International Law – serie

With the proliferation of international organisations and their ever increasing role in a wide range of policy fields, situations multiply in which human rights are threatened or violated through the actions, operations or policies of such organisations. The present book, with carefully selected contributions from many prominent scholars and practitioners, is the first to explore these problems in a comprehensive manner and to examine the accountability mechanisms that are available. In a first, cross-cutting part, the contributions study general concepts, such as the accountability of international organisations as an evolving legal concept, international organisations as independent actors, the logic of sliding scales in the law of international responsibility and the relations between the international organisations and their Member States in regard to their respective obligations and responsibilities.The subsequent parts of the book focus on the accountability for human rights violations attributable to international organisations in four areas: (i) peace and humanitarian operations; (ii) international civil administration; (iii) economic governance; and (iv) staff of international organisations.

Over the past twenty years, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) have moved from the periphery to the centre of the human rights debate. The potential of NHRIs to transmit and implement international norms at the domestic level, and to transfer human rights expertise to regional and global human rights fora, is increasingly recognised. In Europe, the continent with the widest variety and density of human rights protection mechanisms, NHRIs are also gradually gaining recognition as actors that can enable more comprehensive and effective human rights promotion and protection. This book, the result of a COST conference held in Leuven in April 2012, focuses on the functioning and role of NHRIs in Europe in a comparative, European and international perspective. At a time when the European Union is looking for a more coherent and strategic human rights policy, it is important that policy makers and academics pay more attention to the potential role of NHRIs.By bringing together contributions from academics and practitioners, this volume offers insights into the opportunities and challenges that accompany the increasing emergence of NHRIs in Europe and their proliferation on the multiple levels of human rights promotion and protection. Accordingly, this volume aims to inform and further trigger the NHRI debate in Europe.

Many states view Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) as crucial to implement their security policy. However, reoccurring incidents of human rights violations have led the international community, private sector and civil society to acknowledge the need for more control over the use of PMSCs. Growing state support for The Montreux Document and an ever growing number of signatory companies to the International Code of Conduct for Security Providers (ICoC) show that self-regulation through non-binding norms has shifted to the centre of this debate. This book examines the promises and dangers of emerging non-binding PMSC regulation alongside more traditional forms of law-making such as plans for an international convention on the use of PMSCs. It offers in-depth analysis of legal and political developments that led to the proliferation of The Montreux Document and the ICoC. Identifying the state side of duties and corporate responsibility as leaving gaps and grey zones in international law, it analyses how both instruments address the responsibility to protect and the responsibility to respect.Covering the Private Security Providers' Association's Articles of Association, the most recent developments on the establishment of a PMSC oversight mechanism are included. Finally, the book provides an original theory of how both instruments could become more effective to protect victims against PMSC human rights violations; The Montreux Document by developing into a form of customary international law, the standards of the ICoC framework by developing into more binding normative standards as a form of 'corporate custom'. About the author Corinna Seiberth gained her first degree in law at the University of Basel. She has since worked as a human rights researcher, lecturer and PhD research fellow at the University of Lucerne and the University of Nottingham. She is currently working as a project manager for Usthi Foundation Switzerland working on a development project for tribal children and communities in Orissa, India.

Every year, millions of people worldwide are forced to leave their homes and become displaced due to a variety of causes. This book explores the role of international human rights law in protecting people against involuntary displacement. It does so with reference to the idea of a 'human right not to be displaced'.

In the last five years the topic of cyber warfare has received much attention due to several so-called "cyber incidents" which have been qualified by many as State-sponsored cyber attacks. This book identifies rules and limits of cross-border computer network operations for which States bear the international responsibility during both peace and war. It consequently addresses questions on jus ad bellum and jus in bello in addition to State responsibility. By reference to treaty and customary international law, actual case studies (Estonia, Georgia, Stuxnet) and the Tallinn Manual, the author illustrates the applicability of current international law and argues for an obligation on the State to prevent malicious operations emanating from networks within their jurisdiction. This book is written for academics in public international law and practitioners from the military and other public security sectors.

