Following the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2020, and the creation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, there is increased interest in and a need to develop national human rights' bodies for children's rights. This book provides an in-depth look at one domestic independent children's rights institution: the Irish Ombudsman for Children's Office, to highlight the learnings for an international audience and the methodologies that can be used to promote and protect children's rights at a national level. Co-authored by Ireland's first Ombudsman for Children and a children's rights professor, the book will present an original and informed analysis of how a national human rights institution can advocate, most effectively, for the rights of children. By using illustrative case studies, the book will highlight how the powers of a national human rights institution can be put to strategic use to address specific children's rights deficits in areas of child protection, youth detention and public awareness about children's rights. Each chapter focusses on a case study, identifies a problem, the approach or intervention by the Ombudsman for Children, the outcome and reflects on lessons learned. It ensures that the cases can be extracted, examined and replicated in other jurisdictions by an international community interested in the promotion, monitoring and protection of children's rights. It speaks to those interested in Human Rights; Children's Rights; Socio-legal studies, Social Work; Childhood Studies; Administrative Law, Constitutional Law and International Law, and to practitioners and policy-makers in this field.

Traditionally, consumer law has played an instrumental role in the EU as a tool for market integration. There are now signs in the new EU legal framework and jurisprudence that suggest this may be changing. These changes can be seen in recent court cases and, above all, the Lisbon Treaty and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Treaty contains provisions affecting consumer law and, at the same time, it grants binding legal force to the EU Charter, which adds a fundamental rights dimension to consumer protection. This evolution, however, is still at an early stage and may be thwarted by conflicting trends. Moreover, it may generate tensions between social objectives and economic goals.
This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of these developments and examines new avenues that may be opening for consumer law, focussing on three key areas: financial services, electronic communication, and access to justice. Through a systematic analysis of relevant cases the book traces the development of a human rights dimension in consumer law and details the potential ramifications that the post-Lisbon legal framework may have on consumer protection and on related policy issues. This book concludes by providing ideas for a new legal approach to consumer law which strikes a compromise between social and economic demands.

This is a selection of Lord Irvine's major lectures and articles since 1995. It surveys the constitutional revolution that has taken place in Britain since the Labour Government came to power in 1997, taking in devolution and House of Lords reform, but with a particular focus on human rights. The evolution of a new human rights culture is traced, from the policy underlying the Human Rights Act 1998, through the scheme of the legislation and the preparations for implementation, to an analysis of the impact of the Act during its first two years. The work is of particular interest because Lord Irvine chaired the four main Cabinet Committees on constitutional change and introduced the Human Rights Bill to Parliament. Lord Irvine also considers the development and practice of public and administrative law, and the constitutional role of the British judiciary and the Lord Chancellor within our unique separation of powers. Alongside forays into criminal, commercial, and medical law, the collection also embraces an international perspective, with essays on the influence in Britain of european law; comparative analyses of key aspects of English, American and French jurisprudence; and a discussion of the continuing relevance of Magna Carta in Britain and Australia. This collection is a timely contribution to the debate on human rights, constitutional law and the English legal system at the turn of the new millennium, and will be of interest to judges, academics, practitioners and students.

An international selection of writers tackle some of the toughest questions about improving the lives of women and explain why societies need fresh approaches in analysing what works and what doesn't for the most vexing issues.

This book introduces "biolaw" as an integrated and distinct field in contemporary legal studies. Corresponding to the legal dimension of bioethics, the term "biolaw" is already in use in academic and research activities to denote legal issues emerging mostly from advanced technological applications. This book is a genuine attempt to rationalize the field of biolaw after almost four decades of continuous production of relevant legislation and judgments worldwide. This experience is a robust basis for defending a) a separate legal object, covering the total of legal norms that govern the management of life as a natural phenomenon in all its possible forms, and b) an "evolutionary" approach that opens the discussion on a future conciliation of legal regulation with the Theory of Evolution on the ground of biolaw.

Is it impossible to assess dignity, which is the faculty or agency of autonomy and equality of rights under the current rule of law, when we are met by global challenges like climate change, financial crisis, food crisis, natural disasters, inequality, violent conflicts and trade disputes? Drawing on European philosophical enlightenment to rethink dominant theories of contemporary Western Human Rights, Stephan P. Leher explores the philosophical foundation of the concept of "dignity" and Human Rights. Using specific examples from Africa and Latin America to explain these concepts as social realizations in the world, Leher demonstrates the link between justice and peace and contends that dignity, freedom and Human Rights law rule are social realizations and claims by all people. With the help of language philosophy, he argues that sentences and propositions about social choices and realizations of real life expressed in ordinary language constitute the basic elements of the foundation and protection of human dignity and Human Rights. The social choice to claim one's freedom and rights can be considered the dignity agency of the individual. Dignity and Human Rights sheds new light on the academic assessment of dignity, the agency of autonomy and the equality of rights under the rule of law, in a time of changes and challenges to Human Rights policies and politics.

