The trickster of exiled intellectuals: Arcane opposition to the perceived injustice

Roughly 100 000 immigrants in the Nordic countries originate from areas in Africa where the tradition of FGC is still well known. A majority of this immigrant group consists of Somali women and men (approximately 25 000 in Sweden 16 000 in Denmark 8000 in Norway and 7000 in Finland less than 10 in Iceland; national statistics figures). FGC in the Nordic countries became an issue in the 1980s. The civil war in Somalia caused many Somalis to leave their country in the early 1990s. The arrival of large groups of Somali families forced the Nordic societies to take a stand on the health issue of FGC. Traditionally Somali girls are infibulated which involves excision of the clitoris labia minora and stitching of the vaginal opening. Health providers and social professionals in the Nordic countries are therefore obliged to know how to handle this issue. The primary motives for FGC in Somalia are that the practice is experienced as a religious duty and a prerequisite of marriage. Based on clinical experience the most common reaction to FGC in a Western country is one of disgust and rejection. However in countries where FGC is practiced it is looked upon as the "normal" state sometimes expressed in line with the following citations: "being smooth in the genital area without flaps is a beauty ideal" "if the labia minora are not cut they will continue to grow" "the clitoris and the labia minora have to be concealed in order to reduce sexual desire to reduce the risk of promiscuity promote fertility and make childbirth easier or the girl will not become a woman" "circumcision will ensure that the woman is a virgin as she gets married." These examples of motives do not necessarily coexist in the same ethnic groups. Thus FGC has deep and complex social and cultural roots that we cannot ignore when discussing how to best deal with FGC as a health issue in the Nordic countries. (excerpt)

Chapter seven examines extra-judicial executions and wilful killings of children during armed conflict as part of a common plan and a form of physical and/or psychological torture. Selected ICC and Inter-American human rights system cases are discussed in this regard.

Restricted by economic and social development conditions and the construction level of the domestic regulatory system, the traditional host country-centered approach makes it challenging to ensure that multinational enterprises fulfil their human rights obligations. The jury is still out on whether international law can directly impose obligations and responsibilities on enterprises. Therefore, the home countries could regulate human rights violations in enterprises' outbound investments. However, in the domestic regulatory system of the home country, there is often a problem of no regulation or ineffective regulation of enterprises' outbound investments. Taking China as an example, this article explores how to enhance the home country's regulation on multinational corporations' fulfilment of human rights obligations,by comparing and drawing on the experience of other jurisdictions in dealing with similar issues and combining with the regulatory practice of China's outbound-invested enterprises, which will better promote China's full implementation of the commitment to the UNGP as stated in the National Human Rights Action Plan, and help Chinese multinational companies go global better, highlighting the value concept of community with a shared future for mankind that China has always advocated as a responsible major country.

Such is its pervasiveness that human rights discourse is used to legitimise humanitarian and military intervention in the affairs of other states, provide a rationale for ‘ethical’ foreign policy, justify the punishment of war crimes, and validate the formation of international coalitions mandated to eradicate terrorism wherever its is found. At grass-roots level, human rights talk is deployed to lobby governments and to press for socioeconomic and legal change, to combat the dehumanising treatment of specific populations, to ground educational initiatives and spawn local, national, international, and sometimes global networks oriented to its advancement, and to induce the patient and meticulous documentation of its violations. In terms of women, human rights activism has been instrumental in problematising violence against women, prompting the recognition by the UN Human Rights Commission in 1992 of rape during war as a form of torture, and as a war crime or crime against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (which came into force in 2001). It also led to the appointment in 1994 by the UN Human Rights Commission of Radhika Coomaraswamy as the first Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and its Causes and Consequences. Activities centring on human rights produced the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 18 December 1979 and became operational as an international treaty on 3 September 1981 when it was ratified by its twentieth signatory.

Existing case law under human rights treaties, in particular Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, includes several findings and interpretations related to sexual rights. The sexual identity and orientation of a person, as well as his or her sexual autonomy and integrity have found protection under the right to respect for one's private and family life. Among other important treaty provisions giving protection to sexual rights in the framework of international human rights law are the prohibition of torture and other inhuman or degrading treatment, the prohibition of discrimination, the right to a fair trial and the right to marry and to found a family. Under humanitarian law rape, one of the main forms of violations of sexual integrity and autonomy, is defined as a crime against humanity, with the consequence of individual criminal responsibility arising. Rape committed by a public official during detention has been defined as form of torture by the European Court of Human Rights. Positive state obligations exist under the right to respect for an individual's private life to sanction rape or other breaches of sexual autonomy and integrity when committed by other private individuals. Sexual identity and its manifestations, again, enjoy protection under the right to private and family life, as has been shown by international case law related to homosexuality and transsexualism. Here, the autonomous and independent non-discrimination clause in Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a basis for further guarantees.

In China’s participation into the international human rights system, the government has increasingly paid more attention to human rights than ever, but still overuses long-standing capital punishment, tortures detainers and forces the convicted to work against international standards. Many human rights groups and foreign governments often criticize China's human rights violations, particularly its widespread use of the death penalty for numerous nonviolent crimes, of torture to extract false confessions from those facing the death penalty, of forced labour in dentition centers or prisons. This article will examine China’s harsh punishment that mainly involves the death penalty, torture and forced labour, at the core of their international debates from a human rights perspective. Behind harsh punishment in China, underlying reasons for and policy concerns about its use include historical resistance to individual rights, traditional approaches to administrating the masses and the political control of anti-crime campaigns. It will suggest that China’s international human rights obligations require its strict limits on the broad use of capital punishment, as well as those on any forms of torture and forced labour in practice. Further reform on domestic law and practices in using harsh punishments is needed to bring them in line with international standards, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that China signed but has not yet ratified.

