Part II Predominant Security Challenges and International Law, Human Security, Ch.23 Migration, Displacement, Security, and International Law

Author(s):  
Saul Ben

This chapter discusses the relationship between mass migration, security, and international law. The security implications of migration first depend on what type of migration is at issue and what international legal frameworks accordingly apply to it. The security implications of migration, and the international legal responses to them, also depend on how security is defined. In addition, the transit of migrants may threaten human security, as it may involve loss of life during perilous journeys at sea or during remote land crossings, and exploitative practices such as enslavement or human trafficking. Further, migrants or displaced persons may themselves occasionally present hard or soft security threats. Ultimately, international legal frameworks in relation to migration generally are relatively underdeveloped, including in relation to its security dimensions. Instead, a patchwork of international norms (hard and soft), regimes, and institutions apply to different facets of the migration-security nexus. The chapter focuses on the security dimensions (including terrorism) of international law governing refugees, complementary human rights protection, and due process in the expulsion of aliens (including disclosure of classified information). It identifies gaps and challenges evident in the existing regimes, and charts contemporary developments through soft law initiatives.

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 842-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Jay

The United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been historically fraught. This article examines this relationship with a view to understanding how the United Kingdom’s conceptions of human rights protection, both domestically and in Europe, shape its willingness to comply with ECtHR judgements. The article argues that the U K maintains a sense of a distinctly ‘British’—as opposed to ‘European’—rights culture, based on principles such as parliamentary sovereignty and so-called common sense values. In doing so, the article explores an important analytical gap in terms of understanding the relationship between compliance behaviour and international law, as current theoretical explanations do not necessarily explain how cultural perceptions of rights and law translate into decisions to comply.


Author(s):  
Bożena Drzewicka

Conceptions And Interpretations of Human Rights in Europe and Asia: Normative AspectsThe issue of confronting values between civilizations has become very important. It influences not only the level of international politics but also the international normative activity. It is very interesting for the modern international law and its doctrine. The most important factor of causing huge changes in the system of international law is still the international human rights protection and the international humanitarian law which is related to it. It is very difficult to create one catalogue of executive instruments and procedures but it is possible to influence the attitude toward the basic paradigms. The frictions appear from time to time and move to other planes. The West and Asia are still antagonists in the dialogue on the future of the world. The article is a contribution to the intercivilizational dialogue.


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Yahyaoui Krivenko

AbstractInternational constitutionalism relates to processes of limiting traditionally unrestricted powers of states as ultimate subjects, law-makers and law-enforcers of international law. Human rights occupy a central, but very confusing and confused role in the theorisation of international constitutionalism. If feminist scholars have criticised the inadequacies, shortcomings and gaps of international law of human rights at least since 1991, the doctrine of international law theorising constitutionalisation of international law until now has remained blind to these critiques idealising human rights and often using them as the ultimate legitimating factor. Thus, legitimacy and legality become confused and the distinction between them blurred in the doctrine of international constitutionalism. This in turn creates a danger of failure of the constitutionalists project itself, as it will serve to reinforce existing inadequacies and gaps in human rights protection. To illustrate this argument, I discuss some examples related to the protection of women's and migrants' rights. In order to avoid this dangerous development, I argue that international lawyers theorising international constitutionalism shall adopt an adequate, inclusive notion of legitimacy. In order to develop this adequate understanding of legitimacy, they should first take seriously feminist and other critiques of international human rights law and international law more generally. In the final parts of this article I develop my own more detailed proposals on the future of legitimacy and international constitutionalism. In doing so, I draw on the 'self-correcting learning process' developed in the writings of Jürgen Habermas, 'democracy to come' and more general views on the nature of sovereignty and human rights expressed by Jacques Derrida, as well as Levinasian 'responsibility-to-and-for-the-Other'.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessika Eichler

This textbook offers insights into the recently established special rights regime on indigenous peoples’ rights at international level. The reader is guided from the early beginnings of this issue in the 1970s to current jurisprudential developments. International and regional norms are introduced and contrasted with societal and political challenges. The book also opens broader debates on the politics of recognition and decolonisation, multilateral systems and global governance, the pluralisation of society and its institutions, collective rights and the meaning of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. This group-specific field of the international human rights protection system is viewed through the lenses of international law and socio-political approaches.


