Ethnocultural Diversity and Human Rights: Legal Categories, Claims, and the Hybridity of Group Protection

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaetano Pentassuglia
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Group Status ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Ethnocultural Diversity ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Impact

In this article I explore the interface between theoretical accounts of the field, the overlapping dimensions of international legal categories in framing ethnocultural claims, as well as the impact of international legal practice, particularly human rights jurisprudence, on addressing those claims both on their own merits and within the wider context of human rights law. By doing so, I seek to provide a perspective on ethnocultural diversity in human rights discourse that is less concerned with issues of group status and right-holding and more interested in capturing complex overarching dimensions surrounding the field. I argue that looking at the nature and structure of claims is as important as discussing how to maximise protection for tightly construed classes of groups – universally and in the Arctic region. In this context, I also argue for a hybrid understanding of group protection that puts strains on rigid conceptual dichotomies between the individual and the group in human rights law.

Human Rights Diffusion in North Korea: The Impact of Transnational Legal Mobilization

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-203
Author(s):  
Patricia GOEDDE
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
The North ◽  
Domestic Legislation ◽  
Evidence Collection ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article asks how legal mechanisms are employed outside of North Korea to achieve human rights diffusion in the country; to what extent these result in human rights diffusion in North Korea; and whether measures beyond accountability can be pursued in tandem for more productive engagement. Specifically, it examines how the North Korean government has interacted with the globalized legal regime of human rights vis-à-vis the UN and details the legal processes and implications of the UN Commission of Inquiry report, including domestic legislation, and evidence collection. While transnational legal mobilization has gathered momentum on the accountability side, it is significantly weaker in terms of achieving human rights protection within North Korea given the government’s perception of current human rights discourse as part of an externally produced war repertoire. Thus, efforts to engage the North Korean population and government require concurrent reframing of human rights discourse into more localized and relatable contexts.

Contesting Austerity in the 1970s and 1980s

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-316
Author(s):  
Matthias Goldmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
The Status ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

While human rights discourse became fundamental for challenging austerity in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, in historical perspective, such a role of human rights represents the exception rather than the rule. Human rights discourse in the context of sovereign debt-induced austerity has varied enormously over time. Far from reflecting progress, its history reveals changing paradigms of human rights law. This chapter focuses on one of these paradigm shifts occurring at the turn from the 1970s to the 1980s. In the 1970s, newly independent states invoked human rights mostly to assert their sovereignty and avert international interference. This structural human rights paradigm abruptly disappeared from austerity debates in the 1980s, when the sovereign debt crisis hit the Global South, creating a need for multilateral liquidity assistance. Faced with pressure to reconsider the social impact of structural adjustment programmes, the International Monetary Fund shifted the terms of the debate from ‘human needs’, a human rights-related term, to ‘human capital’. Consequently, at the time when human rights rose to the status of the ‘last utopia’, they ceased to have relevance for austerity. Hence, whether human rights discourse promotes social ends depends on the particular context and time. The chapter ends by proposing a political paradigm of human rights law reflecting this insight.

scholarly journals The victim and the criminal process: an analysis of recent trends in regional and international tribunals

Legal Studies ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Doak
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
European Court ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
International Tribunals ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper examines the recent trends in regional and international tribunals that relate to the position of the victim in the criminal process. Recent decisions in both the European Court of Human Rights and other international tribunals have illustrated a new and progressive attitude towards the role of the crime victim. This can be attributed, in part, to the breakdown of the public/private divide in human rights law and the mutually expanding parameters of both human rights discourse and criminal law. It is argued here that cross-fertilisation between these disciplines, which is widely evident in current policy making and judicial decision-making, has meant that the traditional failures of human rights law and the criminal law to protect victims are being addressed – at least to some extent. A line of European and international case law has developed which suggests that victims of crime have acquired a number of enforceable substantive rights, similar to those held by victims of abuse of power. While the potential for victims to be further empowered will always be inherently limited in adversarial jurisdictions, it is none the less a welcome development that a clear trend is emerging which indicates that international policy makers and tribunals are viewing criminal justice issues in a much more holistic manner.

