Contested Secessions Rights

In his extensive body of work, Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim challenges both historical interpretations of Islamic Sharia and neo-colonial understanding of human rights. To advance the rationale of scholarship for social change, An-Naim proposes advancing the universality of human rights through internal discourse within Islamic and African societies and cross-cultural dialogue among human cultures. This book proposes a transformation from human rights organized around a state determined practice to one that is focused on a people-centric approach that empowers individuals to decide how human rights will be understood and integrated into their communities. Decolonizing Human Rights aims to illustrate the decisive role of human agency on the subject of change, without implying that Islamic or any other society are exceptionally disposed to politically motivated violence and consequent profound political instability.

Although rights-based claims are diversifying and opportunities and resources for claims-making have improved, obtaining rights protections and catalysing social change in South Korea remain challenging processes. This volume examines how different groups in South Korea have defined and articulated grievances and mobilized to remedy them. It explores developments in the institutional contexts within which rights claiming occurs and in the sources of support available for utilizing different claims-making channels. Drawing on scores of original interviews, readings of court rulings and statutes, primary archival and digital sources, and interpretive analysis of news media coverage in Korean, this volume illuminates rights in action. The chapters uncover conflicts over contending rights claims, expose disparities between theory and practice in the law, trace interconnections among rights-based movements, and map emerging trends in the use of rights language. Case studies examine the righ

This book explains civil rights, and the reasons why LGBTQ+ people have had to fight for equal rights, in an accessible way for younger readers. LGBTQ+ movements through history are explored chronol

International treaties are the primary means for codifying global human rights standards. However, nation-states are able to make their own choices in how to legally commit to human rights treaties. A state commits to a treaty through four commitment acts: signature, ratification, accession, and succession. These acts signify diverging legal paths with distinct contexts and mechanisms for rights change reflecting legalization, negotiation, sovereignty, and domestic constraints. How a state moves through these actions determines how, when, and to what extent it will comply with the human rights treaties it commits to. Using legal, archival, and quantitative analysis this important book shows that disentangling legal paths to commitment reveals distinct and significant compliance outcomes. Legal context matters for human rights and has important implications for the conceptualization of treaty commitment, the consideration of non-binding commitment, and an optimistic outlook for the impa

This edited collection provides a comphrehensive analysis of how the European Convention on Human Rights protects the rights of migrants in different stages of migration, including asylum seekers, irr

During the past three decades, the international lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights movement has made significant advances in securing legal protections and rights. However, millions of LG

Vernacular Rights Cultures offers a bold challenge to the dominant epistemologies and political practices of global human rights. It argues that decolonising global human rights calls for a serious epistemic accounting of the historically and politically specific encounters with human rights, and of the forms of world-making that underpin the stakes and struggles for rights and human rights around the globe. Through combining ethnographic investigations with political theory and philosophy, it goes beyond critiquing the Eurocentrism of global human rights, in order to document and examine the different political imaginaries, critical conceptual vocabularies, and gendered political struggles for rights and justice that animate subaltern mobilisations in 'most of the world'. Vernacular Rights Cultures demonstrates that these subaltern struggles call into being different and radical ideas of justice, politics and citizenship, and open up different possibilities and futures for human right

The term 'civil rights' has such a familiar presence in discussions about American politics and law that we tend to use it reflexively and intuitively, but rarely do we stop to think about what exactly we mean when we use the term and why certain uses strike us as right or wrong. In this book, Professor Christopher W. Schmidt tells the story of how Americans have fought over the meaning of civil rights from the Civil War through today. Through their struggles over what it means to live in a nation dedicated to protecting civil rights, each generation has given the label new life and new meaning. Civil Rights in America shows how the words we use to understand our world become objects of contestation and points of leverage for social, political, and legal action.

The term 'civil rights' has such a familiar presence in discussions about American politics and law that we tend to use it reflexively and intuitively, but rarely do we stop to think about what exactly we mean when we use the term and why certain uses strike us as right or wrong. In this book, Professor Christopher W. Schmidt tells the story of how Americans have fought over the meaning of civil rights from the Civil War through today. Through their struggles over what it means to live in a nation dedicated to protecting civil rights, each generation has given the label new life and new meaning. Civil Rights in America shows how the words we use to understand our world become objects of contestation and points of leverage for social, political, and legal action.

