Millions of people are forced today to flee persecution. The core international legal instrument on which they must rely to find safety is the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This book examines key challenges the Convention faces, on the basis of nine papers by eminent international refugee lawyers, which were then discussed at an expert roundtable meeting in 2001 as part of UNHCR's Global Consultations on International Protection. The papers are published here in one volume, together with the conclusions of the roundtables and other documents.

"The genocide in Rwanda showed us how terrible the consequences of inaction can be in the face of mass murder. But the conflict in Kosovo raised equally important questions about the consequences of action without international consensus and clear legal authority. On the one hand, is it legitimate for a regional organization to use force without a UN mandate? On the other, is it permissible to let gross and systematic violations of human rights, with grave humanitarian consequences continue unchecked?" (United Nations Secretrary-General Kofi Annan). This book is a comprehensive, integrated discussion of `the dilemma' of humanitarian intervention. Written by leading analysts of international politics, ethics, and law, it seeks, among other things, to identify strategies that may, if not resolve, at least reduce the current tension between human rights and state sovereignty. Humanitarian Intervention is an invaluable contribution to the debate on all aspects of this vital global issue. J.L. Holzgrefe is a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Political Science, Duke University. He is a former Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and visiting scholar at the Center of International Studies, Princeton University, the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and elsewhere. He was educated at Monash University, Australia and Balliol College, Oxford. He has published on the history of international relations thought. Robert O. Keohane is James B. Duke Professor of Political Science, Duke University. He is interested in the role played by governance in world politics, and in particular on how international institutions and transnational networks operate. He is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, 1984), for which he was awarded the second annual Grawemeyer Award in 1989 for Ideas Improving World Order. He is also the author of International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Westview, 1989), co-author of Power and Independence: World Politics in Transition (Little, Brown, 1977; 3rd edition 2001), and co-author of Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, 1994). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.

This extensively revised third edition covers developments since publication of the second edition in 1997. It includes consideration of the UN human rights system, international humanitarian law, European human rights law and Inter-American human rights law. New chapters address capital punishment in African human rights law and international criminal law. An extensive list of appendices contains many of the essential documents for the study of capital punishment in international law. (Introduced with a Foreword by Judge Gilbert Guillaume, President of the International Court of Justice.) Previous Edition Hb (1997): 0-521-58135-4 Previous Edition Pb (1997): 0-521-58887-1

Armed opposition groups generally fight governments, seeking overthrow and/or secession. But who is accountable under international law for the acts committed by these groups, or for the failure to prevent these acts? Zegveld examines the need legally to identify the parties involved when armed internal conflict arises, and the reality of their demand for rights. Although currently most armed conflicts are internal, they remain largely uncharted territory in law. This award-winning study will be of interest to academics, postgraduate students and professionals involved with armed conflict and international relations.

When does international law give a group the right to choose its sovereignty? In an original perspective on this familiar question, Knop analyzes the ways that many of the groups that the right of self-determination most affects--including colonies, ethnic nations, indigenous peoples and women--have been marginalized in its interpretation. Her analysis also reveals that key cases have grappled with this problem of diversity. Challenges by marginalized groups to the culture or gender biases of international law emerge as integral to the cases, as do attempts to meet these challenges.

How do international human rights and humanitarian law protect vulnerable individuals during peace and war? Provost analyzes systemic similarities and differences between the two to examine how they are each designed to achieve their specific goals. He describes the dynamics of human rights and humanitarian law, revealing that each performs a task for which it is better suited than the other, and that the fundamentals of each field remain partly incompatible. He covers all relevant materials from the UN, ICTY, ICTR, and regional organizations in Europe, Africa and Latin America.

There is considerable writing on the laws designed to regulate war, but most of this material is devoted to international wars between different states. Lindsay Moir examines the laws which exist to protect civilians caught up in armed conflicts within a single state. This book traces the development of international law from the nineteenth century, up to events arising from the conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. It demonstrates how human rights can offer protection during armed conflict and how effectively (and by whom) the relevant rules can be enforced.

Do people everywhere have the same, or even compatible, ideas about multiculturalism, indigenous rights or women's rights? The authors of this book move beyond the traditional terms of the universalism versus cultural relativism debate. Through detailed case studies from around the world (Hawaii, France, Thailand, Botswana, Greece, Nepal and Canada) they explore the concrete effects of rights talk and rights institutions on people's lives.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid. However, the TRC's restorative justice approach did not always serve the needs of communities at a local level. Based on extended anthropological fieldwork, this book illustrates the impact of the TRC in urban African communities in Johannesburg. It argues that the TRC had little effect on popular ideas of justice as retribution. This provocative study deepens our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa and the use of human rights discourse.

