The 1948 Genocide Convention has become a vital legal tool in the international campaign against impunity. Its provisions, including its enigmatic definition of the crime and its pledge both to punish and prevent the 'crime of crimes', have now been interpreted in important judgments by the International Court of Justice, the ad hoc Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and various domestic courts. The second edition of this definitive work, first published in 2009, focuses on the judicial interpretation of the Convention, relying on debates in the International Law Commission, political statements in bodies like the General Assembly of the United Nations and the growing body of case law. Attention is given to the concept of protected groups, to problems of criminal prosecution and to issues of international judicial cooperation, such as extradition. The duty to prevent genocide and its relationship with the emerging doctrine of the 'responsibility to protect' are also explored.

The new edition of this market-leading textbook includes a revised introduction and updated chapters with new research and insights. Four new case studies of twenty-first-century genocides bring this horrific history up to the present moment: the genocide perpetrated by the government during Argentina's "Dirty War," the genocide of the Yazidis by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), genocidal violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and China's genocide of the Uyghurs. Powerful survivor testimonies bring the essays to life and help readers grapple with the difficult lessons presented throughout the book.

For decades, framing an issue as a ‘human rights’ issue carried certain power and effect in politics and international relations, one that has been challenged by the recent rise of populist political forces. Ford explores the recent impact of populist politics on the universalist human rights project, in particular, how scholars have framed and responded to this challenge.

Ford offers a provocation to the human rights movement. Rather than ‘what have populists done to human rights?’, it asks ‘how did we, the human rights movement, do this to ourselves?’ How did fundamental protections for all become so easily scapegoated as ‘us and them,’ as claims of small, often foreign, minorities? Did human rights lose some vital connection to ordinary people’s interests, their value taken as obvious and self-explanatory?

Looking forward, the book asks how – in a post-truth ‘fake news’ world – we might reimagine human rights as underpinning human flourishing as well as important constraints on public and private concentrations of power. Traversing relevant scholarly literature on the future of human rights and zooming out to look at wider patterns of political and diplomatic discourse, this book will speak to policymakers, diplomats, journalists, and human rights advocates – and all interested in the crisis of liberal democracies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Questions to explore

Outline of the book

Caveat, clarification, caution

I Patterns: ‘Populism’ and its claimed impact on human rights in recent times

Defining ‘populism’

Backslide

Backlash

II Problems: Putting the ‘populist challenge’ narrative in perspective

Couching the ‘populist era’ in some historical perspective

Enduring critiques or drawbacks of the human rights project

‘Distortive’

‘Disconnected’

‘Delegitimised’

III Progress?: Evaluating proposals to counter populism and revitalise human rights

Reframing

‘Populist backlash’ as blindness

‘Populist backlash’ as distraction

‘Populist backlash’ as window (of opportunity)

Reviewing

Prescriptions advanced for revitalisating human rights

Evaluating prescriptions for revitalisating human rights

Recalculating

Are human rights still powerful?

A persistent belief in the rights frame

Great expectations?

Questions of substance versus form

Conclusion

Index /

This book examines accountability issues and the problems of regulating non-governmental organisations (NGOs) through self-regulation. It focuses on methods of self-regulation for NGOs in response to prominent scandals that revealed problems with their accountability, notably the 'Mafia Capitale' scandal in Italy and the Oxfam GB scandal in Haiti. It also touches upon other accountability failures, including the allegations against the WWF of facilitating human rights abuses of indigenous groups in Cameroon. The work brings a legal approach to the topic of NGO self-regulation and accountability, contributing to the academic and policy debate in several ways. It advances a brand-new theoretical model to explain the reasons behind NGOs non-compliance with self-regulation, examines the reasons for self-regulation failures, identifies new accountability routes, and recommends proposals for sectoral reform. The book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers and PhD students who work in the area of NGO regulation and accountability from a legal perspective as well as to accountability and NGO scholars working in other disciplines. It will also appeal to practitioners and policymakers who work on the development of NGO policies.