This book offers perspectives from the ground on human rights and peace in Timor-Leste. By highlighting the local voices, this book draws on their experience and expertise in engaging with questions concerning the nexus between human rights, peace and development. It posits that these concepts no longer mean absence of conflict, and argues that sustainable peace must be built from rights frameworks to protect the locals' interests in the processes. Acknowledging the lack of autonomy on local actors in peace-making contexts, the book emphasizes the urgent need to facilitate the creation of political and social structures that can support and offer contextual rights and dignity for the Timorese community.

A popular myth emerged in the late 1990s: in 1900, wars killed one civilian for every eight soldiers, while contemporary wars were killing eight civilians for every one soldier. The neat reversal of numbers was memorable, and academic publications and UN documents regularly cited it. The more it was cited, the more trusted it became. In fact, however, subsequent research found no empirical evidence for the idea that the ratio of civilians to soldiers killed in war has changed dramatically. But while the ratios may not have changed, the political significance of civilian casualties has risen tremendously. Over the past century, civilians in war have gone from having no particular rights to having legal protections and rights that begin to rival those accorded to states. The concern for civilians in conflict has become so strong that governments occasionally undertake humanitarian interventions, at great risk and substantial cost, to protect strangers in distant lands. I n the early 1990s, the UN Security Council authorized military interventions to help feed and protect civilians in the Kurdish area of Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia. And in May 2011 , Barack Obama 's National Security Advisor explained the United States' decision to support NATO's military intervention in these terms "When the president made this decision, there was an immediate threat to 700,000 Libyan civilians in the town of Benghazi. We've had a success here in terms of being able to protect those civilians." Counting Civilian Casualties aims to promote open scientific dialogue by high lighting the strengths and weaknesses of the most commonly used casualty recording and estimation techniques in an understandable format. Its thirteen chapters, each authoritative but accessible to nonspecialists, explore a variety of approaches, from direct recording to statistical estimation and sampling, to collecting data on civilian deaths caused by conflict. The contributors also discuss their respective advantages and disadvantages, and analyze how figures are used (and misused) by governments, rebels, human rights advocates, war crimes tribunals, and others. In addition to providing analysts with a broad range of tools to produce accurate data, this will be an in valuable resource for policymakers, military officials, jou rnalists, human rights activists, courts, and ordinary people who want to be more informed-and skeptical-consumers of casualty counts.

In an age where racial and ethnic identity intersect, intertwine, and interact in increasingly complex ways, Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream offers a superb and rigorous analysis of black politics and coalitions in the post-Civil Rights era. Using an original survey of a New York City labor population and multiple national data sources, author Christina M. Greer explores the political significance of ethnicity for new immigrant and native-born blacks. Black Ethnics concludes that racial and ethnic identities affect the ways in which black ethnic groups conceptualize their possibilities for advancement and placement within the American polity. The ethnic and racial dual identity for blacks leads to significant distinctions in political behavior, feelings of incorporation, and policy choices in ways not previously theorized. The steady immigration of black populations from Africa and the Caribbean over the past few decades has fundamentally changed the racial, ethnic, and political landscape in the U.S. An important question for social scientists is how these 'new' blacks will behave politically in the US. Should we expect new black immigrants to orient themselves to politics in the same manner as native Blacks? Will the different histories of the new immigrants and native-born blacks lead to different political orientations and behavior, and perhaps to political tensions and conflict among black ethnic groups residing in America? And to what extent will this new population fracture the black coalition inside of the Democratic party? With increases in immigration of black ethnic populations in the U.S., the political, social, and economic integration processes of black immigrants does not completely echo that of native-born American blacks. The emergent complexity of black intra-racial identity and negotiations within the American polity raise new questions about black political incorporation, assimilation, acceptance, and fulfillment of the American Dream. By comparing Afro-Caribbean and African groups to native-born blacks, this book develops a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the 'new black America' in the twenty-first century. Lastly, Black Ethnics explores how foreign-born blacks create new ways of defining and understanding black politics and coalitions in the post-Civil Rights era.

