Abuse Of Human Rights Research Articles

Security Agencies and Human Right Violations in Nigeria

It is no news that Nigeria, which is arguably the giant of Africa, is known for human rights violations. From its years of military authoritarianism which witnessed the killing of several human rights activists, and since the return to democratic rule, the country’s human rights narrative has not changed. Government authorities and law enforcement agents (the police) frequently engage in various human rights violations, notably unlawful killings, torture, ill-treatment of no crime suspects, forced evictions, interference with the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of association, and violence against women and children are widespread across the country. This has created worrisome threats to lives and government seems to be grappling with the situation, hence there is some measure of friction between the activities of security agencies and human right in Nigeria. It is against this backdrop that pertinent questions are asked on how well security agencies could be operated without infringement on fundamental human rights and what are the probable mechanisms that could be adopted by security agencies without abuse of human rights in Nigeria. Answers to these questions instigated this research work. This study exemplified the extent of human rights abuses in Nigerian democratic governance. It equally highlighted causes and the effects of human rights abuses in Nigeria and made recommendations on how to prevent its occurrences in the future. Secondary sources of data thus become the hub of its methodology. The study adopted system theory by Gabriel Almond as its theoretical framework.

UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights or Investor-State Arbitration? A Sober Answer for the Better Protection of Human Rights

Summary The concept of legal personality has been and is currently the object of studies. The doctrine is vast and made of many convincing interpretations. For this reason, an excursus of the main theories will be outlined in the light of recent events which support a specific theoretical orientation. The study will give a clear understanding of how international legal personality applies to Non-State Actors. After removing minor doctrines from the equation, those that remain will be highlighted, and compared with how the same matter is de facto faced in international investment law. The relationship between international investment law and international human rights law with regards to the role played by investors will be scrutinised. In investment arbitration, the position of the State and the investor is equal. This leads to the impression that international investment law is the realm in which to ensure more protection for the victims of human rights violations by business enterprises. So, if respect for international human rights is incorporated into the investment arbitral dispute procedures it could protect and or prevent human rights abuses. The opposite approach is to view business activities as objects. In this case, the role to regulate companies and protect stakeholders will be only on the state, and companies will be indirectly obliged to respect human rights. Therefore, the current draft of the binding treaty on business and human rights will be taken into consideration. The analysis of the two approaches will highlight which represents the more stable option for preventing, protecting and remedying human rights abuses by business enterprises. Specifically, the main questions to be answered are: is the international investment law’s field the future for more effective protection of human rights violations coming from business activities? Or is it a states’ prerogative to set and impose rules to prevent and protect such violations?

The Divisible College: A Day in the Lives of Public International Law

AbstractThis is an article about two things. First, the bifurcation of public international law (PIL) into two distinct forms: The material and the narrative. And second, the methodological fragmentation of international lawyers into discrete communities. After setting the substantive fragmentation of PIL as the context of analysis, I deploy Susan Marks’ concept of “false contingency” to distinguish material and narrative PIL. I briefly examine each, and their interactions, before turning to a specific manifestation of material PIL that I call the Global Legal Order (GLO).I then sketch the radical indeterminacy of narrative PIL, its manifestations in the ontological indeterminacy of the commonly accepted sources of PIL, and its source in PIL’s lack of authority and institutionalization. This contrasts with the determinacy and authority of the GLO. Next, I turn to the “fragmentation” of international lawyers into distinct “communities of practice.” In fact, this process turns out to be one of agglomeration, international lawyers are constructed within communities of practice, which glom together to create the appearance of PIL.Finally, I turn to how these communities function by pitting “performances of legality” in “vicarious litigation,” using the Chagos Islands case as an illustration. This is contrasted with the functioning of the operative legal system that is the GLO. I examine the constituent institutions of this system, and how they operate together to produce direct and indirect governance in under-developed states. In practice, this policy imposition immiserates states and antagonizes local populations. It necessitates oppressive governance which entails what narrative PIL determines to be “human rights abuses.”

