Civil Society, Rights and Welfare: Exploring the Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Cambodia

This study examines Cambodia’s implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Corpus analysis of civil society organisations’ submissions to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review reveals a raft of CRC violations, including sexual abuse, trafficking and child labour. This is due to political and bureaucratic failings. The wider significance of this lies in underlining how the disjuncture between state and civil society underpins ongoing violations. Future progress depends on strengthened mobilisation yet increasing repression of civil society makes this unlikely. Accordingly, the prospects are bleak with children in Cambodia continuing to suffer widespread rights violations.

Universal periodic review as a migration desecuritization instrument

For the last decades, it was observed that the migration subject was addressed as a security issue due to a social construction proposed by the state that sees immigrants as a threat to security, in which they are subconsciously considered as “the other”. Thus, migration issues started to be analyzed under the security bias, which resulted in the topic being securitized instead of politicized and discussed by all sectors of society and under the human rights scope. In 2006 the United Nations Human Rights Council created the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism, which allows all UN member states to have their human rights situations reviewed every four years and a half. In this respect, the paper aims at presenting how the UPR mechanism may be a tool to desecuritize the migration subject by using Spain as a study case, which is the country that receives more recommendations about migrants among all UN member states. Therefore, the research focuses on a comprehensive evaluation of documents on Spain outcomes in the first two UPR cycles, in order to identify the main recommendations about the migration subject and to understand the interventions related to Spain's position on accepting or not such recommendations. The purpose here is to check the effectiveness of the UPR as a tool that may contribute to the desecuritization of the migration subject under the human rights perspective. The research focuses on a review of documents and bibliographic references, with a qualitative approach and exploratory nature. The initial result points out that the interactive discussion promoted by the UPR mechanism can help support to desecuritize the migrant issue.

(Geo)Politics of Universal Periodic Review: Why States Issue and Accept Human Rights Recommendations?

The research identifies geographic proximity as the crucial driving force behind state behavior in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Looking at both stages of the UPR mechanism, we pose two questions: what best explains states issuing human rights recommendations and what best explains states accepting those recommendations? Our model controls for a variety of alternative explanations—state capacity, international structure, and international institutions. The results show that the closer the states are, the more likely it is that they will issue each other recommendations; however, the closer the states are, the less likely it is that they will accept recommendations from one another. We also find an important caveat: the logic of issuance and acceptance of recommendations is reversed when it comes to neighboring states. The latter speaks against general international relations literature, where sharing a border and geographic proximity are both associated with increasing the likelihood of conflict.

# Me Too: Global Progress in Tackling Continued Custodial Violence Against Women: The 10-Year Anniversary of the Bangkok Rules

On any given day, almost 11 million people globally are deprived of their liberty. In 2020, the global female population was estimated to be 741,000, an increase of 105,000 since 2010. In order to investigate progress in the adoption of the Bangkok Rules since 2010, we conducted a legal realist assessment based on a global scoping exercise of empirical research and United Nations (UN) reporting, using detailed MESH terms across university and UN databases. We found evidences in 91 documents which directly relate to violations of the Bangkok Rules in 55 countries. By developing a realist account, we document the precarious situation of incarcerated women and continued evidence of systemic failures to protect them from custodial violence and other gender-sensitive human rights breaches worldwide. Despite prison violence constituting a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, very little research (from the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia) has been conducted on custodial violence against women since 2010. Although standards of detention itself is a focus of UN universal periodic review, special procedures (violence against women) and concluding observations by the UN committees, very few explicitly mentioned women, and the implications of violence against them while incarcerated. We highlight three central aspects that hinder the full implementation of the Bangkok Rules; the past decade of a continued invisible nature of women as prisoners in the system; the continued legitimization, normalization, and trivialization of violence under the pretext of security within their daily lives; and the unawareness and disregard of international (Bangkok and others) rules.

Advocating for Change in Nepal’s Adult Entertainment Sector

The United Nations Human Rights Council has a powerful role to play in addressing the worst forms of child labour. Accountability mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) – which work to support Member States to improve their human rights situation – are therefore widely seen as important opportunities to advocate for change. Ahead of Nepal’s third UPR cycle in 2021, the CLARISSA programme met with eight UN Permanent Missions to present recommendations addressing the exploitation of children within Nepal’s adult entertainment sector. This spotlight story shares the programme’s experience in advocacting within this process. It also highlights their approach of providing decision makers with recommendations to the Government of Nepal that were underpinned by the importance of integrating a participatory, adaptive and child-centred approach.

Implementation of International Human Rights Obligations in Nigeria: Civil Society Perspective

Civil society organizations are key actors in the promotion and protection of human rights in Nigeria and have participated in all the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) circles of the Government of Nigeria. The UPR is a first of its kind innovation adopted in 2006 by the Human Rights Council to complement the works of treaty bodies and involves the review on a periodic basis, the human rights records of all Member States of the United Nations. As a peer review process comprising three distinct stages and involving three major sources of information, this article exclusively ex-rays the UPR civil society report on the implementation of Nigeria’s international human rights obligations. As one of the three sources of information relied upon by the Human Rights Council in the Universal Periodic Review of the human rights record of the Government of Nigeria, this article, while focusing on the civil society information submitted to the Human Rights Council pursuant to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/251 concludes that despite advances in the promotion and protection of human rights claimed in its national report to be made in the implementation of international human rights obligations, there are still, from civil society lens, plethora of issues and gaps in the implementation of Nigeria’s international human rights obligations.

Conclusion

Custom poses challenges for its identification but at the same time it offers a potential for dynamism that may often be superior to that of treaty law. Recent developments, most importantly the near-universal ratification of major human rights treaties and the Universal Periodic Review mechanism of the Human Rights Council, greatly facilitate the identification of customary law. It is clear that most of the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are unquestionably part of customary international law. Doubts may persist about a few rights, such as the right to property. Customary law also extends to ‘solidarity rights’ or ‘peoples’ rights’, whose reflection in treaty law is not so universal. Recognition of rights does not ensure that there are effective mechanisms for their enforcement and implementation.

Methodological considerations

Evidence for the existence of customary law is compiled, using the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a template. The pattern of treaty ratification is examined along with materials from the Universal Periodic Review, especially concerning States that are not parties to relevant treaties. The list is supplemented with rights omitted from the Declaration, such as the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples, as well as with so-called peoples’ rights, to development, peace, and self-determination. Particular attention is directed to the customary nature of economic, social, and cultural rights.