Gender, toilets, and the planning gap: A United Nations framework analysis of Canadian municipal parks policies

An edited version of this text is published with some revisions as a chapter in Surya Deva and David Bilchitz (eds.) Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect?, Cambridge University Press (2013).The reception of the ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework on Business and Human Rights, which was developed during 2005-2008 by the United Nations (UN) Special Representative for the Secretary General (‘SRSG’), John Ruggie, and which was ‘unanimously welcomed’ by the UN Human Rights Council in 2008, stands in stark contrast to the rejection of the ‘Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights’ (UN Norms) that had been developed between 1998 and 2003 under the UN Human Rights Commission. The significance of the UN Framework as a type of international law-in-the-making is underscored by the fact that the Framework formed the foundation for the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, an international soft law instrument developed during the SRSG’s second mandate term 2008-2011. The difference in the making of the Framework and that of the UN Norms as well as some other previous efforts under the UN to formulate norms for business in relation to human rights makes the 2005-2008 SRSG process an obvious candidate for analysis to seek to identify what caused such difference. Adopting a socio-legal perspective and combining reflexive law with discourse theory, this chapter analyses the argumentative structure and strategy of the SRSG, business representatives and civil society during the 2005-2008 mandate in order to understand how these elements contributed to an output whose fate has been radically different than its predecessor.

The 2008 United Nations (UN) Framework ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ broke ground by being accepted by the UN’s main human rights body, the Human Rights Council, as a first ever authoritative clarification of human rights responsibilities of business enterprises as well as States’ duties to protect against human rights violations caused by business organisations. The Human Rights Council’s acceptance of the UN Framework stands out because previous efforts to reach agreement on norms for business responsibilities for human rights within a comparable UN setting had failed. As a UN initiative aimed at developing norms that may eventually become international law, the process, which was undertaken by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (‘SRSG’), Professor John Ruggie, also stood out because it applied a multi-stakeholder approach involving representatives of business organisations as potential duty-bearers. Through a discourse analysis this article explores how and why the SRSG process delivered broad-based acceptance of the UN Framework not only with the UN but also with non-state actors. It concludes that consensus came about as a result of strategic usage of language, which addressed the specific interests of particular stakeholders in ways that induced acceptance of emerging normative expectations that business organisations take responsibility for human rights. In combination with the multi-stakeholder approach, which allowed for direct participation of business organisations as prospective duty-holders, consensus emerged leading to institutionalisation of norms on business responsibilities for human rights for States as well as business organisations.

A human rights approach: The right to education in the time of COVID‐19

This chapter discusses the development of the Special Representative of the Secretary- General (SRSG) Nations (UN) Framework, focusing on the consultative approach adopted during the SRSG's mandate and the difference to the development of the UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights and the reception that the Norms met in the Commission on Human Rights. It considers the process leading to the UN Framework and the unanimous welcoming that the Framework was given by the Human Rights Council. The broad consultative process provided the UN Framework with an element of process legitimacy led to output effectiveness in terms of the broad acceptance of the Framework. This provided the normative as well as politically accepted background for the Guiding Principles. The SRSG process is an example of a politically pragmatic process towards a legally pragmatic output. Keywords:guiding principles; human rights council; legitimacy; pragmatic output; pragmatic process; SRSG; United Nations (UN) framework

