Minimum Requirements for a New Nordic Sami Convention

1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Minimum Requirements ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
Rights Issues

AbstractDiscussions are underway for a new Nordic Sami convention. A number of human rights issues of both substance and form need to be considered in the course of preparations for such a treaty. On substantive issues, a new convention must not fall below existing minimum human rights standards under international law, including ILO Convention No. 169 and other indigenous and minority-specific rights in treaties, customary law and case-law. Access to procedural and other monitoring avenues at the national and international levels must also be guaranteed. Furthermore, it is suggested that the Sami should be a party/parties to an eventual convention because their participation is closely related to equal rights, dignity, identity and the justice to which indigenous peoples aspire.

Towards the International Protection of Indigenous Peoples' Rights

1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Burger ◽  
Paul Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
Indigenous Movement ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
First Time

This article traces the development of indigenous peoples' international activity and considers why the international indigenous movement has grown since the 1970s. The authors examine the draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples which is due to be considered by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for the first time in early 1995. The article makes some general points about the draft declaration before looking in some detail at three of its provisions: the right to protection from ethnocide and cultural genocide, the right to guarantees in relation to cultural and intellectual property, and the provision about treaties between indigenous peoples and States. The authors argue that although these provisions build on existing international law, they constitute an innovative evolution of international human rights standards.

The Draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: What is it? What Does it Mean?

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert T. Coulter
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Indigenous Participation ◽  
Human Rights Standards

The draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, now before the UN Commission on Human Rights, is a far-reaching and innovative document that has resulted from more than 10 years of debate, lobbying and drafting by indigenous representatives, human rights experts and members of the UN Sub-Commission's Working Group on Indigenous Populations. The level and nature of indigenous participation in this elaboration of human rights standards has been unprecedented. The draft Declaration sets forth basic human rights that flow from long-established principles of international law and widely accepted concepts of human rights. The detailed provisions of the draft Declaration would reach out to protect indigenous communities as well as indigenous individuals from the discrimination, the deprivations and the abuses that they so often endure. The author praises the draft for its thoroughness and adherence to principle. The article summarizes and analyses the provisions of the draft Declaration and calls for others to provide futher commentary and analysis.

scholarly journals Reconsidering Trials in Absentia at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon: An Application of the Tribunal's Early Jurisprudence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
George Washington ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Interpretive Approach ◽  
Human Rights Standards

43 George Washington International Law Review 91 (2011)Since Nuremburg, no individual has been prosecuted in an international or internationalized court entirely in his or her absence. That may soon change. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is empowered to try defendants in absentia, has now confirmed its first indictment. While its trial in absentia procedures were met with concern and criticism from some quarters when they were first announced, reconsideration is warranted in light of subsequent judicial developments. The judges of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon have now established in their preliminary decisions an interpretive approach to the Tribunal’s Statute that is adamantly purposive. This purposive approach should lead the judges to apply the Tribunal’s groundbreaking trial in absentia provisions in a manner that is consistent with international human rights jurisprudence, thereby quelling most, if not all, of the prior criticism. This Article first clarifies the debate by disentangling different notions of trials in absentia and by outlining the circumstances under which such trials are considered to accord with modern human rights standards. It then re-evaluates the framework for trials in absentia before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in light of the Tribunal’s early jurisprudence, suggesting how the judges should interpret and apply these provisions in keeping with their prior case law. It ends with a more pragmatic evaluation of the costs and benefits of trials in absentia and cautions that such trials, while acceptable under the highest international standards of criminal justice, should be undertaken rarely, if at all.

scholarly journals Islam and Human Rights

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-103
Author(s):  
Ahmad Moussalli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
Rights Issues

