Suchergebnisse

Armed conflict and occupation are by definition necessarily violent for all participants, be they civilians or combatants. However, for women it heralds an exacerbation in existing violence, discrimination and inequalities. While international humanitarian law (IHL) has dedicated or 'special' provisions for women, feminist legal scholars have done much to expose the gendered nature of this branch of international law. In recent decades, the United Nations' campaign of mainstreaming of women's issues has impacted significantly on relevant human rights law (HR Law), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has actively sought to investigate and address women's concerns. However, there has been limited flow through of these efforts in the sphere of private military and security companies (PMSCs). This report provides but an overview of the main issues and legal concerns raised by the impact of the privatisation of war on women during military engagements. It is divided into four parts. Part I highlights how armed conflict and occupation generally have a detrimental effect upon the lives of women with particular reference to safety, displacement, health and economic disadvantage. Part II provides a summary of existing IHL and HR provisions in this field. Part III examines recent developments within the United Nations (and its members states), the work of the ICRC, and international criminal law jurisprudence shaping these existing protections. Part IV in conclusion considers the relevant Montreaux Document provisions in the light of these developments.

Selected excerpts from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) publication, "Arab human development report, 2002: creating opportunities for future generations" (2002), indexed in PAIS International, 2002.

This book examines religious activism?Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism?in China, a powerful atheist state that provides one of the hardest challenges to existing methods of transnational activism. The author focuses on mechanisms used by three kinds of actors: protesters, advocates and opportunists, and uses regional, inter-faith, and international comparisons to understand why some foreign advocates can enter China and engage in illegal aid and missions to empower local activists, while the same groups cannot conduct the same activities in another geographically, economically and politically similar location. The stories in this book demonstrate a more inclusive and bottom-up approach of transnational activism; they challenge the conventional spiral theory paradigm of human rights literature and the narrow views about GONGOs in civil society literature. This new knowledge helps to sustain a more optimistic view and offers an alternative way of promoting human rights in China and countries with similar authoritarian environments

This thesis discusses the right to work of refugees and asylum-seekers in the context of the current refugee crisis, using Bulgaria as an example of the less studied case of transit countries. Bulgaria legally recognizes the right to work of refugees and yet has no political will to effectively fulfill this right with appropriate integration policies. At the same, refugees are not interested in integration because they perceive Bulgaria as a pit stop, but still need income, so they engage in informal employment in precarious conditions. Through an analysis of the legal and policy framework, and the practical constraints for accessing adequate employment, this thesis proposes to rethink the paradigm of integration, which is not attractive to either the government or refugees, and offers an alternative human rights-based approach.

Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 reads "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". This Article is widely regarded as expressing customary international law. Within the United Nations framework, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are explicitly prohibited under a number of international treaties, which are legally binding on those States which have ratified them. Many treaties establish Committees, known collectively as the treaty bodies, which are mandated to monitor States Parties' compliance with their obligations under the treaties. They do this by issuing General Comments or Recommendations, which provide detailed interpretation of specific aspects of the treaty. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the definition and the elements required for an act to be classified as torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, applied within the United Nations system, by considering the General Comments and jurisprudence of the treaty bodies, in particular the Human Rights Committee (HRC), which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Committee against Torture (CAT), which monitors compliance with the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT). The paper focuses on States Parties' obligations under the main treaties, by considering the scope of application of these obligations. DOI:10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n8p61

The International Law Commission held its fifty-fifth session in Geneva from May 5 to June 6, and from July 7 to August 8, 2003, under the chairmanship of Enrique Candioti of Argentina. The Commission elected Roman Kolodkin of the Russian Federation, Constantin Economides of Greece, Teodor Melescanu of Romania, and Michael Matheson of the United States to fill the vacancies resulting from the death of Valery Kuznetsov of the Russian Federation, the election of Bruno Simma of Germany and Peter Tomka of Slovakia to the International Court of Justice, and the resignation of Robert Rosenstock of the United States.