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161. Revisiting Extraterritorial Jurisdiction: A Territorial Justification for Extraterritorial Jurisdiction under the European Convention

Author:
Sarah Miller
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
European participation in controversial aspects of the 'war on terror' has transformed the question of the extraterritorial scope of the European Convention on Human Rights from abstract doctrine into a question with singularly pressing political and legal ramifications. Yet the European Court of Human Rights has failed clearly to articulate when and why signatory states' extraterritorial actions can be brought within the jurisdiction of the European Convention. The Court has veered between a narrow view of extraterritorial jurisdiction confined to four fixed categories of cases and a broader view which contemplates extraterritorial jurisdiction when a signatory state effectively controls an individual's ability to exercise fundamental Convention rights. Scholars have favoured the latter, arguing that the universality of human rights demands an expansive concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction. This article proposes a different theory: existing categories of extraterritorial jurisdiction can best be understood as limited exceptions to the rule of territorial jurisdiction because they all require some significant connection between a signatory state's physical territory and the individual whose rights are implicated. Properly understood, extraterritorial jurisdiction under the European Convention is and should be limited to such situations to maintain a workable balance between the Convention's regional identity and its universalist aspirations.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
Europe

162. Reshaping Civil Society in Morocco: Boundary Setting, Integration and Consolidation

Author:
Bohdana Dimitrovova
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This paper looks at the dynamics affecting the development of civil society in Morocco within the context of the European Neighbourhood Policy. It explores cooperation mechanisms in three domains of civil society endeavour – women's rights, human rights and socio-economic rights. In each area, the paper examines the kinds of mechanisms and opportunities emerging for the promotion of civil society, and which forms of action and stances taken by civil society have been encouraged (or otherwise). The paper contends that the development of civil society has triggered different responses by the state and international community. While civil and political rights have preoccupied domestic and international actors, socio-economic rights have long been absent from their agendas. Yet it is argued here that shifting responsibility for issues in the socio-economic domain to civil society is highly problematic under the current circumstances of state building, and poses risks of further ruptures in Moroccan society.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Human Rights, and Islam
Political Geography:
Europe, North Africa, and Morocco

163. Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience

Author:
Omar G. Encarnación
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
A key contention of the transitional justice movement is that the more comprehensive and vigorous the effort to bring justice to a departed authoritarian regime the better the democratizing outcome will be. This essay challenges this view with empirical evidence from the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, a sweeping policy of purges intended to cleanse the state and society of the authoritarian past nearly derailed the transition to democracy by descending into a veritable witch-hunt. In Spain, by contrast, letting bygones be bygones, became a foundation for democratic consolidation. These counter-intuitive examples suggest that there is no pre-ordained outcome to transitional justice, and that confronting an evil past is neither a requirement nor a pre-condition for democratization. This is primarily because the principal factors driving the impulse toward justice against the old regime are political rather than ethical or moral. In Portugal, the rise of transitional justice mirrored the anarchic politics of the revolution that lunched the transition to democracy. In Spain, the absence of transitional justice reflected the pragmatism of a democratic transition anchored on compromise and consensus.
Topic:
Human Rights, Politics, International Affairs, and Law
Political Geography:
Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Iberia Peninsula

164. Slavery, Science, and the end of the Old Regime in the Luso-Brazilian Empire

Author:
Kirsten Schultz
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper provides a preliminary examination of some of the late eighteenthcentury bases for the reception of liberalism and debates on slavery, specifically the Luso-Brazilian engagement with natural science and the work of the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences. The Academy's work most directly concerned with the question of slavery and the slave trade appealed to economic principles of utility, efficiency and productivity to identify ways to reform the practice of enslaving Africans in the interest of increasing the wealth generated within the colonial and imperial economies. Thus, even as slavery was being assailed internationally on both philosophical and religious grounds, Luso-Brazilian Academic writing insisted it was an economic rather than moral problem. At the same time, however, Academic inquiries into the question of human difference often undercut claims about Africans that were invoked elsewhere in the Atlantic world to justify the perpetuation of slavery and the slave trade. As Academic reformism thus grappled with the humanity of Africans, civilization and barbarism emerged as privileged categories of analysis for discerning the future of slavery, reasserting the moral dimensions of the institution.
Topic:
Human Rights and History
Political Geography:
Europe, Brazil, South America, and Spain

165. Promoting Human Rights in Russia by Supporting NGOs: How to Improve EU Strategies

Author:
Elena Klitsounova
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
The EU advocates a policy that includes a great deal of human rights promotion and support for Russian NGOs. The question for EU policy-makers is no longer whether but how to manage NGO involvement in a way that induces necessary changes in Russia's human rights behaviour. This paper argues that current EU policies often fall short of their potential to develop the non-state transfer of European ideas, norms, and practices to Russia or to assist the development of the Russian NGO community. If the EU is to become a serious actor in the field of human rights promotion, it will have to find new and creative ways to communicate with Russians about human rights matters. This paper offers policy recommendations to adapt EU strategies to the current context of the EU Russia relationship and to redesign EU assistance programmes.
Topic:
Human Rights and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
Russia and Europe