This book offers a collection of original essays by a leading group of contributors which examine the role played by international human rights instruments and agendas in shaping domestic provisions for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

On July 8, 1996 the International Court of Justice handed down two Advisory Opinions on the legality of nuclear weapons. This book offers a comprehensive study of those opinions. More than thirty internationally respected experts contribute their analyses of the status of nuclear weapons in international law across all its sectors: use of force, humanitarian law, environment and human rights. The contributions also assess the implications of the opinions for international organizations and the international judicial function. Contributors include lawyers, academics, diplomats and advisors to international bodies.

When the tyrannical Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003, the war in Iraq was in a precarious position. A provisional government had been assembled, but the Iraqi government was not yet recognized as sovereign. They were now expected to put their most infamous citizen on trial for war crimes. Called into duty at this moment was Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic, who was tasked with facilitating U.S. media presence at the arraignment which would establish the judicial framework for future tribunals. Admiral Slavonic was party to the historic US-Iraqi Transfer of Sovereignty and then as the senior military officer in the Iraqi courtroom where he was one of fifteen individuals to witness the historic event. As the senior military officer in the room with fifteen other observers, he managed a challenging pool of media jockeying for access for this once in a career story and plus served as advisor to the Iraqi judge on various media issues. Slavonic's first-hand narrative of a unique moment in military history features never-before-seen transcripts of Saddam Hussein's trial. For the first time, readers can read how Saddam responded to his charges, along with eleven of Hussein's closest advisors and cabinet members who were arraigned that day, and several charged with war "crimes against humanity". This would be the last time all twelve men would be together again who were responsible for the deaths of over several million fellow Iraqi citizens. This book expands our examination of difficult wars and chronicles the legal reckoning and downfall of a tyrant.

Preventing Torture comprises a documentary and empirical study - of a kind rare in the field of international human rights law - of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and the work of the Committee (the CPT) established under it. The authors chart the international human rights background to the Convention (including the historical and contemporary use of torture), describe the travaux préparatoires, analyse the composition and modus operandi of the Committee and set the standards formulated and applied by the CPT against those developed by other human rights bodies. They also assess, on the basis of visits throughout Europe, the reactions to the Committee's work in member states and consider the implications of an enlarged Council of Europe for the CPT in the future.

As dictatorships topple around the world and transitional regimes emerge from the political rubble, the new governments inherit a legacy of widespread repression against the civilian population. This repression ranges from torture, forced disappearances, and imprisonment to the killings of both real and perceived political opponents. Nonetheless, the official status of the perpetrators shields them from sanction, creating a culture of impunity in which the most inhumane acts can be carried out without fear of repercussions. The new governments wrestle with whether or not to investigate prior wrongdoings by state officials. They must determine who, if any, of those responsible for the worst crimes should be brought to justice, even if this means annulling a previous amnesty law or risking a violent backlash by military or security forces. Finally, they have to decide how to compensate the victims of this repression, if at all.
Beginning with a general consideration of theories of punishment and redress for victims, Impunity and Human Rights in International Law and Practice explores how international law provides guidance on these issues of investigation, prosecution, and compensation. It reviews some of the more well-known historical examples of societies grappling with impunity, including those arising from the Second World War and from the fall of the Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese dictatorships in the 1970s. Country studies from around the world look at how the problem of impunity has been dealt with in practice in the last two decades. The work then distills these experiences into a general discussion of what has and hasn't worked. It concludes by considering the role of international law and institutions in the future, especially given renewed interest in international mechanisms to punish wrong-doers.
As individuals, governments, and international organizations come to grips with histories of repression and impunity in countries around the world, the need to define legal procedures and criteria for dealing with past abuses of human rights takes on a special importance. Impunity and Human Rightsin International Law and Practice aims to share their experiences in the hope that lawyers, scholars, and activists in those countries where dealing with the past is only now becoming an imperative may learn from those who have recently confronted similar challenges. This work will be essential reading for lawyers, political and social scientists, historians and journalists, as well as human rights experts concerned with this important issue.

