Number of results to display per page
Search Results
12. Settler-State Political Theory, 'CANZUS' and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Author:
- Kirsty Gover
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- When the UN General Assembly voted in 2007 to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), only Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA cast negative votes. This article argues that the embedding of indigenous jurisdictions in the constitutional orders of these states via negotiated political agreements limits their capacity to accept certain provisions of the UNDRIP. Once the agreement-making process is set in motion, rights that do not derive from those bargains threaten to undermine them. This is especially true of self-governance and collective property rights, which are corporate rights vested to historically continuous indigenous groups. Since these rights cannot easily be reconciled with the equality and non-discrimination principles that underpin mainstream human rights law, settler governments must navigate two modes of liberalism: the first directed to the conduct of prospective governance in accordance with human rights and the rule of law and the second directed to the reparative goal of properly constituting a settler body politic and completing the constitution of the settler state by acquiring indigenous consent. Agreements help to navigate this tension, by insulating indigenous and human rights regimes from one another, albeit in ways not always supported by the UNDRIP.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, International Law, United Nations, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Canada, United Nations, Australia, New Zealand, and United States of America
13. State Formation, Liberal Reform and the Growth of International Organizations
- Author:
- Guy Fiti Sinclair
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- This article argues that the growth of international organizations over the past century has been imagined and carried out in order to make modern states on a broadly Western model. The proliferation of international organizations and the expansion of their legal powers, through both formal and informal means, raise profound questions regarding the relationship between international law’s reforming promise and its imperialist perils. The article proposes a new analytic framework for understanding these phenomena, focusing on the rationalities of international organizations’ powers and the technologies through which they are made operable. It argues that both the growth of international organizations and the cultural processes of state formation are impelled by a dynamic of liberal reform that is at once internal and external to law. That dynamic and the analytic framework proposed here are both illustrated and exemplified through a critical account of the emergence of international organizations in the 19th century.
- Topic:
- Imperialism, International Law, International Organization, History, and State Formation
- Political Geography:
- Europe and United Nations
14. James C. Hathaway, Michelle Foster. The Law of Refugee Status
- Author:
- Rosemary Byrne
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- The claims made by migrants seeking protection under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) have created a staggering body of state practice emerging from the interpretation by national courts of what is the earliest universal human rights treaty. The first edition of James Hathaway’s The Law of Refugee Status, alongside Guy Goodwin-Gill and Jane McAdam’s The Refugee in International Law, is one of the essential texts on every refugee lawyer’s bookshelf. Now in its second edition, co-authored by Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status is likely to maintain its standing.
- Topic:
- International Law, Treaties and Agreements, United Nations, Refugees, and Courts
- Political Geography:
- Europe, United Nations, and Mediterranean
15. The Limits of Legality and the United Nations Security Council: Applying the Extra-Legal Measures Model to Chapter VII Action
- Author:
- Devon Whittle
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is, in many ways, a unique institution. It exercises legislative, judicial and executive powers; operates with few legally binding checks and balances and has even been described as being ‘unbound by law’. The Council has broad powers to maintain international peace and security, most notably under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and its decisions are binding on UN members. At the same time, some of the Council’s actions have been labelled as ultra vires and the lack of a binding, legal oversight mechanism to reign in Council action has been decried. Accepting that there is a difficulty in imposing legally binding checks and balances on the UNSC, this article argues that approaching the Council’s Chapter VII powers as a form of emergency powers may help to illuminate the role that non-legal restraints can play in curbing its power. In particular, this article uses Oren Gross’ ‘extra-legal measures model’ to conceptualize the Chapter VII regime and restraints upon it. It shows how the extra-legal measures model offers a descriptive account of UNSC action under Chapter VII and then builds on the gaps in the application of the model to the Council to highlight areas for the development of better restraints, in particular, in areas that may be missed by a traditional legal analysis.