166. The Other Side of the Moons - The Schengen Information System and Human Rights: A Task for National Courts

Author:
Evelien Brouwer
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
The recent proposals of the European Commission for a European Border Management Strategy are based on an almost blind faith in the use of large-scale databases, identification measures and biometrics for immigration and border control purposes. It is clear that these measures entail a risk to the protection of not only the right to privacy and the right to data protection, but also to the freedom of movement and the principle of non-discrimination. This paper by Evelien Brouwer, lecturer at the Law School of Utrecht University, considers the human rights implications of the Schengen Information System (SIS). Describing the case of Mr. and Mrs. Moon, who have been reported as “inadmissible” in the SIS for more than ten years, the difficulties for third country nationals trying to remedy a false or unlawful SIS report are highlighted. The Moon case illustrates that the outcome of national proceedings dealing with an SIS alert can be very different. The author concludes with recommendations to guarantee individuals' rights to effective remedies and to improve the position and powers of national courts.
Topic:
Government, Human Rights, and International Law
Political Geography:
Europe

167. Is European democracy promotion on the wane?

Author:
Richard Youngs
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
The EU routinely asserts that the promotion of democracy and human rights is central to its international identity. However, while in some places the EU has a relatively strong record as a supporter of democratic values, it is failing to respond effectively to the emergence of a vastly more challenging environment for democracy promotion. This paper reveals serious limits across three strands of democracy policy – the magnitude of incentives offered in return for democratic change, the degree of critical pressure exerted for democratic reform and the scale of European democracy funding. Even where the EU is building on the initiatives it has pursued for the last two decades, the paper demonstrates that these policies fail to measure up to the challenges posed by the new international context.
Topic:
Democratization, Human Rights, and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Eastern Europe

168. Prospects for an EU-Gulf Cooperation Council Free Trade Area: The World's First Region-to-Region FTA?

Author:
Jim Rollo
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The EU and the GCC have seemed close to an agreement on a region-to-region Free Trade Agreement (FTA) – possibly the first in the world between customs unions – for the last two years. The EU seems keener on an agreement than the GCC. An FTA is an element in the EU's Global Europe trade policy strategy and is explicitly linked to energy security concerns. The EU is the GCC's main supplier of goods and services, and since the completion of the GCC Customs Union tariffs are low and the economic effects of an FTA are likely to be small, on goods at least. There may be economic barriers to the final signing of an FTA on both sides: resistance by GCC states to services and investment liberalization; and resistance in the EU over access for GCC refinery products and chemicals. Commentary from the Gulf itself suggests that the EU practice of including clauses on human rights and labour market and environmental regulation may be at the heart of the slow progress from the GCC side.
Topic:
Environment, Human Rights, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, and Arabia

169. EU Operations and Private Military Contractors: Issues of Corporate and Institutional Responsibility

Author:
Nigel D. White and Sorcha MacLeod
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The European Union has developed its security competence since 1992, thus putting pressure on its Member States to provide troops for the increasing number of EU peace operations being deployed to different areas of the globe. But with national militaries being rationalized and contracted the EU will inevitably follow the lead of the US, the UK, and the UN and start to use Private Military Contractors to undertake some of the functions of peace operations. This article explores the consequences of this trend from the perspective of the accountability and responsibility of both the corporation and the institution when the employees of PMCs commit violations of human rights law and, if applicable, international humanitarian law.
Topic:
Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, and Europe

170. Democracy and Human Rights in the European-Asian Dialogue: A Clash of Cooperation Cultures?

Author:
Howard Loewen
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Whereas the European Union (EU) favors a formal, binding, output-oriented, and to some extent supranational approach to cooperation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is based on informal, non-binding, process-oriented intergovernmental forms of cooperation. This article addresses the question of whether these differences between European and Asian cooperation norms or cultures can account for interregional cooperation problems in the areas of democracy and human rights within the institutional context of EU-ASEAN and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). The author argues that a clash of cooperation cultures basically occurs in both forms of interregional collaboration between Asia and Europe, with slight differences due to the institutional context: while disagreements over the question of democracy and human rights between the EU and ASEAN have led to a temporary and then a complete standstill in cooperation, the flexible institutional mechanisms of ASEM seem, at first glance, to mitigate the disruptive effects of such dialogues. Yet informality does not remove the issues from the agenda, as the recurrent disputes over Myanmar's participation and the nonintervention norm favored by the Asian side of ASEM clearly indicate. Antagonistic cooperation cultures thus play a significant role in explaining the obstructive nature of the interregional human rights and democracy dialogue between Asia and Europe.
Topic:
International Relations, Government, Human Rights, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, and Myanmar