Human rights' limitations in patent law

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Sociology and Human Rights in the Post Development Era

Associative Solidarity, Relational Goods, and Autonomy for Refugees: What Does it Mean to Stand in Solidarity with Refugees?

The article examines the problems of torture and ill-treatment in the relevant practice of the European Court of Human Rights. The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the Convention) has become an important place in the practice of application of criminal law of Ukraine. After analyzing some practice ECtHR about violation of Article 3 of the Convention, the forms of torture and inhuman treatment were singled out. These include: improper investigation, improper treatment of convicts, improper medical care of convicts, threats of torture, ignoring allegations of threats of torture or ill-treatment, etc.It was found that despite numerous judgments of the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine, both certain provisions of law and practice of their application continue to contradict the provisions of the Convention, in particular Article 3.It is established that currently the problem of treatment of people by law enforcement agencies and other state representatives is urgent and systemic.The paper proposes that some European experience should be borrowed in providing a real mechanism for the protection of human rights and freedoms. Reforms are needed to ensure the effective participation of victims in criminal proceedings and the use of incentives, as well as the practice of compensating victims. It seems that given the accompanying circumstances, failure to provide the victim with a real opportunity to participate in criminal proceedings, as well as the lack of informing the victims about the progress of the investigation can be considered as inhuman treatment within the meaning of Art. 3 of the Convention.

The paper defines the author’s approach to the concept, types, characteristics of the goals of state human rights protection. In its most general form, human rights protection includes a system of actions carried out by State bodies and organizations, as well as civil society institutions and international organizations, aimed at restoring violated and creating appropriate conditions for implementation of human and citizen rights, freedoms and legitimate interests, as well as collective rights and public interests of groups of citizens, commercial and non-commercial organizations.Researchers propose to distinguish the following types of human rights protection objectives: general and particular; basic and non-basic; final, intermediate and immediate; objectively true and objectively false; real and unreal; timely and untimely; substantive and instrumental. Indeed, the available academic developments on this issue are of great interest, but largely they characterize the human rights objectives enshrined in legislation, rather than practice of human rights protection.The paper elucidates and describes in detail such necessary signs of a human rights protection objective as its humanism, moral validity, social conditionality and legal significance.The classification of the types of human rights objectives is defined; it is proposed to distinguish strategic (general) and tactical (private) objectives; law enforcement, law-making and «law-enlightening» ones; positive and natural law human rights objectives.The paper concludes that there is a need for comprehensive consideration of the goals of human rights protection in legislation and law enforcement practice. It is also indicated that a necessary characteristic of human rights protection is its implementation by specific legal methods that are subject to strict regulation by means of provisions of existing normative legal acts or, in any case, they do not contradict them, and in addition, should not go beyond ethical norms and principles.

Using material taken from contemporary feminist theory and also from work on human rights, it is argued that rape is a form of torture, and that it operates on powerful levels, both literally and metaphorically. Part of the argument is that rape has achieved the status it has as political force for exploitation because of strong beliefs about cultural reproduction and about the roles that women play in cultural reproduction.

ABSTRACTDo the Nordics warrant the label ‘global good Samaritans’ in human rights promotion? Is the Nordic welfare state a close to perfect realisation of human rights norms? Alternatively, do Nordic international and domestic human rights policies constitute a peculiar ‘Nordic human rights paradox’ where norms are supported internationally while not being implemented at home? In what is the first collection of articles on Nordic human rights history, we take issue with previous scholarship, finding it often to be unsubstantiated and lacking a basis in historical contexts and relevant source materials. This also includes the stream of historical studies in the past decade, where, until recently, the Nordic countries have represented something of a blind spot. However, the lack of prior interest in the region means there are several promising avenues for historical investigations of both the Nordic countries in human rights history and the role of human rights in the history of the region.

The “Invisible Children”: Uncertain Future of Unaccompanied Minor Migrants in Europe

On October 1, 2002, Magnus Gafgen was taken into custody by the Frankfurt police in connection with the kidnapping of a young boy held for ransom. The police threatened Gafgen with various forms of torture unless he divulged the location of the boy. Gafgen quickly relented and led the police to the boy, who was already dead. Gafgen was convicted of murder and the police were convicted of coercion. However, the district court concluded that the police, though culpable, were not appropriate subjects of punishment. Gafgen, unhappy that his torturers were not punished, filed a case against Germany at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), arguing that Germany's failure to punish his torturers violated his human rights. The ECHR concluded that Gafgen was right--the German government was obligated to punish perpetrators of torture, and by failing to do so adequately, Germany violated Gafgen's human rights. The goal of this chapter is to show that the argument in Gafgen is generalizable to other contexts. Although the case arose from a particular procedural posture, there is little reason to suspect that the arguments in Gafgen will not hold for other crimes as well. At the very least, these arguments can be extended, without logical disruption, to other international crimes that states are under a legal obligation to criminalize, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Moreover, if the structure of these arguments is conceptually sound, in theory they should apply outside of the European context, unless the argument is based on a particular right that is only protected by the European Convention and not by international law. This subtle change in emphasis -- moving from punishment as a license to punishment as a legal requirement -- has profound consequences for the operation of international criminal justice. States and international tribunals are required to punish perpetrators as a matter of human rights law, and their failure to follow through on this obligation violates not just some vague or inchoate ergo omnes obligation, it also violates an obligation owed directly to the victims of that particular atrocity. This applies not just when the perpetrators are not punished at all but also when the perpetrators, like in Gafgen's case, are not punished severely enough.