New evidence that naming and shaming influences state human rights practices

To what extent does naming and shaming influence state respect for human rights? Although many countries and international human rights organizations strategically name and shame states with the hope of deterring human rights abuses, prior empirical work on these strategies has disagreed about their effectiveness. In this article, we reinvestigate this theoretically important question. We take a new approach to examining how naming and shaming influences state human rights practices. First, we apply automatic text analysis to a corpus of human rights reports and develop two new cross-national human rights naming and shaming measures. One measure focuses on Amnesty International’s (AI’s) naming and shaming efforts, and the other focuses on the US government. Second, we assess the construct validity of these measures, finding evidence that they capture the relevant latent dimension. Third, we examine the extent to which these measures are correlated with human rights practices. Our results show that whereas AI’s naming and shaming activities do not seem to influence regime practices, the US State Department’s are associated with improved rights performance. Our measures and results contribute to the growing literature on human rights, international organizations, and foreign policy.

Extraterritorial, Universal, or Transnational Human Rights Law?

AbstractTraditionally, international human rights adjudication relied on the paradigm of extraterritoriality on the rare occasions when it was confronted with cross-border cases. This paradigm recognises only limited circumstances in which states bear extraterritorial human rights obligations. However, with globalisation, transboundary human rights cases have multiplied. This emerging litigation increasingly reveals that the paradigm of extraterritoriality is no longer fit to address global crises. Extraterritoriality demands effective control over a territory, or authority and control over a person, for a state to exercise jurisdiction outside its territory. Thus, several cases of cross-border human rights abuses are inevitably barred on jurisdictional grounds. This is particularly true for obligations of a global character, which are, by their very nature, completely unrelated to the control that states exercise over territories or people. It is therefore necessary to look beyond extraterritoriality. This article analyses the competing paradigms of universality and transnationality as they have been adopted by domestic courts. It argues that international human rights adjudication should reconceptualise extraterritoriality against the background of universality and transnationality to address global crises.

Experiences and perceptions of coercive practices in mental health care among service users in Nigeria: a qualitative study

BackgroundPeople with mental health problems are more vulnerable to a broad range of coercive practices and human rights abuses. There is a global campaign to eliminate, or at the very least decrease, the use of coercion in mental health care. The use of coercion in psychiatric hospitals in developing countries is poorly documented. The primary aim of this study was to explore service users’ perceptions and experiences of coercion in psychiatric hospitals in Nigeria.MethodsFour focus group discussions were carried out among 30 service users on admission in two major psychiatric hospitals in Nigeria. The audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and then analyzed thematically with the aid of MAXQDA software.ResultsThe Focus group participants included 19 males and 11 females with a mean age of 34.67 ± 9.54. Schizophrenia was the most common diagnosis (40%, n = 12) and had a secondary school education (60%, n = 18). The focus group participants perceived coercion to be a necessary evil in severe cases but anti-therapeutic to their own recovery, an extension of stigma and a vicious cycle of abuse. The experience of involuntary admission revolved mainly around deception, maltreatment, and disdain. Participants in both study sites narrated experiences of being flogged for refusing medication. Mechanical restraint with chains was a common experience for reasons including refusing medications, to prevent absconding and in other cases, punitively. The use of chains was viewed by participants as dehumanizing and excruciatingly painful.ConclusionThe experiences of coercion by participants in this study confirm that human rights violations occur in large psychiatric hospitals and underscore the need for mental health services reform. The use of coercion in this context reflects agelong underinvestment in the mental health care system in the country and obsolete mental health legislation that does not protect the rights of people with mental health problems. The study findings highlight an urgent need to address issues of human rights violations in psychiatric hospitals in the country.

In the Absence of a Tribunal, Can UN Investigative Mechanisms Ensure Justice for Victims of Rape as a Weapon of War?

Abstract This article explores the evolution of UN fact-finding mechanisms as a method of pursuing legal accountability for violations of international criminal and human rights law, specifically sexual and gender-based violence and violations of sexual and reproductive health rights in conflict situations. The article argues that, in order to effectively contribute to the task of securing individual accountability for violations of international criminal law, while also pursuing political accountability for mass abuse of human rights, the UN system of fact-finding mechanisms must be reformed. The mandates of Commissions of Inquiry must be stripped back to their core function of investigating human rights abuse, while Novel Investigative Mechanisms take over the individual criminal responsibility mandate. Until both these functions are given separate and adequate attention by properly resourced fact-finding mechanisms, victims of abuse such as sexual and gender-based violence and violation of sexual and reproductive health rights in countries without recourse to international courts will be denied justice and recognition through UN channels.