The history of international law is replete with concepts that have generated change: individual criminal responsibility, common heritage of mankind and sustainable development to name but a few. These are concepts that have influenced the scope, structure and purpose of international law. This book explores the extent to which Responsibility to Protect (R2P) possesses the same transformative potential, showing how R2P shifts our understanding of both the potential and practice of international law. Responsibility to Protect is both an ambitious and an ambiguous concept in international law. Ambiguity creates space for debate and the potential for legal development, but it may also generate misunderstanding, false expectations and uncertainty. Despite its ambiguity, R2P has quickly found a place within international legal texts. At the same time its ambiguity or rather the tensions the concept generates has also helped generate an enormous range of scholarship. This collection of essays presents a more fundamental critical evaluation of R2P, exploring how it interacts with existing concepts and values, and how this influences normative developments within international law. In particular, the essays explore the influence of R2P upon sovereignty as responsibility, the continued advance of positive human rights obligations and the safeguarding of international community interests.These themes are explored in a range of essays written by new and established scholars. The essays explore the moral and political foundations of R2P, the expansion of R2P to non-state actors, and the interaction between R2P and certain branches of international law, such as use of force, responsibility as liability, humanitarian law and international criminal law.

This book offers a comprehensive yet concise take on the legal regulation of the various phases in the complex cycle of armed conflicts, from prevention to reconstruction, and covering everything in between, in particular the vast body of rules laid down in current international humanitarian law. The manual combines a general theoretical approach with modern practice in order to offer a complete picture of the law before, during and after warfareThrough a series of fourteen thematic chapters that logically follow from one to another, scholars and practitioners tackle core issues relating to the international regulation of armed conflicts, while situating them in a broader societal context. Particular attention is given to the emergence of the European Union as an increasingly important regional and global player in international peace and security. In combination with the broad scope and accessible nature of the collection, the experience and ambition on display in this volume makes it a unique reference tool for students, scholars, practitioners, civil servants, diplomats and humanitarian and human rights workers around the globe. It is complemented by, and a helpful companion to, J. Wouters and P. De Man, Humanitarian and Security Law: A Compendium of International and European Instruments.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of writing on the topic of human dignity across a plethora of different academic disciplines. Despite this explosion of interest, there is one group - critical legal scholars - that has devoted little if any attention to human dignity. This book argues that these scholars should attend to human dignity, a concept rich enough to support a whole range of progressive ambitions, particularly in the field of international law. This book synthesizes certain liberal arguments about the good of self-authorship with the critical legal philosophy of Roberto Unger and the capabilities approach to agency of Amartya Sen, to formulate a unique conception of human dignity. The author argues how human dignity flows from an individual's capacity for self-authorship as defined by the set of expressive capabilities s/he possesses, and the book demonstrates how this conception can enrich our understanding of international human rights law by making the amplification of human dignity its fundamental orientation.

This volume considers how, based on the examination of cases pertaining to transitional justice settings that resort to local interpretations of crimes against humanity jurisprudence, fragmentation of international law and circumscribed applications of universal jurisdiction are necessary aspects of the grand enterprise to overcome the impasse of the tainted legacy of international criminal law in the Global South. If we are to proceed with adjudication of the most egregious and heinous crimes involving state criminality without facing the charge of neo-colonialist plotting, then we must reckon with localised and domesticated interpretations of international criminal law, rather than pursuing strict forms of legislative dictation of international criminal law.

This is a time when the rule of law is seriously challenged, when governments threaten deliberately to break the law, and the independence of justice is jeopardised by unrelenting pressure from both the executive and the media. This book aims at contributing to restoring trust in judges as custodians of the law and justice, through a comparison between Civil and Common Law countries. It offers a rare opportunity to gather the expertise of eminent judges and legal authorities from five different countries, providing a unique insight into their work and the way they deliver justice based on their respective professional experience and practise of the law. Far from being a highly technical debate between experts, however, the book is accessible to students and the general public, and raises important contemporary legal issues that involve them both as citizens, with justice as a shared aspiration, and a common attachment to the rule of law.

This study advances three interrelated claims for international human rights standards (IHRS). First, that post-colonial African societies are bureaucratic modern states and capitalist societies to which IHRS are suitable for application, pursuant to the Modified Modernisation Theory. The sweeping vicissitudes that have taken place in post-colonial Africa since colonial eras necessitate a paradigm shift: we must change our assumptions about the structural and socio-politico-economic systems of post-colonial Africa and their impact on individual and group rights. Second, that extant pleadings for cultural relativism in post-colonial Africa are fixated on reified assumptions about the minimal role of the individual. Today, however, every state relies on its individual subjects for its institutional and socio-politico-economic development, just as every individual relies on the state for a more secure, fulfilling and dignified human existence. Finally, the book advances legal and moral justifications for the universality of human rights standards, notwithstanding global cultural heterogeneity.