I. IntroductionThe 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development emphasized that every state has the responsibility respect, protect and promote human rights, and that democracy, good governance and the rule of law . . . are essential for sustainable in each of its three dimensions: economic growth, social development, and environmental protection. 1 The following year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon reiterated that an essential building block for sustainable development agenda is a far-reaching vision of the future firmly anchored in human rights and universally accepted values and principles.2The importance of human rights for economic and social development has long been recognized in principle, if not always in practice.3 However, the relevance of human rights for environmental protection, the third pillar of sustainable development, has only recently begun to receive increased attention at the United Nations. In March 2012, shortly before the Conference on sustainable Development, the united Nations Human Rights Council decided to appoint an independent expert with three-year mandate to clarify the human rights obligations relating to environmental protection and to identify good practices in their use.4 In addition, the independent expert was requested to [t]ake into account the results of the 2012 United Nations Conference on sustainable Development and contribute human rights perspective to follow-up processes.5Perhaps the chief follow-up process was the development of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide progress toward sustainable development after 2015, the date set as target by the Millennium Development Goals.6 At the 2012 conference, governments decided to establish the open Working Group to develop the sDGs, and in August 2014, the group submitted its report to the UN General Assembly.7 The report proposed seventeen new SDGS and 169 targets for realization of specific aspects of the goals. The General Assembly decided that the proposal shall be the main basis for integrating sustainable development goals into the post-2015 development agenda, while recognizing that other inputs may also be considered in the intergovernmental negotiation process.8 This continuing negotiation is expected to result in document adopted by the General Assembly by the end of 2015.This article explains how the Human Rights Council mandate on human rights and the environment relates to the development of the SDGs. Part I describes the mandate's principal findings on the relationship between human rights obligations and environmental protection. Part II evaluates the goals and targets proposed by the open Working Group in light of those findings. The article concludes that while the draft SDGs set out many worthwhile goals, the targets often do not contain language that is concrete and focused enough to effectively promote human rights or environmental protection.II. The Relationship Between Human Rights Law and Environmental ProtectionThe modern environmental movement, which began in the late 1960s, realized from its early days that human rights and environmental protection are closely linked. For example, the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, the first united Nations environmental conference, proclaimed that [b]oth aspects of man's environment, the natural and the man-made, are essential to his well-being and to the enjoyment of basic human rights-even the right to life itself.9 A few years later, countries began to add right to healthy environment to their national constitutions.10 However, this recognition came too late to be codified in the major international human rights agreements. The General Assembly had already adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the two International Covenants on human rights in 1966.11 Later efforts to introduce right to healthy environment in new global human rights instrument were unsuccessful. …

Armed Non-State Actors and International Human Rights Law: An Analysis of the Practice of the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. General Assembly

The obligations arising from investment protection regimes can impede states’ power to pursue legitimate human rights policy objectives. This raises unique obligatory challenges for a host state in balancing human rights obligations and investment protection. Will the emergence of the new Africa’s Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) investment chapter provide the much-needed regulatory balance between investment protection and human rights obligations of host states and promote investors’ human rights responsibility? This paper raises this question through the analytical lens of the asymmetrical relationship between investment protection and human rights and x-rays Africa’s structural responses to this relational imbalance. The paper recognizes the obligatory potentials of the reform models in Africa’s treaty-making practices towards expanding regulatory space of the host states for human rights and promoting investors’ human rights responsibility. The paper, however, highlights the limitations inherent in the existing models. The paper identifies normative human rights disparity and human rights deficit in Africa as a major hindrance in measuring realizable investors’ human rights obligations in investment treaties. By introducing the human rights integration model, the paper offers new insights and approaches that harmonize Africa’s human rights landscape for determining and measuring investors’ human rights obligations under the emerging AfCFTA’s investment chapter.

Preventing and responding to the phenomenon of foreign fighters involves a multitude of potential initiatives. By itself, Security Council Resolution 2178 on foreign fighters contains a wide range of recommendations and binding decisions, triggering the potential for engagement of a broad range of human rights in States’ prevention and responses to foreign fighters. This is further impacted upon by the absence in Resolution 2178 of a comprehensive, concise and human-rights compliant definition of terrorism. This chapter highlights that the issue of human rights compliance in countering foreign fighters does not involve new questions. Drawing directly from the past decade and a half of developments concerning human rights compliance when countering terrorism, the principle of complementarity and mutual reinforcement between security and human rights is seen as being reflected in the United Nations’ Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and accompanying action, as well as within the Security Council’s Resolution on foreign fighters. The chapter shows that this is also a natural consequence of State’s legal obligations, and reflects the flexibility of international human rights law to accommodate security and public order objectives. It also illustrates that this position is not altered when States implement binding decisions of the Security Council. States will be held to account for implementing action where its acts or omissions involve violation of their human rights obligations, including where a State is left with no choice as to the means of implementation. The chapter asserts that States must therefore be rigorous in ensuring that their implementation of Security Council resolutions on foreign fighters comply in all aspects with their international human rights obligations.

There is no comprehensive document, in which the United Nations sets out its position on the human rights obligations of its peacekeepers. Security Council and General Assembly resolutions do not provide much guidance either. However, a patchwork of United Nations policies – some adopted at the level of the Secretary-General, others by the UN departments responsible for peacekeeping operations and special political missions – recognize and seek to implement a comprehensive set of human rights obligations that rest on United Nations peacekeepers. The present article seeks to place this patchwork into a coherent normative framework consisting of duties to respect human rights, duties to take precautionary steps, duties not to assist human rights violations of others, a responsibility to protect civilians and their human rights and the obligation to provide effective remedies for human rights violations. In doing so, it identifies remaining gaps in the policy framework. While not the primary focus of this article, some of the most significant advances and gaps in the actual implementation of existing policies are highlighted.

