Serious International Crimes, Human Rights, and Forced Migration

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Simeon
Author(s):  
David B. Thronson

Citizenship plays a larger and more critical role in the life of children than it should. Children who lack citizenship are incredibly vulnerable to exploitation. In the migration context, a child’s citizenship can be largely determinative of where and with whom a child lives. Despite a modern children’s rights framework that recognizes the humanity and autonomy of children, citizenship and nationality still form an integral part of a child’s identity and play a critical role in a child’s development. It has a pervasive impact in securing other rights for children and can be a central factor in a child’s cultural and linguistic background, education, economic and environment exposures, and virtually all aspects of a child’s daily life. This chapter examines children’s right to citizenship and explores the ongoing crisis of statelessness that undermines these rights. It reviews the role that citizenship plays in both voluntary and forced migration of children, child-specific protections found in both universal and regional human rights frameworks, and the role of children’s citizenship in promoting family unity.


Author(s):  
Petra Molnar

This chapter focuses on how technologies used in the management of migration—such as automated decision-making in immigration and refugee applications and artificial intelligence (AI) lie detectors—impinge on human rights with little international regulation, arguing that this lack of regulation is deliberate, as states single out the migrant population as a viable testing ground for new technologies. Making migrants more trackable and intelligible justifies the use of more technology and data collection under the guide of national security, or even under tropes of humanitarianism and development. Technology is not inherently democratic, and human rights impacts are particularly important to consider in humanitarian and forced migration contexts. An international human rights law framework is particularly useful for codifying and recognizing potential harms, because technology and its development are inherently global and transnational. Ultimately, more oversight and issue specific accountability mechanisms are needed to safeguard fundamental rights of migrants, such as freedom from discrimination, privacy rights, and procedural justice safeguards, such as the right to a fair decision maker and the rights of appeal.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-376
Author(s):  
Marcel Brus

This article focuses on the possibilities for victims of international crimes to obtain reparation in a foreign domestic court. The chances of success for such claims are small under traditional international law. The article questions whether the development of human rights and humanitarian ethics as a core element of international law (referred to as ius humanitatis) is having an impact on traditional obstacles to making such claims. Two elements are considered: the relevance of changing societal attitudes to the ‘rights’ of victims of such crimes and their possible effect on the interpretation and application of existing law, and whether in present-day international law humanitarian concerns have led to limiting obstacles that are still based on sovereignty, notably regarding the universality principle, prescription, and state immunity. The general conclusion is that on all these points much remains to be done.


2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-531
Author(s):  
Harmen van der Wilt

This article traces the development of the foreseeability test in the context of the nullum crimen principle. While the European Court of Human Rights has introduced the ‘accessibility and foreseeability’ criteria long ago in the Sunday Times case, the Court has only recently started to apply this standard with respect to international crimes. In the Kononov case, judges of the European Court of Human Rights exhibited strongly divergent opinions on the question whether the punishment of alleged war crimes that had been committed in 1944 violated the nullum crimen principle. According to this author, the dissension of the judges demonstrates the lack of objective foreseeability, which should have served as a starting point for the assessment of the subjective foreseeability and a – potentially exculpating – mistake of law of the perpetrator. The Court should therefore have concluded that the nullum crimen principle had been violated.


2021 ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
Petra Molnar

AbstractPeople on the move are often left out of conversations around technological development and become guinea pigs for testing new surveillance tools before bringing them to the wider population. These experiments range from big data predictions about population movements in humanitarian crises to automated decision-making in immigration and refugee applications to AI lie detectors at European airports. The Covid-19 pandemic has seen an increase of technological solutions presented as viable ways to stop its spread. Governments’ move toward biosurveillance has increased tracking, automated drones, and other technologies that purport to manage migration. However, refugees and people crossing borders are disproportionately targeted, with far-reaching impacts on various human rights. Drawing on interviews with affected communities in Belgium and Greece in 2020, this chapter explores how technological experiments on refugees are often discriminatory, breach privacy, and endanger lives. Lack of regulation of such technological experimentation and a pre-existing opaque decision-making ecosystem creates a governance gap that leaves room for far-reaching human rights impacts in this time of exception, with private sector interest setting the agenda. Blanket technological solutions do not address the root causes of displacement, forced migration, and economic inequality – all factors exacerbating the vulnerabilities communities on the move face in these pandemic times.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Vunderink

Examines the situation of forced migration in Colombia by identifying how profound inequalities, a lack of governmental authority, and a crisis in national identity have contributed to the emergence of armed irregular groups and the perpetuation of the civil conflict. The Colombian conflict which has last[ed] for more than forty years has perpetuated extreme criminal violence, grave human rights abuses and massive levels of population displacement. Determinants or push factors involved in Colombian internal displacement and asylum seeking are analyzed to draw similarities between these two experiences to further question the distinctions maintained between them in international law.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Sylvia Yazid ◽  
Iyan Septiyana

ASEAN member countries are migrant-sending and receiving countries. Around 7.3 million ASEAN citizens are migrant workers, more than 740 thousand refugees are from Myanmar, and many ASEAN citizens are victims of human trafficking. Frequently, these migrants get discriminatory treatment, which makes them unable to fulfill their human rights. ASEAN, as a regional organization, is an actor that can implement migration governance in the region. As a governance institution, ASEAN has several migration instruments relating to human trafficking and migrant workers. To implement this regional instrument, ASEAN forms bodies that function to encourage and protect migrant rights. The Rohingya people from Myanmar still experiences forced migration and displacement. However, ASEAN still does not have a comprehensive instrument that can be a source of regional governance toward the issue. This paper will discuss the prospects of ASEAN migration governance in resolving migration issues in the region.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document