scholarly journals Influence of international commitments against torture on prison indicators: measuring human rights

2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. e49611125288
Author(s):  
Cíntia da Silva Telles Nichele ◽  
Aldo Pacheco Ferreira

O Protocolo Facultativo à Convenção contra a Tortura e Outros Tratamentos ou Penas Cruéis, Desumanos ou Degradantes criou mecanismos de prevenção à tortura para ampliar a proteção dos direitos humanos das pessoas sob custódia. A intenção era garantir o tratamento adequado à população mais vulnerável a esse tipo de agressão. Mas será que o pacto de fato gera efeitos positivos aos países que o aderem? O objetivo do estudo é avaliar a influência do protocolo nos indicadores prisionais. Utilizou-se o método estatístico do teste t de duas amostras para comparar as médias dos indicadores dos países que ratificaram o protocolo e dos países que não o fizeram para verificar se a diferença entre os resultados era estatisticamente significativa. Para tanto, consideramos 5% de significância. Os resultados mostraram que a população adulta feminina dos países não ratificantes é maior do que a dos ratificantes. No entanto, em relação aos adultos do sexo masculino e à população jovem não houve diferença estatística. Sobre os presos sem sentença também não houve diferença nos percentuais médios entre os dois grupos de países. A mortalidade por causas externas e por suicídio atingiu taxas estatisticamente mais altas nos países que o ratificaram. Nas demais causas (causas naturais, homicídio, acidentais ou outras causas, e total de mortes) as diferenças entre as taxas encontradas não foram significativas.

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 290-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karina Gomes da Silva

As the level of governance closest to the city dwellers, local authorities have been called to play a protagonist role as implementers of global standards on human rights and sustainable development. The New Urban Agenda, a political declaration signed by all UN Member States, sets a human rights-based approach to policy-making and service delivery as a path towards inclusive and sustainable urban development. Remarkably, the document acknowledges that local authorities are responsible for protecting, respecting, fulfilling, and promoting the human rights of the inhabitants. However, gaps between the aspiring language of international commitments and their concrete impact on the ground have limited its potential to transform people’s lives. Nevertheless, all over the world human rights cities have pro-actively set the implementation of human rights as a core task in the municipality. By establishing practical links and synergies between human rights cities and the NUA, this paper suggests ways of filling implementation gaps, drawing a promising scenario for the realisation of both global and local agendas.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Arturo C. Sotomayor

In recent years, Mexico has presented mostly favourable views of the R2P concept. This is a radical change, since historically it had been a strong advocate of non-intervention norms. This essay argues that Mexico’s R2P position has been shaped and constrained by two incoherent domestic narratives: democratization and the war on drugs. These two narratives have led to an inconsistent and ambiguous record of compliance with human rights norms and R2P principles. Mexican authorities, who had been championing for the implementation of R2P, have now become victims of their own international commitments. This Latin American country thus needs to reconcile its two distinct domestic agendas if it aims to be seen as an R2P advocate. The goal of this study is to explore the inherent complex and at times contradictory relationship between domestic demands for democratization and securitization and R2P commitments, using Mexico as a critical case study.


2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Joanna Harrington

According to Canadian Supreme Court Justice Claire L’HeureuxDubé, the global judicial community is engaged in a process of dialogue, especially in cases involving the determination of constitutionally protected human rights. However, as this author notes, if there is a process of dialogue taking place, it does not always include the international treaty monitoring bodies supported by the United Nations, even when there is a treaty link between the international body and the domestic state. The author considers the approach taken by courts in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Ireland with respect to the judicial consideration of international human rights decisions, linking the prospects for dialogue to the express mandates to consider such case law within their constitutions, while contrasting the experience with that of Canada and New Zealand, where no such express imperative exists. The author concludes by suggesting that such a constitutionallydeterminedapproach may well be the most democratic means of reconciling a state’s international commitments with its domestic law.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1088-1103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Long ◽  
Max Paul Friedman

Although international precommitment regimes offer a tool to escape the apparent contradiction between sovereignty and the international protection of democracy and human rights, they raise theoretical and practical questions. This article draws on multinational archival research to explore an overlooked historical episode and suggest new thinking regarding the logjams over sovereignty, incapacity of global decision making, and humanitarian imperialism. In 1945 and 1946, the American states engaged in a debate over the Larreta Doctrine, a Uruguayan proposal about the parallelism between democracy and human rights, and the regional rights and duties to safeguard these values. In the ensuing debate, the Uruguayan foreign minister elaborated a tripartite precommitment mechanism to create a web of national commitments to democratic governance and the domestic protection of human rights, to establish a regional insurance policy against failures to maintain those commitments, and to obligate the great power and neighboring states to precommit to working through the regional system instead of unilaterally. As a proposal that emerged from a weak state—and garnered support from states that faced internal and external threats to democracy and rights—the Larreta Doctrine offers insights on the central tension between state sovereignty and international commitments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
pp. 89-95
Author(s):  
Firuza Khamdamova ◽  
◽  
Zakhro Jurayeva ◽  

