a-review-of-the-state-department-human-rights-reports-to-congress-testimony-to-the-subcommittee-on-human-rights-and-international-organizations-of-the-committee-on-foreign-affairs-mar-12-1981-17

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-729
Author(s):  
Jacques Zylberberg

This essay undertakes a review of national and international law to demonstrate that law is mainly an ideological and variable instrument of the State and of the United Nations, which is a by-product of the states. In this perspective, the author opposes the pragmatical ideology of resistance against the sovereign state to the juridical legitimation and the behaviour of the States who reluctantly have conceded some civil and political rights. Those rights are endangered by the growing bureaucratization of the state, the inflation of the juridical norms and rules, in addition to the permanent repressive characters of the State. The criticism of the contradiction and the variation of the rule of law when it relates to "human rights" is also extended to international law as well as to the international organizations.


Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 35-36
Author(s):  
Tinley Nyandak Akar

A few months ago President Carter's human rights stature took a dive when the Department of State rejected the requests of a group of American citizens to have “Tibet,” instead of China, listed as their birthplace on their U.S. passports. The decision came on the heels of an announcement that Zbigniew Brzezinski would be visiting China a few weeks later.Despite the president's repeated assertions about his impartial application of human rights to all nations, the administration has been silent when it comes to human rights violations by the People's Republic of China. Evidently Washington does not want to offend Peking and thus lets China dictate, at least indirectly, an internal policy decision of the United States. The action by the State Department regarding American citizens of Tibetan origin has carried this unequal application of human rights principles to an absurd degree.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 338-355
Author(s):  
Sead Bandžović ◽  

The three key conditions for the existence of a state, according to the theory of state and law, are geographical territory, population and organized political power in that area. However, during the twentieth century in some African and Asian countries, due to various political, economic and other factors, problems began to appear in performance of their basic functions: ensuring public order and peace, providing health services, education. Modern science has introduced the term failed states to describe such countries. This scientific phenomenon has been the subject of numerous researches, and international organizations have been publishing annual indices of fragile, failed or unsuccessful world states for years. The first index of its kind was created in 2005 by the American non-profit organization The Fund for Peace in cooperation with the magazine Foreign Policy, which initially included 76 countries. The original term failed state was considered politically extremely incorrect, even when it referred to countries like South Sudan or Somalia, noting that such a term originated in the political terminology of developed countries by which all other countries at a lower level of development were considered to be failed ones. Therefore, in 2014, a new notion of a fragile state was created, and accordingly the existing index was renamed the Fragile State Index (FSI). This parameter determines the degree of fragility for each country on an annual basis, assessing four basic indicators: cohesion (functionality of the state apparatus), economic (overall economic situation), political (legitimacy of the state, availability of public services, respect for human rights and freedoms) and social (demographic structure of the community, number of displaced persons and refugees, external interventions). Based on the values of these indicators, countries are positioned in four groups: sustainable, stable, endangered and alarming. The paper also discusses Bosnia and Herzegovina as a potentially fragile state. Although it enjoys sovereignty and political independence, the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement still provides for the strong participation of the international community in the performance of its basic state functions. Examples include the presence of international military and police forces from the early post-war years to the present (EUFOR), with a special emphasis on the position of High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The peace agreement gave him the status of his supreme interpreter, as well as the well-known Bonn powers that he used on several occasions to remove Bosnian political officials and the imposition of laws (Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Law on the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Law on the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina) due to the inability of domestic parliamentary bodies to pass them independently. In addition to the extremely complicated constitutional structure, the functioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina is hampered by the inability to reach an agreement between political representatives on key issues in the country. In the first place, these are much-needed changes to the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina that would in the future allow members of minorities (Jews and Roma) to elect their own representatives in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this regard, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 2009 in the case of Sejdić-Finci assessed that the impossibility of minority participation in political decision-making is a gross violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Numerous international organizations, primarily Human Rights Watch, have been warning for years about other problems in the country: national segregation of children under two schools under one roof, numerous attacks on Bosniak returnees in Republic of Srpska without adequate sanctions and extreme slowness in war crimes proceedings and the administration of transitional justice with the emergence of increasingly frequent denials of war crimes and victims. Although more than 25 years have passed since the end of the war, the participation of the international factor is still noticeable, and in some cases necessary.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 238-260
Author(s):  
Philip C. Aka

To stem its diminishing dominance in the international political and economic system, the us must re-establish its leadership in international human rights. A starting point in that journey will be to streamline the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices published annually by the State Department. This article presents several avenues for such improvement, but posits that lasting improvement will come only if the us abandons the national arrogance of exceptionalism that, even in the age of Obama, still drives its human rights policy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-581
Author(s):  
Christina M. Cerna

On November 25, 2015, the U.K. Supreme Court dismissed a case in which the British Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and Defense failed to hold a public inquiry into an atrocity committed in 1948 by British troops in the British protectorate of Malaya, today Malaysia. The case is of particular interest because it concerns the obligations of states for atrocities committed in the past, before their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (European Convention) or a comparable treaty, entered into force. Whereas the principle of the nonretroactivity of treaties protects a state from responsibility for acts committed before the human rights treaty entered into force for that state, the issue in this case was whether the state nonetheless had an obligation to investigate the crimes of the past.


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