Enforcement of human rights

7 Key excerpts on "Enforcement of human rights"

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  International Human Rights

  A Survey

  • Cher Weixia Chen, Alison Dundes Renteln(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  2 Human Rights Machinery: Enforcement Mechanisms We must not be deluded by the efforts of the forces of reaction to prostitute the great words of our free tradition and thereby to confuse the struggle. Democracy, freedom, human rights have come to have a definite meaning to the people of the world which we must not allow any nation to so change that they are made synonymous with suppression and dictatorship. Eleanor Roosevelt 1 2.1 Introduction International human rights law was designed to protect the human rights of individuals and groups around the world. Despite the unique challenges involved with enforcement, this set of mechanisms has great potential to achieve these goals. Many different kinds of institutions have been created to safeguard international human rights. This chapter offers an overview of some of the key enforcement mechanisms at the international, national, and local levels. They include United Nations (UN) mechanisms, regional human rights systems, national institutions, cities, and non-state actors/ non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Although states may sometimes appear to lack the political will to enforce their own laws on the books, leaders are, in fact, sensitive to criticisms that will adversely affect their reputations. Nowadays, no official readily admits to having committed atrocities. Researchers have been con- ducting empirical studies investigating the mechanisms to determine the circumstances under which they can effect positive social change (Comstock, 2019; Simmons, 2009). Often, they examine state behavior after they have ratified treaties to determine “post-commitment actions.” Research of this kind may not capture deep commitments to norms that influence behavior behind the scenes. The question of whether individuals and government officials respect human rights law depends partly on how we view power. Some of the mechanisms we discuss involve more subtle ways of wielding power.

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  Human Rights Brought Home

  Socio-Legal Perspectives of Human Rights in the National Context

  • Simon Halliday, Patrick Schmidt, Simon Halliday, Patrick Schmidt(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  A human rights commission, for instance, will depend to a substantial degree on cooperation from government, adminis-trative bodies, and the courts. Again we can do little more in this chapter than sketch the main elements in implementation at the national level. Before considering these matters, mention should be made of several factors particular to human rights and relevant to implementation. THE CONCEPT AND CONTEXT OF HUMAN RIGHTS The Concept We begin by considering the concept of human rights and the context in which it occurs. There are various ways of defining or describing human rights, some idealistic others more practical and prosaic; there are also 30 Galligan and Sandler different kinds of human rights. Here we work on a fairly simple idea of a right: for a person to have a right, whether within a system of legal or other kinds of rules, is to have an interest that is given a special status and protec-tion within the rules. 20 In other words, the interest is guaranteed within the social organisation. The elements of a right may be expressed more for-mally in this way: a right-holder has an interest (the object of the right) which is given expression within and protection by the rules of the society. A right is socially guaranteed when effective arrangements are in place to ensure that the right-holder may enjoy the object of the right. Such processes usually require a public or private actor to take positive action to create the conditions in which the right can be enjoyed, such as the provi-sion of welfare or the restraint of others from interference with free speech. Alternatively, the process of protection may require forbearance from actions which would interfere with a right. Human rights fit within the general concept of a right. Human rights mean that some interests are so tied to the very idea of being human that they warrant a special status and protection within a society.

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  Resource Book on the Use of Force and Firearms in Law Enforcement

  • United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • United Nations Publications

    (Publisher)

  In some federal States, for example Argentina, Mexico and the United States, the competence to draft regulations for many law enforcement functions and powers, such as the power to use force, are placed at the state level. Whichever may be the case, the obligations of the State under international human rights obligations should be observed. All of these steps should also be kept under review by relevant independent domestic oversight bodies, which may include the Parliament and national human rights institutions. 17 Or other publication channels as available in the country. It is important to note that not all SOPs may be appropriate for publication due to the sensitive information they may include. 18 See Guidelines for the Effective Implementation of the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials. See also OHCHR, Human Rights and Law Enforcement, A Manual on Human Rights Training for Law Enforcement Officials , 2017. 19 Samuel Walker and Carol Ann Archbold, The New World of Police Accountability , Sage Publications, United States, 2014. PART I. SETTING THE BOUNDARIES FOR THE USE OF FORCE IN LAW ENFORCEMENT 11 1.3. Key human rights standards related to use of force The rights discussed in this section are all particularly relevant to the use of force by law enforce-ment officials. The meaning and scope of these rights, as well as how they shall be protected, should be well understood by law enforcement officials. Right to life The use of force and firearms has the potential to infringe on the right to life, which is often described as a right without which all other rights would have no meaning. The right to life is protected by article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 6(1) of the ICCPR, which provides that: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life”.

