Applying the Human Rights Framework to Economic Policy: Insights from an Impact Assessment of Services Trade Liberalisation in Mauritius

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Caroline Dommen

This article sets out the methodology and findings of a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) for Mauritius. It presents analysis of possible impacts of services trade liberalisation and deregulation on the right to water, on labour rights and on labour migration. By examining impacts of trade-related policies through the lens of human rights law, this article brings to the fore how an HRIA can strengthen trade policy-making, and how it can provide African negotiators and other stakeholders with legal and conceptual arguments to strengthen their positions in economic negotiating contexts that are often highly complex. The article is a contribution to the literature in that it provides insights into the underexplored area of human rights impacts of liberalisation of trade in services, and in that it illustrates through specific examples how the human rights analytical framework can be applied to services trade negotiations in other fora, and to economic policy more broadly.

Author(s):  
Robin F. Holman

SummaryExisting theoretical approaches to international human rights law governing the state’s duty to respect and ensure the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life fail to provide a satisfactory analytical framework within which to consider the problem of a rogue civil airliner — a passenger-carrying civil aircraft under the effective control of one or more individuals who intend to use the aircraft itself as a weapon against persons or property on the surface. A more satisfactory approach is provided by the addition of a norm of proportionality of effects that is analogous to those that have been developed within the frameworks of international humanitarian law, moral philosophy, and modern constitutional rights law. This additional norm would apply only where there is an irreconcilable conflict between the state’s duties in respect of the right to life such that all of the courses of action available will result in innocent persons being deprived of life.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-286
Author(s):  
Ignatius Yordan Nugraha

Abstract The goal of this article is to explore the clash between international human rights law and a legal pluralist framework in the case of the noken system and also to investigate potential solutions to the clash. Elections in Indonesia are generally founded on the principle of direct, universal, free, secret, honest and fair voting. There is a notable exception in the Province of Papua, where tribes in the Central Mountains area are following the noken system. Under this system, votes are allocated to the candidate(s) based on the decision of the big man or the consensus of the tribe. The Indonesian Constitutional Court has accepted this practice as reflecting the customs of the local population. However, this form of voting seems to be contrary to the right to vote under international human rights law, since article 25(b) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stipulates that elections shall be held genuinely by universal suffrage and secret ballot to guarantee the free will of the electors. Consequently, the case of the noken system in Papua reflects an uneasy clash between a legal pluralist approach and universal human rights.


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