Law, Democracy and the European Court of Human Rights examines the political rights jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. It discusses how the Court supports a liberal representative and substantive model of democracy, and outlines the potential for the Court to interpret the Convention so as to support more deliberative, participatory and inclusive democratic practices. The book commences with an overview of different theories of democracy and then discusses the origins of the Council of Europe and the Convention and presents the basic principles on the interpretation and application of the Convention. Subsequent chapters explore issues around free expression, free assembly and association, the scope of the electoral rights, the right to vote, the right to run for election and issues about electoral systems. Issues discussed include rights relating to referendums, voting rights for prisoners and non-nationals, trade union rights and freedom of information.

Traditionally, human rights have protected those facing the sharp edge of the criminal justice system. But over time human rights law has become increasingly infused with duties to mobilise criminal l

This is the first global examination of the historical relationship between Christianity and human rights in the twentieth century. Leading historians, anthropologists, political theorists, legal scholars, and scholars of religion develop fresh approaches to issues such as human dignity, personalism, religious freedom, the role of ecumenical and transatlantic networks, and the relationship between Christian and liberal rights theories. In doing so they move well beyond the temporal and geographical limits of the existing scholarship, exploring the connection between Christianity and human rights, not only in Europe and the United States, but also in Africa, Latin America, and China. They offer alternative chronologies and bring to light overlooked aspects of this history, including the role of race, gender, decolonization, and interreligious dialogue. Above all, these essays foreground the complicated relationship between global rights discourses - whether Christian, liberal, or otherw

This book deals with the two key concepts of gender and rights of the indigenous people from all continents of the world. It looks at issues of indigenous human rights, gender justice, repression, res

This book deals with the two key concepts of gender and rights of the indigenous people from all continents of the world. It looks at issues of indigenous human rights, gender justice, repression, res

This book addresses the relationship between International Refugee Law and International Human Rights Law. Using international refugee law’s analytical turn to human rights as its object of inquiry, i

While almost everyone has heard of human rights, few will have reflected in depth on what human rights are, where they originate from and what they mean. A Philosophical Introduction to Human Rights – accessibly written without being superficial – addresses these questions and provides a multifaceted introduction to legal philosophy. The point of departure is the famous 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides a frame for engagement with western legal philosophy. Thomas Mertens sketches the philosophical and historical background of the Declaration, discusses the ten most important human rights with the help of key philosophers, and ends by reflecting on the relationship between rights and duties. The basso continuo of the book is a particular world view derived from Immanuel Kant. 'Unsocial sociability' is what characterises humans, i.e. the tension between man's individual and social nature. Some human rights emphasize the first, others the second aspect. The tensio

While almost everyone has heard of human rights, few will have reflected in depth on what human rights are, where they originate from and what they mean. A Philosophical Introduction to Human Rights – accessibly written without being superficial – addresses these questions and provides a multifaceted introduction to legal philosophy. The point of departure is the famous 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides a frame for engagement with western legal philosophy. Thomas Mertens sketches the philosophical and historical background of the Declaration, discusses the ten most important human rights with the help of key philosophers, and ends by reflecting on the relationship between rights and duties. The basso continuo of the book is a particular world view derived from Immanuel Kant. 'Unsocial sociability' is what characterises humans, i.e. the tension between man's individual and social nature. Some human rights emphasize the first, others the second aspect. The tensio

Despite substantial growth in past decades, international human rights law faces significant enforcement challenges and threats to legitimacy in many parts of the world. Regional human rights courts, like the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights, represent unique institutions that allow individuals to file formal complaints with an international legal body and render judgments against states. In this book, Jillienne Haglund focuses on regional human rights court deterrence, or the extent to which adverse judgments discourage the commission of future human rights abuses. She argues that regional court deterrence is more likely when the chief executive has the capacity and willingness to respond to adverse regional court judgments. Drawing comparisons across Europe and the Americas, this book uses quantitative data analyses, supplemented with qualitative evidence from many adverse judgments, to explain the conditions under which regional courts deter future rights abuses.