Author(s):  
Rose Cecily

This chapter studies the relationship between corruption and global security. It begins by discussing the term ‘corruption’, which lacks a legal definition and can mean different things to lawyers and to social scientists. The chapter describes the various ways in which corruption and insecurity can relate to each other. Corruption is both a cause of global insecurity and a consequence of it. In other words, corruption may lead to insecurity, and conversely, insecurity, as in post-conflict societies, may lead to corruption and to greater tolerance of it. In addition, corruption can also be a cause of security or stability, rather than insecurity. Finally, anti-corruption measures and campaigns may themselves inadvertently cause insecurity. The chapter then details the international legal framework concerning corruption. It explores the extent to which anti-corruption treaty laws can serve as tools or guides for States and also non-State actors seeking to combat corruption and promote global security. The chapter also considers one of the challenges facing researchers who study the causes and consequences of corruption, namely the difficulties involved in measuring corruption and the impact of anti-corruption laws.


Author(s):  
Morgandi Tibisay ◽  
Viñuales Jorge E

This chapter investigates the concept of ‘energy security’, understood as the ‘uninterrupted availability of energy resources at an affordable price’. Importantly, according to this definition, the ‘availability’ of energy resources is measured against existing energy demand, and threats to energy security are therefore threats to the supply of enough energy to meet existing energy demand. Energy supply depends upon both domestic and international factors which are so interconnected that it is difficult to distinguish where one starts and the other ends. What is clear, however, is that international law plays a fundamental role in addressing many threats to energy security. The chapter looks at existing threats to energy security and the international legal frameworks that have been established in response. The challenges to energy security include an exponential increase in world energy demand, shortages of national oil and gas deposits, the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuel production in order to counteract climate change, as well as risks of geopolitical instability. The chapter then focuses on the mechanisms aimed to ensure that the flow of energy remains uninterrupted and at an affordable price, as well as on those mechanisms aimed at increasing access to energy resources.


Author(s):  
Lenzerini Federico

This chapter focuses on the practice of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage, which has represented a plague accompanying humanity throughout all phases of its history and has involved many different human communities either as perpetrators or victims. In most instances of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage, the target of perpetrators is not the heritage in itself but, rather, the communities and persons for whom the heritage is of special significance. This reveals a clear discriminatory and persecutory intent against the targeted cultural groups, or even against the international community as a whole. As such, intentional destruction of cultural heritage, in addition of being qualified as a war crime, is actually to be considered as a crime against humanity. Furthermore, it also produces notable implications in terms of human rights protection. Protection of cultural heritage against destruction is today a moral and legal imperative representing one of the priorities of the international community. In this respect, two rules of customary international law exist prohibiting intentional destruction of cultural heritage in time of war and in peacetime.


2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
Miriam Bak McKenna

This article considers the ways in which geo-political and legal concerns materialised in debates over self-determination in the years following decolonisation, and how they impacted on its’ possibilities, objectives and conception. During this period, self-determination was not, as some scholars have argued, a declining norm, but one central to the competing visions of reinventing international law after empire. These varying articulations were largely shaped by the experience of colonialism and its ongoing effects, along with the ideological confrontation between East-West and North-South. One articulation stressed the primacy of political and economic sovereignty, prominently seen in calls for the establishment of a New International Economic Order. The other sought to integrate self-determination into the elevation of democratic governance and individual human rights protection. Examining these alternative formulations of self-determination, underlines the incompleteness of mainstream historical accounts, and may throw light upon continuing anxieties over its current legal status.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-777
Author(s):  
Vera Shikhelman

Abstract In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of research about the implementation of international law. However, there has been almost no empirical research about implementing decisions of international human rights institutions. The decisions of those institutions are usually regarded as soft law, and states do not have a clear legal obligation to implement them. In this article, I bring original empirical data about how and when states implement decisions of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) in individual communications. I hypothesize that the following factors influence the readiness of states to implement the views of the HRC: (i) the level of democracy and human rights protection in the state; (ii) internal capacity; (iii) strength of civil society; (iv) type of remedy; (v) representation on the HRC; (6) subject matter of the communication. I find that the most important factor for implementing remedies granted by the Committee is the high human rights score of the state. The internal capacity of the state is also significant but to a lesser extent than found in previous studies. Also, I find a certain connection between the state being represented on the HRC and its willingness to implement the remedies.


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