Civil society organizations are key actors in the promotion and protection of human rights in Nigeria and have participated in all the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) circles of the Government of Nigeria. The UPR is a first of its kind innovation adopted in 2006 by the Human Rights Council to complement the works of treaty bodies and involves the review on a periodic basis, the human rights records of all Member States of the United Nations. As a peer review process comprising three distinct stages and involving three major sources of information, this article exclusively ex-rays the UPR civil society report on the implementation of Nigeria’s international human rights obligations. As one of the three sources of information relied upon by the Human Rights Council in the Universal Periodic Review of the human rights record of the Government of Nigeria, this article, while focusing on the civil society information submitted to the Human Rights Council pursuant to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/251 concludes that despite advances in the promotion and protection of human rights claimed in its national report to be made in the implementation of international human rights obligations, there are still, from civil society lens, plethora of issues and gaps in the implementation of Nigeria’s international human rights obligations.

As a member State of the United Nations (UN), China is bound by the provisions of the Charter of the UN (Charter) and any Security Council (SC) decisions that apply to it. It has participated in a number of UN proceedings on human rights and has ratified over 20 international human rights treaties, but not the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), even though it signed that agreement in 1998. Regardless of whether China’s current practices uphold the human rights standards contained in the treaties, China is gradually accepting the concept of human rights and is taking measures to fulfil its international human rights obligations. China also submits reports on human rights to UN treaty bodies, drafts new international human rights instruments, engages in numerous multilateral, regional and bilateral dialogues on human rights and frequently hosts important regional and international human rights meetings. Following the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) by the General Assembly (GA), China was elected to two 3-year terms in 2006 and 2009. Since the end of 2012, when China rotated off the UNHRC, China has already begun lobbying in foreign capitals for a re-election in a future term. All these activities that China has done in an effort to support the UN tend to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

INTRODUCTION Where human rights violations occur due to extraterritorial action or inaction, regional or even global human rights supervisory bodies could become the main forums to which victims of human rights violations turn in order to obtain appropriate remedies. Hence, African regional mechanisms could offer a framework within which to hold the foreign perpetrator responsible for the transboundary violations of rights of residents of third states. In fact, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission) – the supervisory body of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights of 1981 (African Charter), the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa of 2003 (African Women's Protocol), and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Older Persons in Africa of 2016 – has long received complaints involving the extraterritorial reach of states’ human rights obligations. There are discernible trends in the jurisprudence of the African regional system regarding the extraterritorial scope of African Charter guarantees, states’ human rights duties, and the right of individuals and groups to seek and enforce extraterritorial remedies. In a sense, quasi-judicial scrutiny of the extraterritorial reach of human rights and states’ duties has leapfrogged related scholarship. This chapter analyses the concept of extraterritoriality in the field of African human rights law in particular and human rights law in general. The chapter first provides an overview on human rights in Africa (their recognition and relevance). This is followed by a consideration of the extent to which extraterritorial state obligations have been recognised in African regional human rights law. This is discussed in the context of the burgeoning case law of the global and other regional human rights supervisory bodies (sections 5 and 6 below), which provide inspirational sources that the African regional system should draw upon. The recognition of extraterritorial state obligations in international human rights law (with specific focus on the United Nations (UN) system) and other regional human rights law (with specific focus, albeit briefly, on the European and Inter-American systems) provides the context within which the extraterritorial reach of African human rights treaties should be further understood.

Failure of creating a direct human rights obligation for the conduct of Multi-National Corporation is one of the pressing global issues of the 21st century. It has further intensified the influential role of MNCs across the globe. Although regulation of private entities has been recognized concerning war crimes, crimes against humanity, and forced labor but, there is no legal obligation for private entities to be accountable for human rights violations that they are involved in. Nonetheless, under the auspicious of United Nations Organizations few initiatives have been taken to regulate the activities of MNCs concerning their effects on human rights. The Code of Conduct for Transnational Corporations, the UN Global Compact, Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights and Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights (hereinafter Ruggie Principles) are significant in this regard. However, neither any such standards nor the Guiding Principles which is considered as the most authoritative statement of human rights duties of MNCs identify or emphasize direct human rights obligations of MNCs. They merely impose the indirect obligation of MNCs to respect, protect, and remedy human rights. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to assess the legal effects of the obligations created by these UN initiatives focusing more on Guiding Principles. This is normative research based on international legal instruments on human rights. The paper will argue that imposing due diligence on MNCs as a standard of conduct does not maintain a legal duty but, rather help to escape their responsibility. In conclusion, the paper will suggest to have a legally binding framework to regulate MNCs to protect, respect and remedy human rights for direct human rights obligation.
 Keywords: Human Rights, Direct Obligation, Indirect Obligation, Ruggie Principles, Due Diligence