‘Stop killing us without witness’: Analyses of Rawls’s theory of justice within the context of jungle justice in Nigeria in the light of Deuteronomy 19:15–21

This research examined the increasing human rights abuses, reminiscent of jungle justice, in Nigeria in the light of John Rawls’s theory of justice and Deuteronomy 19:15–21. The legal code contained in Deuteronomy was Moses’s instruction to his people when it became obvious that he was old and could not enter the promised land. This legal code found in the study text can serve as a model to any nation saddled with the social vices of jungle justice. Jungle justice means a group of people discharging judgement against an accused person or suspect without going through either the legal process of taking the person to court or waiting for any security agency in charge. These cases of killings without trial reflect on Nigerian society. This research employs Rawls’s theory of justice. As the study text is Moses’s farewell speech, this study employed rhetorical analyses in study of the biblical text and used descriptive analysis in the study of jungle justice in Nigeria. The target population of this study is Christians in Nigeria. Furthermore, the article used secondary data such as Bible dictionaries, concordances, encyclopaedias, journal articles, magazines and newspapers. However, the study’s findings revealed that the scandal of jungle justice has continued because judgement is based on one witness alone. In addition, legal cases are not taken to the court where they are decided. In addition, judges take bribe and derail justice especially against the poor, hence they do not make diligent inquiries before giving their judgement. Rawls’s theory of justice and Deuteronomy 19:15–21 provide a lucid response to this bizarre situation of human rights abuses.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article contributes to scholarship as it provides a new dimension of scholarly discussion on the issue of human rights abuses on record in Nigeria. Again, this article provides a lucid exploration of Deuteronomy 19:15–21 and uses its hermeneutical propagation of more than one witness before adjudicating a case against any criminal suspect as a solution to this spate of human right abuses.

Transitional Justice and Corporate Accountability: Introducing New Players and New Theoretical Challenges

Corporate accountability for complicity in past and ongoing gross violations of human rights and economic crimes is a rapidly growing area of interest in the transitional justice field. Addressing such violations and their role in fueling conflict and repression is now recognized as a key component of societies’ efforts to come to terms with the past, and, perhaps even more importantly, creating the conditions for non-recurrence of violent conflict and human rights abuses. Truth commissions have increasingly included such economic violations in their mandates, and corporate actors have been the focus of a number of high-profile court cases. Such civil claims and criminal cases appear to offer limited redress thus far, but the normative landscape of transitional justice is shifting, both at national and international levels. Scholarly interest has spiked, as illustrated in the review essay in this volume by Evelyne Owiye Asaala, which highlights three new volumes that unpack recent developments. We also see increased civil society mobilization to demand that corporate actors are held to account and contribute to reparations. In some cases, the amounts that corporate actors can or will contribute to compensate survivors dwarf the financial contribution to reparations funds by governments, demonstrating not just their potential contribution to transitional justice, but the scope of their liability for past abuses.1

Legal waivers in settlement agreements: Implications on access to remedies in business and human rights

Legal waivers in the business and human rights context are an agreement corporations use to provide compensation to victims in exchange for waiving their right to file future claims in a court of law in corporate human rights abuses. Corporations use legal waivers to further secure legal immunity from potential future claims for adverse human rights impact. In contrast, right-holders accept legal waivers as they provide quick resolution of grievances, mainly in the form of monetary compensation. This article investigates the inequality of bargaining power under which legal waivers operate. It advances the central claim that the use of legal waivers in private remedial processes reflects corporate attempts to renegotiate human rights standards by exercising authority. I use the Porgera case study to shed light on how power inequalities between corporations and right-holders distort the nature of business actors’ governance authority in business and human rights. I further argue that legal waivers strengthen the power of corporations while simultaneously not serving the public interest that corporations claim to uphold in facilitating a private remedial process for right-holders. I conclude that the power inequalities exacerbate the “power” element of authority without affecting the legitimacy of corporations but distorting the nature of their governance authority.