Since the 1991-2002 civil conflict ended in Sierra Leone, the country has failed to translate the accomplishments of women’s involvement in bringing the war to an end into meaningful political empowerment. This is in marked contrast to other post-conflict countries, which have increased the political participation of women in elected and appointed office, increased the representation of women in leadership positions, and enacted constitutional reforms promoting women’s rights. Written by Sierra Leonean and Africanist scholars and experts from a broad range of disciplines, this unique volume analyses the historical and contextual factors influencing women’s political, economic and social development in the country. In drawing on a diverse array of case studies – from health to education, refugees to international donors – the contradictions, successes and challenges of women’s lives in a post-conflict environment are revealed, making this an essential book for anyone involved in women and development.

Re-thinking Rights: Historical Development and Philosophical Justification takes a new look at the history of individual rights, focussing on the way that philosophers have written that history. The scholastics and early modern writers used the notion of natural rights to debate the big moral and political questions of the day, such as the treatment of Indigenous Americans under Spanish rule. John Locke put natural rights at the centre of liberal political thought. But as the idea grew in strength and influence, empiricist and positivist philosophers punctured it with attacks on logical incompetence and illegitimate appeals to theology and metaphysics. Philosophers then turned to law and jurisprudence for the philosophical analysis of rights, where it has largely stayed ever since. Eleanor Curran argues that the dominance of the Hohfeldian analysis of (legal) rights has restricted our understanding of moral and political rights and led to distorted readings of historical writers on rights. It has also led to the separation of right from the important related notion of liberty-freedoms are now seen as inferior to claims. Curran looks at recent philosophy of human rights and suggests a way forward for justifying universal moral and political rights and separating them from legal rights.

This book explores a new way of doing diplomacy through the engagement with non-governmental organizations, here referred to as hybrid diplomacy. Today's global politics is played out most successfully by the combined actions of different actors. A specific type of partnership is that between governments (namely Ministries of Foreign Affairs) and civil society organizations. While not the only type of global partnership at work, this is particularly effective in advancing new issues and promoting the norm changes that have been discussed at length in international relations and sociological literature. The author has chosen Italy as a case study because of the country's prolonged deployment of such policy. Being a middle power, with a strong non-profit sector, and hosting the central node of catholic global network, Italy is well positioned to take advantage of this new diplomatic mode. Through presenting a new reading of the Italian contribution to international affairs, this book contributes to broadening the scholarship in foreign policy analysis and transnational activism.

The aim of this book is to delve into the impact of the Information and Communications Technologies in the criminal prevention and investigation, by addressing the state of the art of different measures and its implementation in different legal systems vis a vis the protection of human rights. Yet this research not only pursues a diagnostic goal but furthermore aims at providing a reconstruction of this problematic area in light of modern, human rights-oriented notion of criminal justice. This broadens the scope of this investigation, which encompasses both unprecedented safeguards to traditional, or anyway widely recognized individual rights and the emergence of new rights, such as the right to informational self-determination, and the right to information technology privacy. The book addresses the problems and potentials in the areas of criminal prevention and criminal investigation, taking into account that due to electronic surveillance and the progress in the use of big data for identifying risks, the borders between preventive and investigative e-measures is not clear-cut.

This book deals with all the cases that came before the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) from 1922 to 1946, as well as those that were heard by its successor, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from 1946 to 2020 in which interim measures of protection were either indicated or refused. The monograph shows how cases in which injunctive relief was sought were handled and how the PCIJ and the ICJ have undergone certain reforms over the years. The new approach taken by the author is to present all the matters brought before both the PCIJ and ICJ in full and to present the new requirements on the part of the ICJ that have been formulated in recent years. The book is aimed at law students, lecturers and those working in the field of international law. Ewa Salkiewicz-Munnerlyn was a Polish diplomat working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 2018. She was appointed charge d'affaires at the Polish Embassy to the Holy See from 1993-1994, after which she served as the Polish consul at the Consular Division of the Polish Embassy in Washington D.C. from 1995-1999. She then held the position of Human Rights Officer of the OSCE in Macedonia (Skopje and Ohrid) and Bosnia and Hercegovina (Pale in Republika Srbska) from 2001-2005 and has also several times worked as a short-term observer of the OSCE during parliamentary and presidential elections in Ukraine, Russia, Moldova and Belarus. She attained a Ph.D. at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and a post-graduate diploma at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, Switzerland.

