Raoul Wallenberg Institute Human Rights Library – serie

There has always been some discomfort about reservations in relation to international obligations of States applicable to individuals. This apprehension was once again brought to the forefront of the international normative process with General Comment No. 24 of the Human Rights Committee and the work of the International Law Commission on reservations to treaties.This book is a contribution to the debate on reservations to human rights treaties. Several key questions are addressed. Can the reservations' regime, as codified in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, adequately address human rights relationships? Is there a danger of further fragmentation of international law if human rights treaties were to be treated differently as concerns the reservations'regime applicable to these treaties? Should the distinction be made between the validity of a reservation and the effects of a reservation found to be invalid? These and other questions continue to generate a variety of answers.

While the supervision of the European Court of Human Rights constantly grows in importance, little is known about the people, especially the judges, inside the Court. To what extent are human rights sensitive to different traditions and is their work burdened through the plurality of legal, historical-political or vocational experiences among the judges? Looking at the first three years of permanent operation of the Court, this book suggests that it is the legal culture that brings the judges together. Based on interviews, field study observations and an analysis of case law, this book takes a novel approach on European human rights law and provides researchers and practitioners with an important basis for a full understanding of the Strasbourg case law.

This revised and updated collection is intended to serve as a thematic textbook on the institutions and procedures devoted to the national implementation of human rights and to the international monitoring of State performance. Albeit not exhaustive, the coverage extends to most of the monitoring instances available at intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations: complaints, fact-finding and investigative procedures, State reporting obligations, good offices actions, dialogue functions, human rights education, dissemination of human rights information, letter campaigns, and technical co-operation.The target audience of the book is students of international human rights law, but the book can also serve as a guide for both officials and activists involved in the realization of human rights.The success of the first edition has allowed for this second edition. It demonstrates that there is a important demand for literature with a focus on human rights monitoring and follow-up activities.

This book has its roots in a conference on recent developments in Nordic and German constitutional law that took place in Berlin in 2002 at the Nordic Cultural Centre.That conference was organised within the project Konstitutionalism, demokrati och den nordiska välfärdsstaten (Constitutionalism, Democracy and the Nordic Welfare State), financed by the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS). The volume contains the edited and updated papers which emerged from this meeting of minds. They offer insight into some of the new, exciting strands of constitutional thought that are currently present in the Nordic doctrine, where many new paths have been opened in recent years. The contrast with the situation two decades ago is indeed striking. As far as German and European law are concerned, some of the most important theoretical issues in the doctrine are analysed in a number of particularly rewarding and inspiring contributions.

This volume contains revised versions of a select number of research papers presented at a conference in Oslo, Norway, entitled “The New International Law”.The conference was subtitled “Polycentric Decision-making Structures and Fragmented Spheres of Law: What Implications for the New Generation of International Legal Discourse?” This subtitle signals the most important elements of the conference’s main purpose which was to be a project in line with certain strands of contemporary scholarship on international law; scholarship that bases itself on certain assumptions regarding what are important and changing preconditions for the field of international law research.Such assumptions include the transformation of sovereignty, the horizontal and vertical dispersal of governmental authority, the incompleteness of municipal law for legal regulation of individuals and private entities, states’ acceptance of treaty regimes whereby international authorities exercise regulatory power that interferes with domestic authority, and the proliferation of new dispute-settling bodies on the international plane. The volume aims to display the diversity within the new generation of international legal scholarship and to bring the analyses and arguments of this research to a wider audience. Topics addressed include environmental regulation, human rights and humanitarian protection, criminal law, and international security and development.

This book explores the scope and limits of Article 4(h) of the African Union Constitutive Act (AU Act). The goal is to generate new thinking on, and contribute a fresh legal approach to, the implementation of the right to intervene under Article 4 (h) of the AU Act in the face of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The AU right to intervene, though noble in purpose, is problematic to implement owing to the inherently political matrix of intervention and the question of measures for intervention which have usually been reactive. This book seeks to investigate the scope and validity of the AU’s treaty-based right to intervene as an exception to the principle of State sovereignty. Central to the inquiry is the argument that the UN Charter does not expressis verbis provide for enforcement by consent by regional organisations; equally the UN Charter does not specifically outlaw enforcement action by consent by regional organisations. The book examines whether there is any legal basis for forcible military intervention to prevent serious human rights violations that constitute serious crimes under international law; and if yes, when and how? The discussion involves a legal analysis of the rules that ought to apply in the implementation of Article 4(h) intervention in international law. By examining the rationale and applicability of the right to intervene, the book intends to promote the development of consistent legal approaches for effective intervention within the AU human security architecture. More particularly, rather than focusing on intervention, the book intends to inculcate a culture of prevention and compliance within the framework of the AU.

The crime of rape has been prevalent in all contexts, whether committed during armed conflict or in peacetime, and has largely been characterised by a culture of impunity. International law, through its branches of international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, has increasingly condemned such violence and is progressively obliging states to prevent rape, whether committed by a state agent or a private actor. Whereas the prohibition of rape has been consistently recognised in these areas of law, the definition of the offence has been a later concern to international law. Attempts to define the crime have, however, been made by the ad hoc tribunals (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), regional human rights courts and UN treaty bodies. Increasing duties are thus placed on states, not only to prevent rape through the enactment of criminal laws, but to adopt specific elements of the crime in domestic legislation. This study systematises and analyses such emerging obligations in international law. This leads to overarching questions on the fragmentation and harmonisation of norms between various regimes in international law.