Genetic Determinism and Discrimination: A Call to Re-Orient Prevailing Human Rights Discourse to Better Comport with the Public Implications of Individual Genetic Testing

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Eltis
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

“Privacy considerations no longer arise out of particular individual problems; rather, they express conflicts affecting everyone.”Along with the promise of assuaging the scourge of disease, the so-called genetic revolution unquestioningly imports a slew of thorny human rights issues that touch on matters such as dignity, disclosure, and the subject of this article – genetic testing and the social stigma potentially deriving therefrom.It is now rather evident that certain otherwise therapeutically promising forms of research can inadvertently involve social risks exceeding the individual preoccupations of eclectic study participants. With that as the case, the following proposes to examine the peculiar stigma attached to genetic information and its potential human rights implications extending beyond the insurance and employment context. In so doing, it raises the intersection of interests between self-identified members of historically vulnerable groups and the group itself, which the law seems to take for granted in the genetics context.

Religion, the African Concept of the Individual, and Human Rights Discourse: An Analysis

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Nyangweso Wangila
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

scholarly journals Exploring the Theory and Practice of the Relationship between International Human Rights Law and Domestic Actors

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
FRANS VILJOEN
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
National Human ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The One ◽  
National Human Rights Institutions ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

In recent times the human rights discourse has become increasingly concerned with the relationship between domestic and international (UN and regional) human rights law. In 2007, two significant additions to this body of scholarship appeared. Although the authors of these texts are based in Canada and the United Kingdom respectively, their contributions explore the domestic–international relationship from a particularly African angle. While both works are concerned with the national arena (local activist forces and national human rights institutions respectively), the one investigates the domestic impact of international law and institutions, while the other explores the increased international impact of a particular domestic institution.

scholarly journals Less is More or More is More? Revisiting Universality of Human Rights

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanel Kerikmäe ◽  
Katrin Nyman-Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Less Is More ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Abstract Human rights are much talked about and much written about, in academic legal literature as well as in political and other social sciences and the general political debate. Indeed, they are so oft en referred to and used as a basis for claims of various kinds that there may be a risk of certain “inflation” in that so much is said to be a human right that the notion loses its essential meaning. Th is article argues that the universality of basic human rights is one of the values of the concept of rights. Th e rights and the understanding and interpretation of rights may have to be purist. Th is may be the way universal human rights as a concept can survive at all. In the modern world there are different trends that to some extent conflict, like the trend of globalisation but also the re- emphasising in different parts of the world of traditional values, whether from a religious background or something else. It appears that the basic dogma of human rights - which has also been called the first universal ideology - that it is the individual and her rights and freedoms that should always be in the centre of any human rights discourse, is abandoned all the more oft en as the central principle. Instead the banner of human rights is used for various political and economic aims

The Official Police Voice

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-97
Author(s):  
Richard Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
High Level ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Official Police

The task of this chapter is to trace how and why human rights law has come to be such an integral and sustained feature of the PSNI’s official narrative. The reason, this chapter argues, lies in the apparent power of human rights discourse to cool down, even if not quite neutralize, political tensions, debates and controversies that still animate ‘high-level policing’ (Brodeur, 1983) in the country. To frame this chapter’s analysis of the PSNI’s official vernacular of human rights, a ‘dialogic’ model of legitimacy is drawn upon to better account for the conditional nature of power and legitimation. Doing so enables us to better identify and account for the dynamic struggles in which rights-based claims are deployed as part of efforts to frame, or even resolve, contemporary political and public debates. By closely examining chief officers’ forewords and speeches, as well as their public responses to questions at the Policing Board’s public session, three central properties are identified that define this official vernacular. These are: human rights as legality; as an ethics of power; and as accountability. Each of these major strands of the police voice, it is argued, contribute to a purported vision of the PSNI as worthy of endorsement by elite audiences.

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