This central volume in the Collected Essays brings together John Finnis's wide-ranging contribution to central issues in political philosophy. The volume begins by examining the general theory of political community and social justice. It includes the powerful and well-known Maccabaean Lecture on Bills of Rights - a searching critique of Ronald Dworkin's moral-political arguments and conclusions, of the European Court of Human Rights' approach to fundamental rights, and of judicial review as a constitutional institution. It is followed by an equally searching analysis of Kant's thought on the intersection of law, right, and ethics. Other papers in the book's opening section include an early assessment of Rawls's A Theory of Justice, a radical re-interpretation of Aquinas on limited government and the significance of the private/public distinction, and a challenging paper on virtue and the constitution. The volume then focuses on central problems in modern political communities, including the achievement of justice in work and distribution; the practice of punishment; war and justice; the public control of euthanasia and abortion; and the nature of marriage and the common good. There are careful and vigorous critiques of Nietzsche on morality, Hart on punishment, Dworkin on the enforcement of morality and on euthanasia, Rawls on justice and law, Thomson on the woman's right to choose, Habermas on abortion, Nussbaum and Koppelman on same-sex relations, and Dummett and Weithman on open borders. The volume's previously unpublished papers include a foundational consideration of labour unions, a fresh statement of a new grounding for the morality of sex, a surprising reading of C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man on contraception, and an introduction reviewing some of the remarkable changes in private and public morality over the past half-century.

This is open access volume of the NL ARMS offers an interdisciplinary view on the domain of Compliance and Integrity in International Military Trade (CIIMT), integrating defence economics, international law, arms export control frameworks and policies, information management, organizational sciences and ethics. Although, in academia, and from an interdisciplinary perspective, CIIMT constitutes a relatively novel research domain, across private and public defence-related sectors, the subject evokes high levels of attention and interest, instigating a need for critical thinking, reflection and creativity to address ensuing multi-faceted issues and problems. The Faculty of Military Sciences at the Netherlands Defence Academy extends an in-house MSc programme on CIIMT, which, by integrating practice-based and scientific-based knowledge, aims to contribute to this need. The MSc programme on CIIMT is concerned with exploring, analysing, understanding, explaining, controlling and improving the military dimension in international military trade. More particularly, CIIMT studies managerial questions regarding strategic trade control of military and dual-use goods and services. CIIMT ties in with the Netherlands Defence Academy's vision on scientific education, embedded in the reflective practitioners' paradigm uniting both management and leadership skills needed to decide and operate in high-tension and high-risk knowledge intensive environments. The Faculty of Military Sciences uses the reflective practitioners' paradigm to refer to critical thinking, reflection and Bildung that characterize its thinking doers, the so-called Thinking Soldiers, either at the academic Bachelor's or Master's level. In view of the complexity of the international trade regarding military and dual-use goods and services, the rapid evolvement of strategic trade control and frameworks, and its importance to procurement processes, defence organizations require innovative thinking doers, who, based on an in-depth understanding, from an interdisciplinary perspective can be expected to find - and take responsibility for - creative solutions to problems. NL ARMS 2021 comprises, amongst others, contributions from students and lecturers partaking in this programme. All the editors are affiliated with the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda, The Netherlands.

How do international norms evolve? This book examines the manner in which sovereignty, a bedrock norm of international relations since the seventeenth century, has evolved in response to changing conceptions of the responsibilities of government. Whereas most previous studies of international norms have examined how norms influence policy decisions, this book asks, instead, how state policies actively shape international norms. Changing Norms through Actions contends that the concept of sovereignty is moving towards one in which states that are unable or unwilling to fulfill their domestic and international obligations are forced to relinquish certain sovereign responsibilities to the international community. As issues such as genocide, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism have forced states to reassess their understandings of sovereignty, Ramos is interested in how understandings of norms - particularly long-held norms such as absolute sovereignty - change. If action taken by states reinforces an existing norm or alters current understandings of the norm, states must consider how their actions may change the "rules of the game" for the future. Even when a major power acts primarily out of its own self-interest, without any concern to international norms, the action may have the unintended consequence of modifying the normative environment within which other minor powers act. Shifting understandings of sovereignty (and how states relate to one another) can also have profound implications for the workings of the international system. Ramos looks specifically at what happens to sovereignty when states choose to bypass traditional norms of non-intervention on behalf of other competing norms, such as those regarding counterterrorism, human rights, or weapons of mass destruction.

This interdisciplinary volume critically explores how the ever-increasing use of automated systems is changing policing, criminal justice systems, and military operations at the national and international level. The book examines the ways in which automated systems are beneficial to society, while addressing the risks they represent for human rights. This book starts with a historical overview of how different types of knowledge have transformed crime control and the security domain, comparing those epistemological shifts with the current shift caused by knowledge produced with high-tech information technology tools such as big data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The first part explores the use of automated systems, such as predictive policing and platform policing, in law enforcement. The second part analyzes the use of automated systems, such as algorithms used in sentencing and parole decisions, in courts of law. The third part examines the use and misuse of automated systems for surveillance and social control. The fourth part discusses the use of lethal (semi)autonomous weapons systems in armed conflicts. An essential read for researchers, politicians, and advocates interested in the use and potential misuse of automated systems in crime control, this diverse volume draws expertise from such fields as criminology, law, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology.