A new and an essential reference work for any international human rights law academic, student or practitioner, A Commentary on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights spans all substantive rights of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), approached from the perspective of the ICCPR as an integrated, coherent scheme of rights protection. In detailed coverage of the Human Rights Committee's output when monitoring ICCPR compliance, Paul M. Taylor offers extraordinary access to forty years of its Concluding Observations, Views and General Comments organised thematically. This Commentary is a solid and practical introduction to any and all of the civil and political rights in the ICCPR, and a rare resource explaining the requirements for domestic implementation of ICCPR standards. An indispensable research tool for any serious enquirer into the subject, the Commentary speaks to the accomplishments of the ICCPR in striving for universal human righ

Kaalund examines the constructed and contested Christian-Jewish identities in Hebrews and 1 Peter through the lens of the “New Negro,” a diasporic identity similarly constructed and contested during t

This volume presents the first global history of human rights politics in the age of decolonization. The conflict between independence movements and colonial powers shaped the global human rights order that emerged after the Second World War. It was also critical to the genesis of contemporary human rights organizations and humanitarian movements. Anti-colonial forces mobilized human rights and other rights language in their campaigns for self-determination. In response, European empires harnessed the new international politics of human rights for their own ends, claiming that their rule, with its promise of 'development,' was the authentic vehicle for realizing them. Ranging from the postwar partitions and the wars of independence to Indigenous rights activism and post-colonial memory, this volume offers new insights into the history and legacies of human rights, self-determination, and empire to the present day.

The electoral successes of right-wing populists since 2016 have unsettled world politics. The spread of populism poses dangers for human rights within each country, and also threatens the international system for protecting human rights. Human Rights in a Time of Populism examines causes, consequences, and responses to populism in a global context from a human rights perspective. It combines legal analysis with insights from political science, international relations, and political philosophy. Authors make practical recommendations on how the human rights challenges caused by populism should be confronted. This book, with its global scope, international human rights framing, and inclusion of leading experts, will be of great interest to human rights lawyers, political scientists, international relations scholars, actors in the human rights system, and general readers concerned by recent developments.

This unique textbook merges human rights law with its practice, from the courtroom to the battlefield. Human rights are analysed in their particular context, and the authors assess, among other things, the impact of international finance, the role of NGOs, and the protection of rights in times of emergency, including the challenges posed by counter-terrorism. In parallel, a series of interviews with practitioners, case studies and practical applications offer multiple perspectives and challenging questions on the effective implementation of human rights. Although the book comprehensively covers the traditional areas of international human rights law, including its regional and international legal and institutional framework, it also encompasses, through distinct chapters or large sections, areas that have a profound impact on human rights worldwide, such as women's rights, human rights and globalisation, refugees and migration, human rights obligations of non-state actors, debt and hum

Children's Rights and Business: Governing Obligations and Responsibility is a comprehensive legal inquiry into children's rights and business. Relying on insights from various disciplines, the book illustrates the need for a children-focused inquiry on business and human rights. An analysis of the norm legalization process around the regulation of business and human rights, particularly of children's rights follows the inquiry into existing hard and soft law regulatory frameworks on children's rights and business. The book goes on to evaluate the promise of these frameworks in light of globalized business transactions through the lens of in-depth case illustrations on children's rights in cotton and mineral supply chains and children's rights in large-scale energy and transport investment projects. Finally, it concludes with a normative outlook on governing the children's rights obligations of businesses and responsibility when violations occur, drawing on global governance approaches.