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  Towards Ethical Policing

  • Wood, Dominic, Dominic Wood(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Policy Press

    (Publisher)

  Within policing contexts we need to be mindful of a tendency to understand human rights in a legalistic way because where this happens, it does not provide the necessary degree of moral obligation required to establish the kind of moral agency promoted by MacIntyre (2004). At best, such an approach might imbue an officer’s legal obligations with moral flavouring, but at worst it will be completely devoid of any moral purpose. Human rights legislation is perceived from this perspective as an unambiguous decree that elicits an unequivocal legal obligation upon an officer to act with certainty.

  It is not only policing scholars who would question such a rigid interpretation of the law (Lustgarten, 1986; Waddington, 1999; Reiner, 2010; Stenning, 2011). Academic lawyers also emphasise that in practice, the law is ‘not always as it appears on the statute book or in the case law’, and that even when the greatest of clarity is found within law, ‘it often gives wide discretionary powers to those whose duty is to apply it’ (Padfield, 2010, p.103). Stone (2014, p.1) likewise notes that ‘[t]he borderline between law and politics’ regarding human rights ‘is so narrow that the influence of one on the other cannot be ignored’.

  What is true generally within law is especially true within human rights legislation. Human rights legislation has been forged institutionally through various constitutional arrangements globally, as an explicit remedy to the kinds of instances of gross inhumanity captured by MacIntyre’s (2004) narrative of officials operating in Nazi Germany, in which legal obligations form part of the defence by those engaged in inhumane activities. The important point to emphasise here is that the law is subject to a higher authority, which is framed in moral terms, and irrespective of how morally flaky the foundations of a natural law conception of human rights are (Gearty, 2006; Sen, 2009), we need to recognise that without such a moral foundation human rights become more arbitrary (Gray, 2000; Ignatieff, 2001). They lose the importance they are granted within contemporary legal, criminal justice and political orders the world over.

  Beyond the particular challenges of embedding human rights within policing, I will now consider more general concerns about the role human rights institutions play in addressing contemporary global inhumanities. It is suggested that human rights, which emerged in response to the horrors of two world wars in the first half of the 20th century, are less appropriate at the start of the 21st century (Dershowitz, 2006), which is characterised more by weak, fragmenting states (Gray, 2000).

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  Texts and Materials on International Human Rights

  • Rhona K.M. Smith(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 6 Monitoring and enforcing human rights: extra-conventional mechanisms

  Chapter contents

  6.1 Human Rights Council 6.2 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 6.3 United Nations Security Council: responsibility to protect, and sanctions 6.4 International criminal courts, tribunals and processes 6.5 Organisation of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

  For most readers, the importance of human rights is as the mechanism by which one’s rights may be enforced. Although ideally each State should ensure all the human rights to everyone within their jurisdiction, this is not always the reality. This chapter will identify the key international and regional mechanisms deployed by the organisations mentioned in the previous chapters to effect human rights. The focus is on investigative mechanisms and independent fact-finding systems, as well as those systems through which organisations oversee all human rights (rather than those in a specific treaty).

  • The Human Rights Council.
    • Universal periodic review of all States.
    • Special mechanisms to investigate human rights by theme or country through the deployment of an independent expert.
  • UNESCO and its system of individual complaint over infringements of human rights in the sphere of its work.
  • The potential impact of sanctions ordered by the Security Council to coerce a State into complying with human rights (or other international laws).
  • Reconciliation through truth-finding missions and international court and tribunal processes held after a series of flagrant violations of human rights and part of the mechanism for rebuilding the State.
  • Organisation of American States’ general jurisdiction. The general jurisdiction of the OAS is one of the few mechanisms under which individual complaints against the United States of America can be examined.