Through a comparative analysis involving 15 countries from around the world this book provides an invaluable assessment of women's equality at the global level. This book explores the constitutional protection of equality and women's rights in 15 countries drawn from Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. The work focuses on formal constitutional provisions as well as the substantial level of protection women's equality has achieved in the systems analysed. The investigations involve looking at the relevant gender-related legislation, the participation of women in the institutional arena, and the constitutional interpretation made by constitutional justice on gender issues. Furthermore, the book highlights women's contribution in their roles as judges, parliamentarians, activists and academics, thus increasing the visibility of women's participation in the public sphere. The work will be of interest to academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law and Women's and Gender Studies.

This book presents an in-depth analysis of how UN Human Rights institutions and mechanisms have addressed environmental protection, sustainable development and climate change. Despite the increasing involvement of UN human rights bodies in addressing environmental degradation and climate change, a systematic review of the convergence between human rights and the environment in these bodies has not been carried out. Filing this lacuna, this book surveys the resolutions, general comments, concluding observations, decisions on individual communications and press releases. It identifies principles that have emerged, explores the ways in which human rights Charter-based and treaty-based institutions are interpreting environmental principles and examines how they contribute to the emerging field of human rights and environment. Given the disproportionate effect that polluting activities have on marginalized and vulnerable groups, Atapattu also discusses how these human rights mechanisms have addressed the impact on women, children, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities and racial minorities. Written by a world-renowned expert on human rights and the environment, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars researching and teaching in this important field of study.

Claims about a pursuit of justice weave through all periods of China's modern history. But what do authorities mean when they refer to 'justice' and do Chinese citizens interpret justice in the same way as their leaders? This book explores how certain ideas about justice have come to be dominant in Chinese polity and society, and how some conceptions of justice have been rendered more powerful and legitimate than others. This book's focus on 'how' justice works incorporates a concern about the processes that lead to the making, un-making and re-making of distinct conceptions of justice. Investigating the processes and frameworks through which certain ideas about justice have come to the political and social forefront in China today, this innovative work explains how these ideas are articulated through spoken performances and written expression by both the party-state and its citizenry.

This book presents an argument for environmental human rights as the basis of intergenerational environmental justice. It argues that the rights to clean air, water, and soil should be seen as the environmental human rights of both present and future generations. It presents several new conceptualizations central to the development of theories of both human rights and justice, including emergent human rights, reflexive reciprocity as the foundation of justice, and a communitarian foundation for human rights that both protects the rights of future generations and makes possible an international consensus on human rights, beginning with environmental human rights. In the process of making the case for environmental human rights, the book surveys and contributes to the entire fields of human rights theory and environmental justice.

This book shows how international criminal courts have paid only limited and inconsistent attention to atrocity crimes affecting children. It elucidates the many structural, legal, financial and even attitudinal obstacles, often overlapping, that have contributed to the international courts’ focus on the experience of adults, rendering children almost invisible. It reviews whether and how different international and hybrid criminal jurisdictions have considered international crimes committed against or by children. The book also considers how international criminal justice can help contribute to the recognition of the specific impact that international crimes have on children, whether as victims or as participants, and strengthen their protection. Finally, it proposes an agenda to improve this situation, making specific recommendations encompassing the urgent need to further elaborate child-friendly procedures. It also calls for international investigative and prosecutorial strategies to be less adult-centric and broaden the scope of crimes against children beyond the focus on child-soldiers. This book is an invaluable resource for academics, researchers and fieldworkers in the areas of international criminal law, international human rights law/child rights, international humanitarian law, child protection and transitional justice.

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This book presents a ground-breaking, interdisciplinary study into the various goals assigned to international criminal trials. It starts from the proposition that no hierarchy exists amongst the different goals meaning that trials should strive to achieve all of them in equal measure. This is made difficult by the fact that not all of these goals are compatible and the fulfilment of one may lead to others going unmet. Therefore, a balance must be found if the goals of trial are to be achieved at all. The book posits that fairness should serve as the guiding principle when weighing the different trial goals against one another. It is argued that without fairness international and internationalised criminal courts and tribunals lack legitimacy and without legitimacy they lack effectiveness. The book concludes that international criminal trials must adopt procedures that emphasise fairness to all of the parties and trial participants if they wish to accomplish any of the goals set for them. Each chapter is devoted to identifying and explaining a different trial goal, providing analysis of how that particular goal functions in conjunction with the other goals, and discussing the ways in which a fairness-oriented trial model will help achieve those goals. The book provides a dynamic understanding of the different trial goals and the importance of fairness in the trial process by drawing on research from a variety of different legal disciplines while also incorporating scholarship rooted in criminology, political theory, international relations, and psychology. The book will be essential reading for researchers, academics and professionals working in the areas of International Criminal Law, Public International Law and Transitional Justice.