Collective Action, Memories of 1989, and Social Media

How does social media facilitate deliberation and collective remembering of past revolutions amid protests in democratizing contexts? To explore this question, I performed a qualitative and quantitative analysis of a unique archive of tweets posted during Moldova’s Twitter Revolution in 2009. The research revealed that Twitter enabled users living in Moldova and Romania to connect online, share information, and chat about the meanings of revolution, civil society activism, and resistance to state oppression, all while providing updates to Western media and warning the public about human rights abuses. Also, the research uncovered that the #pman audiences from Moldova and Romania framed the protest differently. Whereas the Moldovans regarded it as a demonstration against election fraud, the Romanian twitterers framed the events as an anti-communist uprising analogous to the 1989 Revolution, which they mythologized to extract useful strategies for action communicated to the Moldovan activists. Moreover, twitterers from both countries engaged in a transborder conversation about unionism and national identity. Despite Twitter’s documented positive impact on political engagement and Western media reporting, it simultaneously contributed to misinformation through the circulation of rumors, conspiracy theories, and calls for violence.

Business and Human Rights in Latin America: An Introduction to the Special Issue

In his landmark 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez wrote about the ‘Banana Massacre’, where plantation workers that had been striking against the United Fruit Company to improve their working conditions were killed by the military. Despite being an event depicted in a magic realism novel, this example also shows some of the characteristics of Latin America, where colonialism, the close relationship between business and governments, and the incessant fight to protect people from human rights abuses, often converge not just in literature, but in real life. Indeed, Latin America is marked by contradictions between very progressive domestic human rights frameworks and increasing levels of social inequality and poverty; by being part of global value chains while also having an important percentage of informal economy; and by promoting the development of rules and practices without a sufficiently strong rule of law and fragile democracies. To some extent, as the land of magic realism, the business and human rights field in many cases is a real-life example of the nuances and complexities of the region, where progress and challenges are frequently intertwined.

Regulating India’s Coal Sector: Lessons for the Future, from the Past

This essay will examine the desirability of establishing a regulator for the coal sector, and demonstrate its essentiality. The argument is centrally premised on the Government’s policy towards the coal sector, and how these policies are poised to turn the sector into the biggest contributor to India’s 5 trillion USD economic goal. With such lofty ambitions, it becomes imperative to ensure that there is an independent regulator, who can steer the sector into eficiency while balancing competing interests. Analysing the need for a coal-sector regulator becomes all the more important when considering how the history of the sector has been coloured with concerns of ineficiency, scams, human rights abuses, and environmental concerns. This paper will look at the historical context of the sector’s operation in India and the current policies, evaluate the eficiency of the sector by looking at the policy for allotments of coal blocks and the surrounding litigation, and attempts to chart out a way forward.

Democratization in the post-colonial era: shortcomings

During colonialism, African countries were exposed to severe living circumstances and human rights abuses. African nations earned their independence and transitioned to democracy in the post-colonial period. Democracy was touted as a method of creating security, stability, and wealth in African countries, as well as demonstrating Africa's independence. The transition to democratic states was viewed as a necessary step for African countries in order to meet the needs of citizens who had previously been enslaved and whose rights had been violated by colonizers. This article examines the current position of democracy in African States post colonialization. This article argues that African leaders have failed to deliver on their promises of democracy, as evidenced by the fact that African countries are characterized by political instability, corruption, poverty, poor public service delivery, inequality, and low economic growth. Only the political elites in Africa have reaped the benefits of democracy, while the rest of the population has fared less favorably. The authors contend that the process of democratization has not afforded democratic African states the opportunity to acquire solutions. The authors acknowledge the progress, made by democratic states; nevertheless, in spite of this progress, a greater number of Africans continue to live below the poverty line. Those who are elected to positions of power have the appearance of being there to serve the people, but in reality, they only serve themselves and their own interests.

