Human rights 220 results

Although no adequately functioning criminal justice system can presently do entirely without detaining any suspects, pre-trial detention remains problematic in the context of human rights, the detainee’s family and society. This volume offers a wide variety of topics that are relevant to pre-trial detention: developments that affect the application of pre-trial detention; relevant international and national human rights standards as well as monitoring systems; pre-trial detention of specific groups, and alternatives to pre-trial detention.

This volume aims to produce a better understanding of the relationship between tradition and justice in Africa. It presents six contributions of African scholars related to current international discourses on access to justice and human rights and on the localisation of transitional justice. The contributions suggest that access to justice and appropriate, context-specific transitional justice strategies need to consider diversity and legal pluralism.

As the title suggests, the scope of this volume moves beyond the death penalty. It reflects on punishment from a variety of angles and, additionally, gives some food for thought to the contemporary debate on crime and punishment.

This book examines the fate and role of human rights before, during and in the aftermath of violent conflicts. It brings together both scholars and practitioners from different parts of the world and from different disciplines, including law, anthropology, history, conflict studies, development studies and international relations. The roles of international organisations, NGOs, governments, and corporations in realising human rights are discussed. The book thus reflects the ‘de-approach’ to human rights research that has been advocated and pioneered by Bas de Gaay Fortman: de-legalise, de-Westernise, and de-State-ise, together with his instance that human rights research should not just be about norms, but as much, if not more, about the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of the distinct environments in which these rights have to be realised.

In late 2010, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) entered into force. The present study addresses the question of determining state responsibility under the ICPPED, based on a framework that harmonises the protection afforded by this convention with the experiences of victims of enforced disappearance. The premise is that such an approach enhances the protection from this grave human rights violation.

This volume examines in detail attempts that were made in certain significant post-conflict or post-authoritarian situations to strengthen the domestic rule of law with the aid of international law. Attention is paid in particular to the empowerment of domestic courts in such situations. International law may serve these courts as a tool for reconciling the demands for new rights and responsibilities with due process and other rule of law requirements.

The recruitment and operations of child soldiers have been hitting the headlines in politics and the media for many years. However, a much broader circle of children is affected by armed conflicts. Hence, the many challenges to deal with youth affected by armed conflict exceed by far the issue of the recruitment and demobilisation of child soldiers, but also extend to questions of rehabilitation, reintegration and reconciliation processes of all children and youths. This book brings together for the first time a wide range of leading scholars from three disciplinary perspectives (children’s rights, psychosocial studies and transitional justice) and aims at enhancing a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach to the rehabilitation, reintegration and reconciliation processes of children and adolescents affected by armed conflict.

Criminal law on hate speech has become a hotly debated topic in the past decade. How to deal with hate speech in an increasingly pluralist society has become a pressing question. This comparative study deals with how ideas behind the law on hate speech and extreme speech in the Netherlands and England and Wales – including the influence of European and international law – have developed since 2001 and how this can be explained by reference to their historical origins.

Since the 9/11 attacks combating terrorism has gained top priority within Dutch politics. This book discusses the scope of the preventive-oriented Dutch anti-terrorism legislation and its impact on fundamental legal rights and principles of law as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. It analyses criminal liability for terrorist offences and discuses in particular the level of suspicion that is required to apply state powers to prevent acts of terrorism in light of the relevant fundamental legal rights.

Under the influence of globalization many countries have been compelled to privatize the provision of a number of State and public services. This trend has been met with skepticism from the human rights world. In this study, the privatization phenomenon is analyzed with the aim of establishing whether it can be reconciled with the human rights obligations of States..

This book offers a rigorous, theory-based, and uniquely comprehensive, analysis of European and international legal standards shaping minorities’ right to freedom of expression. The analysis pays particular attention to the instrumental role played by traditional and new forms of media in ensuring that the right to freedom of expression of persons belonging to minorities is effective in practice.

Fundamental rights provisions are known for their relatively vague and general formulation. As a result, judges dealing with these provisions are confronted with many and often controversial interpretative choices. These interpretative choices already present judges operating in a national context with difficulties, but that is even more so for European judges of the ECtHR and the CJEU. This volume analyses the use legal interpretation methods and principles in the fundamental rights case law of the ECtHR and the CJEU.

In this book, Otto Spijkers describes how moral values have determined the founding of the United Nations Organization in 1945 and the evolution of its purposes, principles and policies since then.

Based on an analysis of the newly-adopted UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and present-day interpretations of international and European human rights instruments, this book seeks to define a contemporary disability human rights approach for the field of employment.

In early 2006, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights called for more detailed research into the relevant international standards and national and international practices concerning the role of victims in criminal proceedings. In response to this call and the increased attention paid to victims at international criminal institutions, this study explores the role of victims in international criminal proceedings.

This volume contributes thoughtful and rigorous research to the fundamental question how to apply truth, justice, reparations and institutional reform to fundamental – and often ancestral – inequalities in each transitional society.

This book zooms in on various aspects of the interaction between courts in the complex European system of human rights protection. Where courts are faced with a human rights claim, they not only have to examine the validity of that claim, but also need to have a clear understanding of the human rights catalogue that is to be applied, i.e. human rights as guaranteed by the national constitution, human rights as protected under EU law, based or not on the Charter, and human rights as identified in the European Convention of Human Rights.

Dans le contexte de profondes mutations du droit des mineurs et de la création en France, d’un code de justice pénale des mineurs on peut s’interroger sur l’avenir de la justice des mineurs en tant qu’objet d’étude spécifique mais aussi en tant qu’objet tout court : que recouvre-t-elle ? En Europe, des réformes similaires ont été menées, avec des postulats et des résultats très variés: le présent ouvrage est l’occasion d’en débattre en laissant une large place aux apports étrangers.

Making the Transition provides an analysis of processes of reform, reconstruction and restructuring in the criminal justice field in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the years since it completed a violent secession from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Across the three sectors of policing, courts and prisons, the work details the challenges facing Bosnia and Herzegovina and explores a range of internationally-sponsored reform initiatives. These three sectors are often examined independently of each other, but by analysing their development side by side it is Making the Transition is able to determine common challenges while establishing different logics and methods of international intervention.

This booklet contains the text of the first lecture in the Theo van Boven Lecture Series. These lectures are organised annually by the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights as a tribute to Theo van Boven, emeritus Professor of International Law at Maastricht University, and formerly Director of the UN Division of Human Rights, member of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and UN Special Rapporteur against Torture. Each year the Centre invites a prominent scholar to share with the audience her/his views on a topical issue in the field of human rights. The themes covered by the speakers reflect the wide range of interests of Theo van Boven.