This book represents a significant and timely contribution to the copious literature of the EU as a global actor providing new insights and fresh perspectives into the promotion of human rights and international labour standards in the EU's external trade relations, building on and stimulating further - the already well-engaged - scientific dialogue on this area of research. In particular, it provides the basis for developing a new analytical structure for better understanding the role of the EU in promoting human rights and international labour standards in global trade and, in particular, for assessing the extent to which and how normative considerations have influenced the adoption of EU legal instruments and policy decisions. This book will appeal to research scholars, post-graduate students, practitioners and human rights activists.

This collection presents a summary of current knowledge regarding autistic suspects, defendants and offenders in the criminal justice system of England and Wales. The volume examines the interaction between each stage of the criminal justice process and autistic individuals accused or convicted of crime, considering the problems, strengths, and possibilities for improving the system to better accommodate the needs of this vulnerable category of neurodiverse individuals. By explicating the core issues in this important but disparate area of study in a single place, the collection facilitates understanding of and engagement with knowledge for a wider audience of relevant stakeholders, including criminal justice practitioners, policy makers, academics and clinicians. It also incorporates key recommendations for improvement, thereby clarifying the urgent need for substantive change in policies and practices. The ultimate goal is to both improve the treatment and experience of autistic people subjected to criminal justice processes; and produce fairer, more appropriate systemic outcomes. While focused on the criminal justice system of England and Wales, the work will be valuable for researchers and policy-makers working in similar systems, as well as those interested in neurodiversity more generally.

Examining the prevalent issue of domestic violence, this book breaks down the reasons behind the ineffectiveness of existing human rights instruments and the gaps in current legal systems failing those in need. Through a variety of key case studies, it reveals significant gaps in the legal conceptualisation of domestic violence between human rights standards on the one hand and the national legal systems examined—those of Ireland and Lithuania—on the other. The book reveals that, contrary to gender-based universal human rights approaches and despite recent legislative reforms, the legal concept of domestic violence is gender-blind. It fails to capture gender-based empirical realities on the ground, rendering national legal systems devoid of an empirically informed theoretical basis for addressing the problem. Despite the differences in the contextual backgrounds of the two case study countries, the legislation on domestic violence is underpinned by patriarchal beliefs in both. This book employs a gender-based examination of the issue that will be of key interest to scholars, legal practitioners, civil society actors, and students of feminist legal theory, gender equality, gender in international law, gender and human rights and conceptual democracy.

Social and economic rights have hitherto been marginalised in mainstream legal and political discourses and treated as second-class citizens in the human rights family. In recent years, these rights are receiving increasing attention in law and politics, arguably because they raise existential questions on human security and dignity. This one-stop volume examines the international and public law perspectives on socio-economic rights in Africa. Working on the premise that these rights are normative and justiciable, the author methodically and expertly examines the legal frameworks for their protection in global, regional, and national instruments, infusing the analysis with African and comparative jurisprudence. In blending theory with practice, the book also reflects on some governance challenges that continue to hobble the effective realisation of socio-economic rights in Africa. It is a seminal contribution on an important field, an ideal companion for human rights practitioners, international and constitutional lawyers, judges, government advisors, students, social workers, and everyone who desires 'freedom from fear and want'

This handbook provides authoritative and cutting-edge analyses of various aspects of the rights and lives of disabled children around the world. Taking the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) as conceptual frameworks, this work appraises the current state of affairs concerning the rights of disabled children across different stages of childhood, different life domains, and different socio-cultural contexts. The book is divided into four sections: Legislation and Policy Children’s Voice The Life Course in Childhood Life Domains in Childhood Comprised of 37 newly commissioned chapters featuring analyses of UN documents and case studies from Australia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vanuatu, its multidisciplinary approach reflects the complexities of the lives of disabled children and the multifarious nature of the strategies needed to ensure their rights are upheld. It will be of interest to researchers and students working in disability studies, education, allied health, law, philosophy, play studies, social policy, and the sociology of childhood. It will also be a valuable resource for professionals/practitioners, allowing them to consider future directions for ensuring that disabled children’s rights are realised and their well-being and dignity are assured.