This book deals with a central issue of international law: the relationship between two of its sources, treaty and custom. In particular, it examines one aspect of this relationship that has not been satisfactorily covered in the literature, whether new customary law may abrogate or modify prior incompatible treaties. State practice in the Law of Sea and other areas of international law contains a number of examples of treaties that have been terminated or revised on account of new conflicting custom. The author draws on these examples as well as on decisions of international tribunals to argue that although new customary law does not automatically affect prior incompatible treaties, it gives a State, under certain conditions, the unilateral right to call for their termination or revision. This is an original position on a controversial subject that was considered too complex to be included in the Vienna codification of the Law of Treaties. This issue may arise in all areas of international law and is of practical importance to all those involved in the field.

The idea of military necessity lies at the centre of the law of armed conflict and yet it is less than fully understood. This book analyses which legal limits govern the commander's assessment of military necessity, and argues that military necessity itself is not a limitation. Military necessity calls for a highly discretionary exercise: the assessment. Yet, there is little guidance as to how this discretionary process should be exercised, apart from the notions of 'a reasonable military commander'. A reasonable assessment of 'excessive' civilian losses are presumed to be almost intuitive. Objective standards for determining excessive civilian losses are difficult to identify, particularly when that 'excessiveness' will be understood in relative terms. The perpetual question arises: are civilian losses acceptable if the war can be won? The result is a heavy burden of assessment placed on the shoulders of the military commander.

Why the international community should have intervened in Rwanda. The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of ethnic Tutsis by ethnic Hutus that took place in 1994. 20 years on, Kassner contends that the violation of the basic human rights of the Rwandan Tutsis morally obliged the international community to intervene militarily to stop the genocide. This compelling argument, grounded in basic rights, runs counter to the accepted view on the moral nature of humanitarian intervention. It is a new approach to the intersection of human and sovereign rights that is of tremendous moral, political and legal importance to theorists working in international relations today. It challenges the immutability of the right of non-intervention held by sovereign states, assessing when it becomes right for the international community to intervene militarily in order to avoid another Rwanda.

From events at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, to the recent trials of Slobodan Milosević and Saddam Hussein, war crimes trials are an increasingly pervasive feature of the aftermath of conflict. In his new book, Law, War and Crime, Gerry Simpson explores the meaning and effect of such trials, and places them in their broader political and cultural contexts. The book traces the development of the war crimes field from its origins in the outlawing of piracy to its contemporary manifestation in the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Simpson argues that the field of war crimes is constituted by a number of tensions between, for example, politics and law; local justice and cosmopolitan reckoning; collective guilt and individual responsibility; and between the instinct that war, at worst, is an error, and the conviction that war is a crime.

Written in the wake of an extraordinary period in the life of the law, the book asks a number of critical questions. What does it mean to talk about war in the language of the criminal law? What are the consequences of seeking to criminalise the conduct of one's enemies? How did this relatively new phenomenon of putting on trial perpetrators of mass atrocity and defeated enemies come into existence? This book seeks to answer these important questions whilst shedding new light on the complex relationship between law, war and crime.

Treaties and Indigenous Peoples is an edited version of Professor Ian Brownlie's 1990 Robb Lectures, delivered at the University of Auckland in the sesquicentennial year of the establishment of New Zealand as a British colony.

Whereas most sesquicentennial writing necessarily deals with Treaty and related problems in the immediate context of New Zealand law and politics, Professor Brownlie, bringing the external perspective and the expertise of an eminent academic and practising international lawyer, deals with those problems in the international context of the rights of indigenous peoples.

The New Zealand constitutional background to the work is provided by Professor Brookfield's annotations.

Winner of the 1988 Paul Reuter Prize awarded by the International Committee of the Red Cross, this book examines two branches of the international law of armed conflict as they apply to national liberation movements. First, it explores the idea that national liberation movements may legitimately resort to the use of force to secure the right of their peoples to self-determination. Second, it examines the application of the humanitarian law of armed conflict in wars of national liberation. After a brief explanation of the traditional law, the book explores the development of the idea that there is a right of peoples to self-determination in international law. The book then expands upon two corollaries which derive from this idea. The first is that in situations of national liberation struggles the use of force should be regarded as legitimate. The second corollary is that, since peoples have status in international law separate and distinct from that of the states governing them, wars of national liberation are international wars by definition, and the international rules governing the conduct of hostilities should apply.

The Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions remain a landmark in the development of international humanitarian law. The first two Additional Protocols were adopted by states in 1977. These protocols encompass the rules governing the treatment and protection of those in the power of an enemy, as well as the conduct of hostilities. Crucially, they address non-international armed conflicts and wars of national liberation. In 2005, a third additional protocol designating an additional distinctive humanitarian emblem was adopted in controversial circumstances. The Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions in Context interprets the key rules and issues of the Additional Protocols and considers their application and implementation over the past forty years. Taking a thematic approach, the book examines subjects including the protection of women, armed non-state actors, relief operations, and prohibited weapons. Each chapter discusses the pertinence of existing laws, the challenges raised by the rules in the Additional Protocols, and what more could be done to better protect civilians. This book also considers whether new technologies, such as offensive cyber operations and autonomous weapons, need new treaty rules to regulate their application in armed conflict.

Cultural rights promote cultural and scientific creativity. Transformative and empowering, they also enable the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, thereby working as atrocity prevention tools. The Transforming Power of Cultural Rights argues that this gives these rights a central role to play in promoting the full human personality and in realizing all other human rights. Looking at the work of the UN Special Rapporteurs in the field of cultural rights as well as UNESCO's efforts, Helle Porsdam addresses the question of how a universal human rights agenda can include a dialogue that recognizes the importance of cultural diversity without sliding into cultural relativism. She argues that cultural rights offer a useful international arena and discourse in which to explain and negotiate cultural meanings when controversies arise. This places them at the center of human rights - and at the center of law and humanities.

Die Arbeit befasst sich anhand des Beispiels des "Islamischen Staates" mit der voelkerrechtlichen Rechtfertigung der militarischen Terrorismusbekampfung. Hierbei grenzt sich die Untersuchung von der bestehenden Diskussion durch ihren Fokus auf autarke, staatsahnliche Akteure ab. Ausgehend von der bestehenden voelkerrechtlichen Diskussion wird der Arbeit die These zugrunde gelegt, dass bisherige Rechtfertigungsansatze zum Einsatz grenzuberschreitender Gewalt gegenuber derartigen Herrschaftsgebilden scheitern mussen. Angesichts des Fehlens einer diese Problematik aufgreifenden Rechtsfortbildung wird eine Aufweichung des voelkerrechtlichen Gewaltverbotes befurchtet und untersucht. Dazu geht die Arbeit einerseits der Frage nach, inwieweit terroristischen Quasi-Souveranen eigene Rechtssubjektivitat zugebilligt werden kann. Andererseits wird gepruft, inwieweit sich die Entwicklung terroristischer Herrschaft auf die Rechtfertigung grenzuberschreitender Gewalt auswirken. Die Untersuchung kommt zur ernuchternden Bejahung der aufgestellten Thesen und attestiert eine Abkehr von Grundprinzipien des Voelkerrechts angesichts der Machtlosigkeit des Rechts gegenuber rechtsverachtend handelnden Akteuren.

This text explores the principal issues and developments, both in international human rights and in rights in the United States, and then compares the concepts and conditions of rights in various parts of the world. It pays particular attention to the role of US foreign policy.

The status of the refugee in international law, and of everyone entitled to protection, has ever been precarious, not least in times of heightened and heated debate: people have always moved in search of safety, and they always will. In this completely revised and updated edition, the authors cast new light on the refugee definition, the meaning of persecution, including with regard to gender and sexual orientation, and the protection due to refugees and those affected by statelessness or disasters. They review the fundamental principle of non-refoulement as a restraint on the conduct of States, even as States themselves seek new ways to prevent the arrival of those in search of refuge. Related principles of protection-non-discrimination, due process, rescue at sea, and solutions- are analysed in light of the actual practice of States, UNHCR, and treaty-monitoring bodies. The authors closely examine relevant international standards, and the role of UNHCR, States, and civil society, in providing protection, contributing to the development of international refugee law, and promoting solutions. New chapters focus on the evolving rules on nationality, statelessness, and displacement due to disasters and climate change. This expanded edition factors in the challenges posed by the movement of people across land and sea in search of refuge, and their interception, reception, and later treatment. The overall aim remains the same as in previous editions: to provide a sound basis for protection in international law, taking full account of State and community interests and recognizing the need to bridge gaps in the regime which now has 100 years of law and practice behind it.