Galtung’s theory of structural violence and other experts of peace studies, this paper argues that blasphemy law should be included as a form of structural violence. Therefore its challenges these States to reform their BL in which its provisions accommodate the state’s neutrality and content high legal standards. Thus, through guarantee the fully enjoyment of human rights for everyone may support the States to achieve sustainable peace.


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