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  Power and Law in International Society

  International Relations as the Sociology of International Law

  • Mark Klamberg(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 Human rights

  5.1 Function of the regime

  There are different views on the precise nature and role of human rights. The concept may be viewed as negative rights, offering protection against state interference and abuse of government power, or as also including positive rights involving protection against other private entities and claims of benefits from the state. The concept of human rights is closely related to ethics and morality. In this, rights that reflect the values of a community will generally have the most chance of successful implementation. Regardless, international human rights law concerns the relationship between the individual and the state, which constrains the state in what it can do and how it should use its resources. The main purpose of international human rights law is to protect individuals. Human rights law differs from other fields of international law in several regards. First, state consent to human rights is, arguably, difficult to explain in terms of solving common problems of cooperation or coordination between states. Unlike other fields of international law, human rights law primarily serves idealistic ends, not particular national interests. Second, states may promote and protect human rights within their territory without necessarily coordinating their efforts with other states. Third, although human rights law becomes entangled in international politics, it contradicts the traditional premise of international law that how a state treats its own citizens is a matter of domestic jurisdiction.1 When a state violates a human rights norm, no other state directly suffers harm. Rather, the primary concern of human rights law is what happens inside a state.

  Different human rights address different needs. This part of the study will focus on the core UN human rights treaties, the main regional human rights treaties and the institutions associated with these treaties. Consistent with the argument made in section 2.2.1 on the objectives of international law, human rights law is a product of competing interests. Much of international human rights law codifies state’s interests, rather than human interests,2

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  Human Rights Defenders and the Law

  A Constitutional and International Legal Approach

  • Núria Saura-Freixes(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  I ultimately reached the conclusion that the right to promote and protect human rights is a new right, not merely an emerging right although it requires stronger legal recognition and guarantees. After the process of codification in the UN Declaration on human rights defenders (1998), the right to promote and protect human rights has extended institutional and judiciary guarantees, particularly with Rapporteurships at local, national, regional, supranational, and international levels. But its presence has increased in the case law of international courts. Hence, the constitutional dimension of this right is more urgent with regard to constitutional and international laws.

  According to Gómez Sánchez, the United Nations’ Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, enforced in 1998, has legal and social effects, even though it is not a binding instrument (Gómez Sánchez, 2006, p. 284). Even when treaties, as law, cannot be applied, the declaration has legal value as a legal agreement, even if it is not binding. Thus, according to Gómez Sánchez, it is important to distinguish between the “legal value” of the declaration and its “internal legal effectiveness” (Gómez Sánchez, 2006, p. 284). Furthermore, “in the United Nations practice a declaration is a formal and solemn instrument suitable for rare occasions when principles of great and lasting importance are being enunciated, such as the Declaration of Human Rights” (Hodgson, 2003 , p. 87). In this context, the DHRD is more than a legitimate claim, but it is not yet a binding international instrument. The reciprocal system of guarantees established remains feeble, as evidenced by continuous threats to human rights defenders.

  Therefore, it is necessary to rethink the international human rights system and fundamental rights at the constitutional level in order to integrate the right to promote and protect human rights at the international and constitutional levels. Only with the requirement of a real multilevel perspective from cities, states, and regions, up to supranational and international levels, can the global constitutional function of the right to promote and protect human rights be achieved. It is time to think globally, providing global answers to global troubles. Consequently, this is not just a question that may be resolved by adopting a treaty or a local plan to protect human rights defenders. It concerns a deeper crisis in the human rights system that requires better supranational and international guarantees in connection with constitutional systems. These new guarantees should take into account new threats to human rights from both state and non-state actors. According to this new paradigm, state sovereignty must give way to the human condition as the leading principle in international and constitutional law, and not vice versa. Human dignity applies to not just the protection of HRDs physical integrity. It recognizes the individual as an active subject of rights, going further than human dignity, creating a paradigm of the human condition necessary for the twenty-first century.

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