This text assesses the suitability of the UN Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (hereinafter referred to as the Torture Convention) as a means of protecting and enforcing the right to be free from torture. Evaluation of the Convention's ability to attain these ends is undertaken through a critical commentary on its substantive and enforcement provisions and on other human rights instruments. The effectiveness of the procedural mechanisms for enforcing the Torture Convention on the national and international planes, and the questions that...

How can international human rights standards - in the civil and political sphere and in respect of economic, social and cultural rights - provide clear guidance for political change? This collection offers the reader an exposition and critical analysis of the agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation from the perspective of international human rights law. Covered topics include - the relevance and influence of international law on the peace-making process, - the strengths and weaknesses of the agreements and the extent to which they lay the foundation for the...

This study demonstrates the extensive protection that international law provides to human rights even in the most serious of emergencies when they are particularly vulnerable. Based on a meticulous analysis of preparatory works and practice under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the American and European Conventions on Human Rights, and with a special chapter on the International Labour Organisation's approach to international labour standards and emergencies, this book shows that respect for the rule of law and the concept of a democratic society are...

This volume covers the subject of international criminal law as it relates to transnational fugitive offenders. The concept of international criminal law now has to embrace crimes that occur in no single place - cross-border financial crimes where vast sums of money exist solely in cyberspace and which have connections with financial institutions in several countries. The international community has also established supra-national criminal courts to deal with the aftermath of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

This text ventures into the area where law and disability intersect. Drawing on developments in the emerging field of disability studies and on a new-found human rights perspective on disability, the contributions traverse topics as wide-ranging as citizenship, feminism, eugenics, euthanasia, and sexual abuse of people with disabilities, and analyze disability law at both a domestic and international level. Informed by the social model of disability, this work brings together academics and disability activists from Australia, Europe and North America. The book is interdisciplinary in nature,...

In practice and legal doctrine, little attention has so far been paid to the position of the applicant who has taken the long road to the European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg) or a UN Human Rights Committee (Geneva) and finally won his/her case there. Does he or she see any improvement in his/her position? Does the applicant obtain real reparation? The purpose of this book is to demonstrate how individual case decisions from Strasbourg and Geneva are implemented in the national legal order. Is there a need for improving this implementation, and if so, how can such an improvement be...

The tension between national security and freedom of expression and information is both acute and multifaceted. Without national security, basic human rights are always at risk. On the other hand, the tendency of governing elites to confuse the life of the nation' with their own survival has often resulted in excessive restrictions on expression and information, as well as other fundamental rights. A proper balance between secrecy and liberty requires a vigilant press and an independent judiciary. It also requires greater clarity than currently exists as to how competing rights and interests...

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive investigation of reproductive freedom in the light of contemporary international law. The author discusses reproductive freedom in the context of feminist legal theory, international human rights and humanitarian law. This holistic approach makes the book unique and enhances its value as a comprehensive resource on the most challenging and contentious issues of our time, i.e., legal abortion, medically assisted reproduction, surrogate motherhood, forced pregnancy during armed conflicts, and many others. The author's aim is to advance current...

As several developments have highlighted, there is an urgent need for an improved theoretical framework concerning how best to accommodate population diversity within multicultural societies. The rights of minorities to identity and real, substantive equality are both used to assess the existing standards and jurisprudence and also to argue for additional rights of (members of) minorities and/or a more beneficial interpretation of existing rights. A defining chapter is followed by three which analyze and evaluate the relative contribution to minority protection of, respectively, individual...

This volume maps out the response of states to human rights violations. It covers the period 1946-1999 and offers a complete and unmatched record for this period. Its starting point is that such responses are not established and accepted state practice. Traditional, if unwritten, norms of states' behaviour developed through centuries of silence and inaction; the prevalent reaction to human rights violations by another state remains the absence of any response. Furthermore, this book probes into evidence of active and passive complicity by reviewing aid to countries in which violations have...