The article is devoted to the issues of international cooperation in order to eradicate poverty. Theauthors provide an overview of the relevant international instruments and mechanisms. The article examines the main measures recommended to states by international structures to eradicate poverty. Special attention is paid to the experience of Uzbekistan in solving these issues. The authors note that the eradication of poverty is one of the global goals of sustainable development and its achievement largely depends on the level of international cooperation. Along with this, the article emphasizes that the real causes of the problem of poverty should be sought at the national level, which necessitatestaking measures, first of all, at the national level.Keywords: poverty, misery, sustainable development goals, international cooperation, human rights, international obligations


sui generis ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 174
Author(s):  
Stéphanie Dagron

The reality of migration today is that a large majority of migrants in vulnerable situations either do not have access, or have only very restricted access, to healthcare. While the current importance of the migratory phenomenon and the need to provide protection to disadvantaged migrants has, in recent years, trig-gered a strong response from the international community in favour of the protec-tion of the rights of persons, either refugees or migrants, fleeing their countries of origin; the central challenge of protecting and promoting the right of migrants to health seems as difficult to as ever. This article firstly sets out the international community’s recent political commitments to protect the human rights of migrants as well as the norms of international law applicable to the protection of the health of migrants, mainly contained within international human rights law and interna-tional refugee and migrant law. It then discusses the numerous barriers at the na-tional level which block migrants, particularly in vulnerable situations, from ac-cessing care. In doing so, this article highlights the profound paradoxes between State’s international commitments on the one hand, and State practices to protect and promote migrant access to healthcare on the other.


Author(s):  
Abker Ali Abdul Majeed Ahmed

This research paper explored the effect of interference in internal affairs for humanitarian purposes on sovereignty principle (Jurisprudence study according to contemporary international law). The research problem was the existence of a right for states and international organizations to monitor and enforce respect of human rights to ensure that weather the transaction is legal or not. The research significance is to explore to what extent international interference for humanitarian purposes affects sovereignty principle considering that humanitarian interference conflicts with some international legal systems and has reflects on sovereignty principle like the principle of noninterference in internal affairs, the princely of equality in sovereignty, and the principle of restricting power usage or threating to use it, which included in the UN character. The study aimed at exploring the legal effects of International interference for humanitarian purposes on the sovereignty principle, and on the principle of noninterference in internal affairs according to the international contemporary law. The researcher adopted the descriptive, analytical, inductive and historical approaches. The researcher concluded to find that human rights are part of the international commitments and are not internal affair which restricts states and international organizations to monitor, because monitoring is the core of the state commitment to apply these conventions. Human rights principles according to contemporary legal aspects adopted by the UN became an international issue not internal, and that depends on considerations related to public interest. The researcher recommended states to put international conventions and declarations related to human rights into execution in order not make it a justification as internal affairs when it has been interfered. He also recommended to consider any interference without the UN acceptance or under its control as illegal, and to consider it as aggressive transaction according to UN character and according to Rome statute which established the ICC.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-537
Author(s):  
Gerard Emmanuel Kamdem Kamga

The article engages with the issue of emergency regimes in Cameroon and compliance with the international standards on that matter. Emergency regimes which entail human rights violation and infringement of the rule of law have become over the years an essential technique of government in Cameroon. Authorities are inclined to invoke such regimes more in times of democratic competition than in times of real external threat. With emergency regimes being organised by a set of international instruments mainly from a treaty-based system, the study focuses on the scale of compliance of the Cameroon emergency system with such international standards. These standards amount to a set of principles that states should comply with when confronted by emergency situations. For example, the UN Charter compels state parties to respect and protect human rights in all circumstances. With Cameroon being subject to international law and to its international commitments towards state and non-state actors, this article questions whether emergency regimes as currently designed in the country are mere derogations or failures of law.


Obiter ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-121
Author(s):  
JC Mubangizi ◽  
DJ McQuoid-Mason

There have been a number of international commitments by members of the United Nations, including Commonwealth countries, to include human-rights education in their formal and informal education programmes. In addition, the Commonwealth Legal Education Association (CLEA), under the auspices of the Commonwealth Secretariat, has produced a Model Human Rights Curriculum for Commonwealth countries. Despite these initiatives, there appears to have been no systematic programme for introducing human-rights education at Commonwealth universities. An increasing number of Commonwealth law schools, however, have introduced human-rights law by integrating it into existing law courses as a “stand-alone” optional or core course, or as a combination of both. In addition, university-based centres for human rights have been established. The importance of the role that universities can play in advancing human rights in countries transitioning from autocracy to democracy is illustrated with passing references to the South African experience.


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