The heritage of the League of Nations’ minority protection system

This paper discusses the system of minority protection of the League of Nations. Minority protection occupied a prominent place on the League’s agenda, which developed a significant expertise in the field. The League’s system of minority protection is often regarded as an experiment. With regard to both material and procedural aspects this assessment is certainly correct. In particular, minority protection based upon legally binding treaties and declarations gave rise to the question of how individual and group rights should be treated within the frame of an international political organization. The paper further examines whether at least some of the elements of the League’s minority protection system still persist in the context of contemporary international human rights law.

Queerly Troubling International Law's Vision of “Peace”

Queering international law involves dreaming. It requires stepping outside the framing presumptions of “normal” law to reveal and challenge the heteronormative underpinnings of the hierarchies of power and value that the law sustains. Reclaiming the nomenclature of queer from its history as a term of insult and dehumanization, queer theory interrogates the normative framework that naturalizes and privileges heterosexuality and its binary regime of gender. In its reclamation, “queer” gestures toward affirmative assemblages of new meanings and emancipatory imaginaries. In international law, queer theory has been used in many different ways. For some, queerly troubling the normative involves expanding the existing normal to be more inclusive of queer lives, as can often be seen in the field of international human rights law. As life-giving as inclusion is to those barely existing on the margins, without changing the terms of inclusion this approach risks leaving heteronormativity intact and may even buttress it, as with the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. For others, queering international law involves a more fundamental critique of its regimes of the normal that, together, regulate our relations with each other and the planet. The objects of queer theory's structural critique are the conceptual foundations of international law, which rely on heteronormativity as a fundamental organizing principle that helps to normalize inequality, poverty, exploitation, and violence. One example is the “civilizing mission” which justified colonialism and continues to animate present legal norms. As Teemu Ruskola argues in his seminal queer critique, international legal rhetoric attributed normative masculinity to (Western) sovereign states and cast the “deficient” sovereignty of non-Western states in terms of variously deviant masculinities which, together with their civilizational and racial attributes, justified their “penetration.” My “troubling” of international law's account of peace takes a queer structural approach and then outlines some alternative imaginaries suggested by queer theory and activism.

Human Rights Protection in Occupied Territories

The chapter discusses the protection mechanisms of human rights in occupied territories, namely it concerns the issue of application of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in occupied territories. The author gives detailed information about the main system for administration of occupied territories, in particular about the conventional and customary law, as well as secondary resources such as court decisions and UN resolutions. The chapter analyses international treaties, customary law, and case law to identify the main problems related to human rights protection in occupied territories, the positive obligations of states to protect population living in occupied territories, and the relevance of existing legal norms with the state practice.

CCTV Cameras Surveillance, Data Protection & Privacy Under International Human Rights Laws

The study aims to find out and suggest that how equilibrium among surveillance through CCTVs, right of privacy and personal data protection regime can be maintained. With the objective in mind, it discusses the CCTVs’ surveillance, its purposes, and scope of privacy in public or private domains under International Human Rights Law. It also focuses on General Data Protection Regulations, 2018 and its amplifications on CCTV surveillance.

Topical issues of ensuring human rights on digital platforms

The article deals with the constitutional understanding of the place modern Internet platforms play in ensuring human rights. Some problematic aspects of the topic are illustrated through the lens of Russian and foreign legal practice, which has developed in connection with the functioning of wellknown digital platforms and promotion of information rights, digital security and privacy rights, freedom of speech within the boundaries of popular social networks, video hosting platforms, online services. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the latest novelties of Russian legislation aimed at regulating the status and new grounds for responsibility of digital platforms. The cornerstone question proposed by the author for discussion is the question of the best model of interaction between the state and digital platforms, as well as the conditions and limits of their responsibility for violations of human rights. The article analyzes the problem of inconsistency of terms of services with generally recognized standards of international human rights law, examines options for unifying the platform’s policies in relation to the content published on them, examines the phenomenon of “refusal of constitutional rights by contract”. Taking into account the deduced features of digital platforms as a space for the realization of human rights, the author’s view of the system of legal measures aimed at improving the standards of protecting human rights on digital platforms, is proposed as conclusions.

The European Court of Human Rights’ Engagement with International Human Rights Instruments: Looking at the Cases of Domestic Violence

In its recent jurisprudence on domestic violence, the European Court of Human Rights started to examine the domestic violence cases in the light of relevant international human rights law developed in this specific area. This article examines the engagement of the European Court of Human Rights with other international and regional human rights instruments in domestic violence cases. Upon examination, the article concludes that by integrating its case law into international human rights law the European Court of Human Rights broadens the scope of protection for domestic violence victims and maintains the unity of international law.

EU, Trading and human rights: consistent framework?

The relationship between European Union and International Human Rights Law has not always been close. The global projection of the EU, specially, its interest in becoming a leader in international trade, is facing its negative impact in some territories, specially those affected by human rights violation or negation of fundamental rules of International Law, such as ius cogens self-determination of people. This paper will examine to what extend the practice of the European Union trading with occupying and administrative powers in some territories could jeopardise its compliance with its own values and principles.

Rights of Families of Disappeared Persons

This book examines how international judicial and non-judicial bodies in Europe address the needs of the families of forcibly disappeared persons. The needs in question are returning the remains of disappeared persons; the right to truth; the acceptance of responsibility by states; and the right to compensation. These have been identified as the four most commonly shared basic and fundamental needs of families in which an adult was disappeared many years previously and is now assumed to be dead, which is representative of the situation of the vast majority of families of disappeared persons in Europe. <br><br>The analysis covers the judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Human Rights Advisory Panel in Kosovo, as well as the activities of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, the Special Process on Missing Persons in the Territory of former Yugoslavia, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the International Commission on Missing Persons. In so doing, the book demonstrates whether, how, and based on what principles these four needs of the families of disappeared persons can constitute a claim based on international human rights law.