The World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) seeks to realize the right to health through national tobacco control policies. However, few states have met their obligations under Article 14 of the FCTC to develop evidence-based policies to support tobacco cessation. This article examines how human rights obligations could provide a legal and moral basis for states to implement greater support for individualsto overcome their addiction to tobacco. The United Nations (UN) has a well-established legal framework for promoting human rights, looking to the right to health to realize health autonomy. Where addiction undermines autonomy, it is widely acknowledged that addiction presents a significant barrier to cessation for individuals who use tobacco, undermining the right to health. The UN human rights system could, therefore, provide a complementary basis for monitoring state obligations under Article 14 of the FCTC, identifying challenges to FCTC implementation and motivating states to support tobacco cessation. The United Nations' human rights system offers a mechanism that could be used to monitor Framework Convention on Tobacco Control implementation in national policy, facilitating accountability for the progressive realization of cessation support.

In this article the author explores what he terms ‘an emergent traderelated, market-friendly paradigm of human rights’, in contrast to the paradigm of human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It focuses on a reassertion of the UDHR paradigm in relation to corporate governance and business conduct, looking specifically at the Proposed Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights (‘Norms’). The article examines, in this respect, five central themes: the intertextuality of the Norms; the ‘network’ conception of trade and business conduct; ways of categorising human rights obligations; duties regarding implementation of the Norms; and, finally, related ethical theory concerns. 1. The Proposed Norms on Human Rights Responsibilities of Transnationals and Other Business Enterprises In The Future of Human Rights, the present author developed a contrast between the paradigm of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the emergent paradigm of the trade-related, market-friendly paradigm of human rights by which it was confronted. In this article a particular set of practices of resistance, which takes the form of full reassertion of the UDHR paradigm in Human Rights Law Review 5:1 (2005), 1–26 p Professor of Law, University of Warwick (upendra.baxi@warwick.ac.uk). This article is a revised version of a chapter that is due to be published in Baxi, The Future of Human Rights, 2nd edn (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005). 1 Baxi, The Future of Human Rights (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002) at 153. Human Rights Law Review 5:1 q The Author [2005]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org doi:10.1093/hrlrev/ngi001 relation to corporate governance and business conduct, is addressed. What is indeed remarkable is the fact that the articulation of this reassertion occurs under the auspices of the United Nations system, which otherwise fosters contemporaneously somewhat assiduously the trade-related, market-friendly human rights paradigm. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights and, particularly, the SubCommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, provide important sites of critique and renewal. The Sub-Commission thrives on dialogical interaction with the non-governmental organisation (NGO) communities; and often its expert consultants (howsoever named) emerge from within these communities, or at the very least remain extraordinarily sensitive to activist critique of contemporary economic globalisation. This article focuses on the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights (‘Norms’), formulated by a Working Group of five independent experts. The adoption of the Norms, together with the Commentary by the Sub-Commission (on 13 August 2003), marks the first step in a long and perilous journey towards their final adoption. The Norms, now transmitted to the Human Rights Commission, remain open to further consideration within and outside the United Nations system and the comments and responses received stand slated for further consideration by March/April 2005. In the interim, the Sub-Commission’s Working Group stands mandated to assemble information from all relevant sources concerning implementation processes, as well as to further innovate these processes where necessary. The Norms, and the accompanying Commentary, had a very short gestation compared with the archetypal endeavour that produced a stillborn United Nations Draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations. Even more remarkable is their enunciative audacity, unfazed by glittering histories of past failures. Twenty-three articles provide an arsenal of general and specific obligations. Transnational corporations and other business organisations stand conceived as networks of corporate governance and business conduct. Ideologies of voluntarism stand replaced by those of regulation 2 See Globalization and its Impact on the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights, 15 August 2001, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2000/13. 3 See the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, 13 August 2003, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12/Rev.2 (2003); hereafter cited as ‘Norms’. For the Commentary on the Norms, see E/CN/4/Sub.2/2003/38/Rev.2 (2003). The latter document refers to ‘paragraphs’ rather than ‘Articles’; The provisions are here described as Articles. Further, all citations to the Norms are derived from the last document above. 4 See, for background analysis, Weissbrodt and Kruger, ‘Norms on Responsibility of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Entities’, (2003) 97 American Journal of International Law 901. See also Muchlinski, Multinational Enterprises and the Law (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995) at 592–7 and the literature cited therein. 5 E/C.10/1984/S/5 (1984); (1984) 23 International Legal Materials 602. 2 HRLR 5 (2005), 1–26