Professor Mayer' second edition of her Islam and Human Rights, like theftrst edition, aims essentially to study comparatively "selected civil and politicalrights formulations in international law and in actual and proposed rightsschemes purporting to embody Islamic principles, with a critical appraisal of thelatter in terms of international law and Islamic jurisprudence" (p. xi). Whileacknowledging that the title of her book is misleading (because it is not onlyIslam that determines a Muslim's attitude), by the end of the book the readerfinds that the different conservative interpretations of Islam that developed duringthe Middle Ages and are kept within authoritacjve books of jurisprudence are made responsible for Muslims’ dealing with human rights issues. However, theauthor does not elaborate much on the repression of secular regimes, whichadhere neither to international human rights nor to medieval Islamic legal thinking.The question then relates not to Islam as such, but to the nature of politicsthat is being exercised, whether in the name of Islam or secularism.Mayer is emphatic in not attributing repression to Islam and is very keen torecognize the multiplicity of ideas and trends within the Islamic world todaytoward the issues of human rights. But what unifies these different trends is theirheavy reliance on religious principles of Islamic sources-meaning medievalbooks of jurisprudence and not the Qur’an or the Sunnah. For Islam, whateverthat may mean to the author, is used for both political protest against undemocraticregimes and for repression by these regimes. In other words, Islam has notspecified what is equivalent to international human rights and has no properscheme for human rights. But had the author looked at the original texts of theQur’an and the Sunnah, she could have developed a scheme of rights that thencould be compared to the international human rights standards. Again, themedieval Islamic literature is not devoid of a scheme of rights, though they maynot be exactly what she wants to label as a scheme of human rights ...

The European Convention on Human Rights and International Law

2007 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luzius Wildhaber
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Mutual Relationship ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
European Court ◽  
Special Character ◽  
British Institute

AbstractThis article is an expanded and footnoted version of the lectur given at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law on Tuesday 21 March 2006, entitled ‘International Law in the European Court of Human Rights’.The article begins with some comparative comments on the application of the European Convention on Human Rights in monistic and dualistic systems It then discusses in detail the European Court's case law which confirms that the Convention, despite its special character as a human rights treaty, is indeed part of public international law. It concludes that the Convention and international law find themselves in a kind of interactive mutual relationship. checking and buildine on each other.

Fragmentation of International Law Revisited: Insights, Good Practices, and Lessons to be Learned from the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 863-885 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADAMANTIA RACHOVITSA
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Good Practices ◽  
European Court ◽  
Interpretation Process ◽  
Fragmentation Of International Law

AbstractThis article discusses the contribution of the European Court of Human Rights to mitigating difficulties arising from the fragmentation of international law. It argues that the Court's case law provides insights and good practices to be followed. First, the article furnishes evidence that the Court has developed an autonomous and distinct interpretative principle to construe the European Convention on Human Rights by taking other norms of international law into account. Second, it offers a blueprint of the methodology that the Court employs when engaging with external norms in the interpretation process. It analyses the Court's approach to subtle contextual differences between similar or identical international norms and its position towards the requirements of Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). It concludes that international courts are developing innovative interpretative practices, which may not be strictly based on the letter of the VCLT.

Competing Values in World Culture and the Emergence of Middle Ground

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-50
Author(s):  
Eun young Song
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Wild Plants ◽  
Biological Knowledge ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Rights Issues

AbstractThis paper, focusing on a Botswanan case of Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), illustrates how globalized norms in seeming competition nonetheless reveal a potential middle ground. In Botswana there have been conflicts between regimes of environmentalism and indigenous cultural rights. Environmental protectionism has been based on a concept of “pristine nature” which does not allow for human interaction. Thus, the more protected areas are designated, the more indigenous peoples' lands are claimed as nature reserves. This forces local peoples to abandon cultural practices such as hunting animals and gathering wild plants. In contrast, impelled by the ascention of human rights issues, advocacy groups for the unorganized fourth world and indigenous communities have been struggling to protect indigenous people's cultural rights, thereby giving prominence to human rights issues. NGO advocates for indigenous peoples as well as professionals involved with indigenous groups have found that indigenous people's practices are in fact not harmful to the ecosystem. Rather, their ethno-biological knowledge and customary activities contribute to balancing the local ecosystem. This means that conflicting guidelines can be harmonized in “buffer zones” around protected areas, and the buffering program that has resulted, that by CBNRM, has been widely accepted in Botswana and is likely applicable to other countries in which we find similar value competition.

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