This groundbreaking study understands the 'long history' of human rights in Australia from the moment of their supposed invention in the 1940s to official incorporation into the Australian government bureaucracy in the 1980s. To do so, a wide cast of individuals, institutions and publics from across the political spectrum are surveyed, who translated global ideas into local settings and made meaning of a foreign discourse to suit local concerns and predilections. These individuals created new organisations to spread the message of human rights or found older institutions amenable to their newfound concerns, adopting rights language with a mixture of enthusiasm and opportunism. Governments, on the other hand, engaged with or ignored human rights as its shifting meanings, international currency and domestic reception ebbed and flowed. Finally, individuals understood and (re)translated human rights ideas throughout this period: writing letters, books or poems and sympathising in new, glob

This comprehensive Commentary presents a contemporary legal perspective on the inherently interdisciplinary field of children’s rights. Chapters analyse each article of the Convention on the Rights of

In Cultures, Citizenship and Human Rights the combined analytical efforts of the fields of human rights law, conflict studies, anthropology, history, media studies, gender studies, and critical race a

All of us are entitled to the protections of law against violence, to a high quality education, to decent employment that respects our dignity, and to necessary assistance with our caregiving. Our civil rights are our rights to the protections of ordinary law - not constitutional law, and not only antidiscrimination law - that will ensure that we can participate in civil society, and hence lead flourishing lives. In this innovative work, Robin L. West looks back to nineteenth-century Civil Rights Acts to argue that the point of civil rights law is not only non-discrimination, but also to assure that all of us receive the protection of legal rights that promote human flourishing. Since the 1960s, Supreme Court decisions on civil rights issues have focused on non-discrimination and thus have 'hollowed out' this broader meaning of civil rights law. This book reconceives civil rights as a set of legal guarantees that all will be included in the legal, political, economic and social project

All of us are entitled to the protections of law against violence, to a high quality education, to decent employment that respects our dignity, and to necessary assistance with our caregiving. Our civil rights are our rights to the protections of ordinary law - not constitutional law, and not only antidiscrimination law - that will ensure that we can participate in civil society, and hence lead flourishing lives. In this innovative work, Robin L. West looks back to nineteenth-century Civil Rights Acts to argue that the point of civil rights law is not only non-discrimination, but also to assure that all of us receive the protection of legal rights that promote human flourishing. Since the 1960s, Supreme Court decisions on civil rights issues have focused on non-discrimination and thus have 'hollowed out' this broader meaning of civil rights law. This book reconceives civil rights as a set of legal guarantees that all will be included in the legal, political, economic and social project

Aili Mari Tripp explains why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria embraced more extensive legal reforms of women's rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts. The study challenges existing accounts that rely primarily on religiosity to explain the adoption of women's rights in Muslim-majority countries. Based on extensive fieldwork in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and an original database of gender-based reforms in the Middle East and North Africa, this accessible study analyzes how women's rights are used both instrumentally and symbolically to advance the political goals of authoritarian regimes as leverage in attempts to side-line religious extremists. It shows how Islamist political parties have been forced to dramatically change their positions on women's rights to ensure political survival. In an original contribution to the study of women's rights in the Middle East and North Africa, Tripp reveals how women's rights movements have capitalized on moments of politi

This unique book examines the role and impact of human rights norms in international courts other than human rights courts. It covers a whole range of courts and jurisdictions, looking at the practice of prominent international courts, such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, as well as various fora of economic adjudication, including the World Trade Organisation, regional integration organisations in Europe and Africa, and investment arbitration. The book systematically explores the role of human rights norms at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, thereby providing an insight into the future evolution of environmental law towards judicial enforcement at the international level. Within each jurisdiction under study, the respective authors, who all are experts within their fields, address the role of different categories of human rights, as well as the range of available modes of operation of human rights norms.