This book addresses intersex rights violations and analyses intersex people's legal demands as expressed by intersex activists themselves and delivered through statements and reports issued by intersex rights organisations, the United Nations and the Council of Europe. Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical notions of male or female bodies, as a result of which they are stigmatised, marginalised and denied the recognition of their fundamental rights. Often, they are subjected to involuntary and harmful sex "normalising" surgeries at birth, which violate their bodily integrity, self-determination and informed consent, so as to comply with societal and legal norms. Moreover, binary legal frameworks prevent them from enjoying the rights to access identification documents, start a family, or be free from discrimination in all areas including employment and sports. To elaborate on intersex violations that emanate from binary laws, this book examines the situation of intersex rights in regional jurisdictions worldwide and within the European Union in particular. In the process, it identifies current legal barriers and suggests how intersex people could be accommodated under legal frameworks and achieve sex/gender equality beyond binary definitions.

The relation between religion and human rights is a contested one, as they appear to compete with one another. Religion is often considered to represent a tradition of heteronomy and subordination in premodern times. Human rights emerged from early modern and modern times and stand for principles like human dignity, autonomy, equality. The first question in this book is how to define religion, its meaning, functions and structures, and how to study it. The second question is how to understand religion from its relation with human rights in such a way that justice is done to both religion and human rights. These questions are dealt with using a historical and systematic approach. The third question is what the impact of religion might be on attitudes towards human rights, i.e. human rights culture. For an answer, empirical research is reported among about 1000 students, Christians, Muslims, and nonreligious, at the end of secondary and the beginning of tertiary education in the Netherlands.

This book outlines the legal status of Muslims in Italy. In particular, it highlights that, when it comes to Islam, the Italian legal system exacerbates the dilemma of contemporary constitutional democracies, increasingly caught between the principle of equality and the right to have rights, which implies the respect of diversity. It provides readers with a deep understanding of how domestic and external socio-political factors may muddle the interpretation of Italy’s constitutional provisions, starting with those relating to state secularism and religious freedom. It is argued that today, as never before, these provisions are torn between the principle of equality and the right to be different. This situation has been exacerbated by incessant states of emergency, from immigration to religion-inspired terrorism, in light of which the presence of Islam in the peninsula has been highly politicized. Italy’s experience on the legal status of Muslims provides an interesting case study and, as such, a valuable source of empirical information for a functioning and pluralistic constitutional democracy, especially when dealing with conditions of fear and insecurity. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and policy-makers working in the areas of law and religion, constitutional law, comparative law, and human rights.

This book presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of the substantive and procedural aspects of compensation for wrongful convictions among European countries and the USA, as well as the standard derived from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The collection draws comparative conclusions as to the similarities and differences between selected jurisdictions and assesses the effectiveness of the national compensation schemes. This enables the designing of an optimum model of compensation, offering accessibility and effectiveness for the victims of miscarriages of justice and being acceptable for jurisdictions based on common law, and civil law traditions, as well as inquisitorial and adversarial types of criminal process. Moreover, the discussion of the minimum European standard as established in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights enables us to identify how the Strasbourg Court can contribute to strengthening the compensation scheme. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policymakers working in the areas of criminal law and procedure.

Looking at two of the key paradigms of the post-Cold War era–national sovereignty, and human rights – this book examines the possibilities for their reconciliation from a global perspective. The real or imagined fear of a flood of immigrants has caused and fuelled the surge of an amalgam of populist political forces, anti-immigrant movements, and exclusionist nationalism in many developed countries. In the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of two phenomena in the political and legal spheres. On the one hand, there are liberal globalists asking for respect and the protection of the basic human rights of migrants and asylum seekers and arguing for their civic and social integration into host societies. On the other hand, there are growing calls for a tougher stance on immigration, and powerful populist politicians and governments have emerged in many developed countries. How can the idea of universal human rights survive exclusionist nationalism that uses a populist, unscrupulous approach to its advantage? The contributors to this book explore the meaning of, and possible solutions to, this dilemma using a wide range of approaches and seek appropriate ways of dealing with these normative predicaments shared by many developed societies. Scholars and students of human rights, migration, nationalism and multiculturalism will find this a very valuable resource.