Armed conflicts are a major cause of forced displacement, but people displaced by conflict are often not recognised as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention. They are frequently considered as having fled from generalised violence rather than from persecution.This book determines the international meaning of the refugee definition in Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention as regards refugee protection claims related to situations of armed conflict in the country of origin. Although the human rights-based interpretation of the refugee definition is widely accepted, the interpretation and application of the 1951 Refugee Convention as regards claims to refugee status that relate to armed conflict is often marred with difficulties. Moreover, contexts of armed conflict pose the question of whether and to what extent the refugee definition should be interpreted in light of international humanitarian law. This book identifies the potential and limits of this interpretative approach. Starting from the history of international refugee law, the book situates the 1951 Refugee Convention within the international legal framework for the protection of the individual in armed conflict. It examines the refugee definition in light of human rights, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, focusing on the elements of the refugee definition that most benefit from this interpretative approach: persecution and the requirement that the refugee claimant's predicament must be causally linked to race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.Refugees from Armed Conflict is of interest to academics and practitioners in international refugee and human rights law.'Anyone who is interested in the present refugee debate, should at some point take up Holzer's book [...].' (ZAR, 2016, 5-6, p. 186)

Introduction to Public Law is a historical and comparative introduction to public law. The book traces back the origins of the res publica to Roman law and analyzes the course of its development, first during the monarchical age in continental Europe and England, and then during the republican age that began at the end of the eighteenth century with the democratic revolutions in the United States and France. For each period and country, the book analyzes the major concepts of public law and their transformations: sovereignty, the state, the statute, the separation of powers, the public interest, and administrative justice.

This book examines theoretical and practical issues concerning the relationship between international law, time and history. Problems relating to time and history are ever-present in the work of international lawyers, whether understood in terms of the role of historic practice in the doctrine of sources, the application of the principle of inter-temporal law in dispute settlement, or in gaining a coherent insight into the role that was played by international law in past events. But very little has been written about the various different ways in which international lawyers approach or understand the past, and it is with a view to exploring the dynamics of that engagement that this book has been compiled. In its broadest sense, it is possible to identify at least three different ways in which the relationship between international law and (its) history may be conceived. The first is that of a history of international law written in narrative form, and mapped out in terms of a teleology of origins, development, progress or renewal. The second is that of history in international law and of the role history plays in arguments about law itself (for example in the construction of customary international law). The third way of understanding that relationship is in terms of international law in history: of understanding how international law has been engaged in the creation of a history that in some senses stands outside the history of international law itself. The essays in this collection make clear that each type of engagement with history and international law interweaves various different types of historical narrative, pointing to the typically multi-layered nature of international lawyers’ engagement with the past and its importance in shaping the present and future of international law. Originally published in hardcover

This is a new and substantially expanded edition of the author's 'Russian Commercial Law' (2001) which has become the standard resource in this area. Compared to the rather chaotic situation in the 1990s, the system of commercial law in Russia has stabilised in the 2000s. Blatant abuses have become less common with the Joint Stock Company Law amendments taking effect and the new Insolvency Law being enacted. The book represents a comprehensive and in-depth study of current Russian commercial law encompassing various areas, from Company law, Banking Law, Natural Resources Law to International Commercial Arbitration. A new chapter on Environmental Law was added in the light of its significance for major natural resources and infrastructure projects. With the expertise of the author who has been involved in Russian Law studies and practice for some decades, the book is intended both for practitioners who have dealings with Russia and for academics and students.Originally published in hardcover.

This book is designed to provide an overview of the development and substance of international human rights law, and what is meant concretely by human rights guarantees, such as civil and political rights, and economic and social rights. It highlights the rights of women, globalization and human rights education. The book also explores domestic, regional and international endeavors to protect human rights. The history and role of human rights NGOs coupled with an analysis of diverse international mechanisms are succinctly woven into the text, which well reflects the scholarship and erudition of the authors. This lucidly written and timely volume will be of great help to anyone seeking to understand this area of law, be they students, lawyers, scholars, government officials, staff of international and non-international organizations, human rights activists or lay readers.Originally published in hardcover.