Aili Mari Tripp explains why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria embraced more extensive legal reforms of women's rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts. The study challenges existing accounts that rely primarily on religiosity to explain the adoption of women's rights in Muslim-majority countries. Based on extensive fieldwork in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and an original database of gender-based reforms in the Middle East and North Africa, this accessible study analyzes how women's rights are used both instrumentally and symbolically to advance the political goals of authoritarian regimes as leverage in attempts to side-line religious extremists. It shows how Islamist political parties have been forced to dramatically change their positions on women's rights to ensure political survival. In an original contribution to the study of women's rights in the Middle East and North Africa, Tripp reveals how women's rights movements have capitalized on moments of politi

Literature has been essential to shaping the notions of human personhood, good life, moral responsibility, and forms of freedom that have been central to human rights law, discourse, and politics. The literary study of human rights has also recently generated innovative and timely perspectives on the history, meaning, and scope of human rights. The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights and Literature introduces this new and exciting field of study in the humanities. It explores the historical and institutional contexts, theoretical concepts, genres, and methods that literature and human rights share. Equally accessible to beginners in the field and more advanced researches, this Companion emphasizes both the literary and interdisciplinary dimensions of human rights and the humanities.

Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation responds to an unresolved question in legal scholarship: how are (or how might be) indigenous peoples' rights included in contemporary regulatory regimes for water. This book considers that question in the context of two key trajectories of comparative water law and policy. First, the tendency to 'commoditise' the natural environment and use private property rights and market mechanisms in water regulation. Second, the tendency of domestic and international courts and legislatures to devise new legal mechanisms for the management and governance of water resources, in particular 'legal person' models. This book adopts a comparative research method to explore opportunities for accommodating indigenous peoples' rights in contemporary water regulation, with country studies in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Chile and Colombia, providing much needed attention to the role of rights and regulation in determining indigenous access to, and involvem

Literature has been essential to shaping the notions of human personhood, good life, moral responsibility, and forms of freedom that have been central to human rights law, discourse, and politics. The literary study of human rights has also recently generated innovative and timely perspectives on the history, meaning, and scope of human rights. The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights and Literature introduces this new and exciting field of study in the humanities. It explores the historical and institutional contexts, theoretical concepts, genres, and methods that literature and human rights share. Equally accessible to beginners in the field and more advanced researches, this Companion emphasizes both the literary and interdisciplinary dimensions of human rights and the humanities.

North Korea’s human rights violations are unparalleled in the contemporary world. In Dying for Rights, Sandra Fahy provides the definitive account of the abuses committed by the North Korean state, do

This book presents a long-term study of the activist campaign that contested the Botswana government's much-publicized removal of the San and Bakgalagadi people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Sapignoli's multiple points of observation and analysis range from rural Botswana to the nation's High Court, and a variety of United Nations agencies in their Headquarters, focusing on rights claimants and officials from NGOs, states and the United Nations as they acted on the grievances of those who had been displaced. In offering a comprehensive discussion of the San people and their claims-making through formal institutions, this book maintains a consistent focus on the increased recourse to law and the everyday experience of those who are asserting their rights in response to the encroachments of the state and the opportunities inherent in new indigenous advocacy networks.

The rise of neoliberal policy and practice simultaneous to the growing recognition of economic and social rights presents a puzzle. Can the rights to food, water, health education, decent work, social security and the benefits of science prevail against market fundamentalism? Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World is about the potential of these rights to contest the adverse impacts of neoliberal policy and practice on human wellbeing. Cutting across several lines of human rights literature, the chapters address norm development, court decision making, policymaking, advocacy, measurement and social mobilization. The analyses reveal that neoliberalism infiltrates management practices, changes international policy goals, flattens public school curriculum and distorts the outputs of UN human rights treaty bodies. Are economic and social rights successful in challenging neoliberalism, are they simply marginalized or are they co-opted and incorporated into neoliberal frameworks? T

The important aspects of human wellbeing outlined in human rights instruments and constitutional bills of rights can only be adequately secured as and when they are rendered the object of specific rights and corresponding duties. It is often assumed that the main responsibility for specifying the content of such genuine rights lies with courts. Legislated Rights: Securing Human Rights through Legislation argues against this assumption, by showing how legislatures can and should be at the centre of the practice of human rights. This jointly authored book explores how and why legislatures, being strategically placed within a system of positive law, can help realise human rights through modes of protection that courts cannot provide by way of judicial review.

Human Rights Tectonics. Global Perspectives on Integration and Fragmentation is a collaborative effort of internationally renowned Human Rights experts who analyse the effectiveness of legal protectio