By exploring crimmigration at its intersection with international refugee law, this book exposes crimmigration as a system focused on the governance of territorially present migrants, which internalizes the impracticability of removal and replaces expulsion with domestic policing. The convergence of criminal law and immigration law, known as crimmigration, has become perhaps the paradigmatic model for governing migration in the age of globalization. This book offers a unique way of understanding crimmigration as a system of governmentality, the primary target of which is the population, its principal form of knowledge being political economy, and its essential mechanism being the apparatus of security. It does so by characterizing a particular model of crimmigration, termed crimmigration under international protection, which targets refugees and asylum-seekers who are principally undeportable under international law. The book draws on a comparative research of such models implemented worldwide, combined with a detailed case study of the immigration detention system instigated in Israel for coping with asylum-seekers specifically and exclusively. These models demonstrate that, at its core, crimmigration is not a system of outright social exclusion focused on the expulsion of undesirable migrants, but rather one focused on the management, classification and policing of domestic populations. It is argued that under crimmigration regimes criminal law becomes instrumental in the facilitation of gradual assimilation, by shifting immigration enforcement from the margins of the state to the daily supervision of territorially present migrants. The book illustrates this point by focusing on three main themes: crimmigration as domestication; crimmigration as civic stratification; and crimmigration as a mechanism coined by Foucault as the apparatus of security and by Deleuze as the society of control. By exploring these themes, the book offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the rise of crimmigration and the particular ways in which it targets resident migrants. The book will be of interest to researchers and academics working in the areas of Criminal law and Criminology, Immigration law, Citizenship Studies, Globalization Studies, Border Studies and Critical Refugee Studies.

This book analyses the contemporary effects of anti-trafficking policies on children trafficked for labour. It explores different dimensions of private and public apparatuses through which the governmentality of child trafficking manifests itself at a regional and interregional level. It investigates questions linked to the diffusion of the child trafficking norm between and within regions and stakeholders; to the criminalisation and vulnerabilisation of child traffickees; and to private governance of anti-trafficking initiatives, in particular concerning social sustainability of business supply chains. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with government, police, justice, civil society, multilateral organizations and businesses in the EU and in the ASEAN, the book argues that child traffickees are subjected not only to physical and psychological violence, but also to structural violence. The book concludes with suggestions to improve current anti-trafficking regimes. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Regionalism, Human Rights, Law, International Relations, and International Political Economy.

This book focuses on the analysis of coercive measures that sports organisations are permitted to use as part of their internal sports investigation proceedings to investigate sports rule violations. The legality of such coercive measures is measured against the legal regime of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The book examines the important issue of the applicability of the ECHR to private sports organisations, which is currently widely debated in the field of sports law. The ECHR is hereby used as the analytical framework, which should also be a source of inspiration for jurisdictions outside the scope of application of the ECHR. The book further explores if and to what extent sports organisations and law enforcement agencies may exchange intelligence in support of both internal sports investigation proceedings and criminal investigations. At all stages, the work seeks to strike a balance between the interest of sports organisations to investigate sports rule violations and the rights of athletes and other sportspersons. The work will be an invaluable resource for students, academics and policy-makers working in the area of Sports Law and Human Rights Law.

This book examines the current status of environmental human rights at the international, regional, and national levels and provides a critical analysis of possible future developments in this area, particularly in the context of a changing climate. It examines various conceptualisations of environmental human rights, including procedural rights relating to the environment, constitutional environmental rights, the environmental dimensions of existing human rights such as the rights to water, health, food, housing and life, and the notion of a stand-alone human right to a healthy environment. The book addresses the topic from a variety of perspectives, drawing on underlying theories of human rights as well as a range of legal, political, and pragmatic considerations. It examines the scope of current human rights, particularly those enshrined in international and regional human rights law, to explore their application and enforceability in relation to environmental problems, identifying potential barriers to more effective implementation. It also analyses the rationale for constitutional recognition of environmental rights and considers the impact that this area of law has had, both in terms of achieving stronger environmental protection and environmental justice, as well as in influencing the development of human rights law more generally. The book identifies climate change as the key environmental challenge facing the global community, as well as a major cause of negative human rights impacts. It examines the contribution that environmental human rights might make to rights-based approaches to climate change.