- Topic:
- International Law, United Nations, International Security, and Peacekeeping
- Political Geography:
- Europe and United Nations
16. Applying the Extra-Legal Measures Model to Humanitarian Interventions: A Reply to Devon Whittle
- Author:
- Oren Gross
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- In ‘The Limits of Legality and the United Nations Security Council: Applying the Extra-Legal Measures Model to Chapter VII Action’, Devon Whittle analogizes the United Nations Security Council’s Chapter VII powers to domestic emergency powers. He then seeks to apply the extra-legal measures (ELM) model of emergency powers, which I developed some 20 years ago, to exercise by the Council of its Chapter VII powers. This brief comment seeks to expand the discussion of ELM in international affairs beyond the collective security system by exploring the application of ELM in the setting of unilateral humanitarian intervention.
- Topic:
- International Law, Treaties and Agreements, United Nations, International Security, and Humanitarian Intervention
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Kosovo, United Nations, and Syria
17. Evelyne Schmid. Taking Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Seriously in International Criminal Law
- Author:
- Mara Tignino
- Publication Date:
- 07-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Evelyne Schmid’s new book, Taking Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Seriously in International Criminal Law, aims to provide a bridge between developing practice and existing knowledge. At the heart of her book lies the question of how, or to what extent, violations of ESCR are addressed in international criminal proceedings and transitional justice mechanisms. She criticizes the current marginalization of ESCR abuses in scholarship on international criminal law and bemoans the reality that ‘efforts to address the legacy of widespread human rights abuses display a bias towards civil and political rights’. While some have argued for an expansion of international criminal law to account more directly for violations of ESCR, Schmid claims such an expansion is unnecessary; in her view, such violations already fall within the scope of international crimes.
- Topic:
- Genocide, Human Rights, International Law, United Nations, War Crimes, Courts, and Transitional Justice
- Political Geography:
- Europe, North Korea, Cambodia, United Nations, and Myanmar
18. Contradiction in International Law
- Author:
- Angela Bunch
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- Indigenous peoples' control over natural resources continues to be one of the most controversial issues in international law. Numerous international human rights treaties recognize Indigenous communities' right to be consulted over the use of resources on or beneath their communal lands. But international law tends to consider third parties' exploitation of natural resources on Indigenous land to be legal—as long as Indigenous rights to consultation, participation and redress, among other rights, are met.
- Topic:
- International Law
- Political Geography:
- United Nations
19. The Transparency Rules and Transparency Convention: A good start and model for broader reform in investor-state arbitration
- Author:
- Lise Johnson
- Publication Date:
- 07-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
- Abstract:
- In July 2013, after nearly three years of work, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) adopted a set of arbitration rules that will help open some investor-state arbitrations to public view. The UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration (Transparency Rules) were crafted with input from governments, academics, arbitration practitioners, and non-governmental organizations, and approved by consensus by the member states. When applied, the Transparency Rules will require disclosure of information submitted to, and issued by, arbitral tribunals throughout proceedings, mandate open hearings and expressly allow for participation by non-parties to a dispute. The Transparency Rules also guard against disclosure of confidential information and establish a repository in which all information will be published.
- Topic:
- International Law, International Trade and Finance, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- United Nations
20. What Future for Human Rights?
- Author:
- James W. Nickel
- Publication Date:
- 08-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- Like people born shortly after World War II, the international human rights movement recently had its sixty-fifth birthday. This could mean that retirement is at hand and that death will come in a few decades. After all, the formulations of human rights that activists, lawyers, and politicians use today mostly derive from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the world in 1948 was very different from our world today: the cold war was about to break out, communism was a strong and optimistic political force in an expansionist phase, and Western Europe was still recovering from the war. The struggle against entrenched racism and sexism had only just begun, decolonization was in its early stages, and Asia was still poor (Japan was under military reconstruction, and Mao's heavy-handed revolution in China was still in the future). Labor unions were strong in the industrialized world, and the movement of women into work outside the home and farm was in its early stages. Farming was less technological and usually on a smaller scale, the environmental movement had not yet flowered, and human-caused climate change was present but unrecognized. Personal computers and social networking were decades away, and Earth's human population was well under three billion.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Human Rights, Human Welfare, International Law, International Political Economy, Sovereignty, and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, China, Europe, Asia, and United Nations