China's rise to prosperity on the international stage has been accompanied by increased tensions with international standards of law and governance. Exporting Virtue? examines China's internationalizing of PRC human rights policy and practice as an example of its international assertiveness, and considers the implications. China's international human rights activism is couched in terms of virtue but manifested as authoritarianism, inviting scholars and policy makers around the world to engage critically with the issue. Exporting Virtue? investigates the challenges that China's human rights orthodoxy poses to international norms and institutions, offering normative and institutional analysis and providing suggestions for policy response.

This book] provides the kind of scholarly resource that educated citizens need to think for themselves, a rich digest of primary sources documenting--in their own words--the views, motives, and intentions of the Framers, historic commentators, legislators, and judiciary who have debated the right to keep and bear arms from the origins of our republic. "Preston K. Covey, Carnegie Mellon University "

Beginning with its origins in the English Civil War, Clayton Cramer traces the development in the United States of the right to keep and bear arms--through the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates that followed, its inclusion by Congress in the Bill of Rights, to the present controversy over gun control. This book provides important background, analysis, documentation, and perspective for the ongoing national debate over arms.

Since the 1990s, human rights advocates, business leaders, and consumers have become increasingly attuned to mitigating sweatshop labor and other abuses in the supply chains that manufacture the clothing, electronics, and countless other products that we buy and use each day. But we know surprisingly little about how companies interact with people in the communities beyond the factory's walls. In many cases, community members are left out of the process of identifying both risks and solutions to problems in global supply chains, including how global companies could add social value in the localities where they operate. Business, governments, and civil society are supposed to be jointly responsible for shaping the remedies available to people harmed in the course of business activity, wherever it takes place. However, the answer to the question of how to do this remains underdeveloped and poorly executed. This book explores the conditions under which local communities and companies can work with one another and the types of remedies available in one of the most widespread and challenging sectors: light manufacturing. Tethered Fates draws on quantitative data (including the 7,000-company database of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre) and original qualitative data to analyze regional and industry-specific trends in stakeholder dialogue globally and at the local level. The book features original interviews with community members in two factory towns in the Dominican Republic, whose perspectives shed light on the prospects for dialogue with companies and the challenges of everyday life in towns where light manufacturing takes place. Tethered Fates does more than simply explain why stakeholder dialogue often falls short as a vehicle for safeguarding economic rights and promoting community development. It also offers an assessment of the varieties of emerging policy alternatives for moving beyond the current state of practice.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have gained a renewed momentum in recent years, and have come to be viewed by governments and funders alike as a silver bullet for infrastructure development and public service provision. Critiques of the corporate capture of development are well established, yet until now the urgent question of the impacts of PPPs on women's human rights around the world has remained under-explored. This open access book aims to fill the gap, providing new insights from a set of case studies from across the Global South. Bringing an intersectional feminist approach to PPPs, these cases enable analysis that can inform advocacy and activism, whilst challenging dominant narratives and resisting the negative impacts of PPPs on women and historically marginalized communities' human rights. Widely advocating for stronger regulatory frameworks and institutions, and indicating how changes could be implemented, the examples analysed cover a range of sectors including health, energy, and infrastructure from countries including Ethiopia, Peru, India and Fiji. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).

In Forced Justice, David Armor explores the entire range of controversial issues in school desegregation policy, including evolving Supreme Court doctrines, the educational and social impacts of desegregation, and the effectiveness of mandatory versus voluntary desegregation methods, including magnet schools. He challenges the "harm and benefit" thesis of Brown v. Board of Education, finding few significant educational and psychological benefits from desegregation, and he counters conventional wisdom by arguing that voluntary plans using magnet schools are just as effective in attaining long-term desegregation as mandatory busing. Armor concludes by proposing a new policy of "equity choice" which draws on the best features of both the desegregation and choice movements.

In Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights, editors Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks, and Andrew K. Woods bring together a stellar group of contributors from across the social sciences to apply a broad yet conceptually unified array of advanced social science research concepts to the study of human rights and human rights law. The book focus on three key methodological and substantive areas: actors, or social and political perspectives, including behavioral economics; communication, covering linguistics, media studies, and social entrepreneurship; and groups, via organizational theory, political economy, social movements, and complexity theory. Their goal is to provide a more comprehensive and more practical theory of social action, which necessarily requires a better understanding of individuals, organizations of individuals, and the ways in which both relate to other individuals and organizations.