The role of the UN and its structures in ensuring transitional justice in post-conflict states

Helping societies affected by conflict or emerging from oppressive rule to restore the rule of law and come to terms with widespread human rights abuses, particularly in the context of broken institutions, depleted resources, deteriorating security, and public anxiety and disunity, represents an enormous the problem Transitional justice aims to ensure recognition of victims, strengthen individuals' trust in state institutions, strengthen respect for human rights and promote the rule of law as a step towards reconciliation and prevention of further violations.
 Transitional justice processes have repeatedly demonstrated that they can help resolve problems and differences. To this end, such processes should be context-specific, state-responsive, and victim-focused. Then they can unite, empower and transform societies and thus contribute to lasting peace.
 For the United Nations system and structure, transitional justice is the full range of processes and mechanisms involved in society's attempt to come to terms with the legacy of massive past abuses in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation. Transitional justice processes and mechanisms are a critical component of the United Nations system and structure to strengthen the rule of law.
 United Nations rule of law and transitional justice activities include developing standards and best practices, assisting in the development and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms, providing technical, material and financial support, and promoting the mainstreaming of human rights and transitional justice in peace agreements.

Globalization and Localization of Holocaust Memory


 
 
 Western media’s narrative of the current Ukrainian refugee crisis has revealed underpinnings of white supremacist ethnic values that fuel Western cosmopolitanism. Integrating globalized cases of war and genocide into local narratives allows for Western nations to condemn human rights abuses while ignoring their own histories of atrocities. In this paper I present the processes of globalization and localization of Holocaust memorialization as a case study by which to understand how Western, globalized nations engage in dialogue about human rights. I first illustrate the emergence of discourses surrounding memory, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, which gave rise to a global Holocaust memory in the West. I then outline how this global memory was adopted locally, resulting in the nationalization of Holocaust memorialization. I argue that a consequence of the localization of Holocaust memory is that it serves to subvert local memories of human rights abuses, ultimately keeping colonial institutions intact.
 
 

Seeking Healing for a Mental Illness: Understanding the Care Experiences of Service Users at a Prayer Camp in Ghana.

Human rights abuses in mental health care are a global concern. Addressing the problem requires input from key stakeholders, particularly from people using mental health services. This study explored the experiences of persons with mental illness receiving care in a faith-based setting in Ghana. The study employed a qualitative design, with in-depth interviews (n = 23) and focus groups (n = 18 participants in 3 groups). The constant comparative method of analysis was used to identify themes in participants' descriptions of their experiences. The first three themes identified are consistent with human rights and coercion, and the last twothemes related to service users' views on participation in spiritual practices. Themes included: decision-making around care; consent and efficacy of religious healing; experiences with chaining; views around biomedical treatment; participation in religious activities as part of healing and recognition of the need for spiritual healing. It was observed that participants with prior experience of psychiatric treatment were happy about the absence of chaining in psychiatric facilities but strongly disliked the side effects of medications. These findings underscore the need for faith-based institutions to provide care that is consistent with patient preferences, thereby helping to address the resultant human rights abuses.

The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

Moving Towards Youth-Specific and Youth-Friendly Mental Health Platform a Case Study for Risk Stratification and Timely Intervention to Mitigate Mental Health Deterioration among Adolescents

Adolescents’ mental health issue has become an imperative focus of the youth development. According to WHO (World Health Organization) report, adolescents with mental health issues are more susceptible to social isolation, discrimination, stigma (which can impair their willingness to seek care), academic challenges, risk-taking behaviors, physical ill-health, and human rights abuses. Hence, we need to take efficient, customized, and collective actions to protect adolescents from further deterioration and solve their mental problems in a timely and specific approach. Out research team strives to investigate the antecedent, solution, mechanism for the youth mental health wellbeing. The projects has last two years and keep on collecting more quantitative and qualitative evidence and implications for establishing a universal-design, person-centered, and evidencebased digital therapeutics for youth development towards Post COVID-19 new normal.

The Social Media, Human Dignity and Linguistic Violence in Cameroon: A Socio-Pragmatic Perception

Conflicts, violence, human rights abuses, and the influence of the social media are the most serious challenges the modern world and emerging democracies face today, and Cameroon, in which verbal and nonverbal violence, has become a daily social fact, is no exception. The language that we speak or write influences our cultural identities, and perception of our social realities. The aim of the present study is to collect and examine specimens of speech acts specific to acts of violence used by the social media practitioners as sociolinguistic facts in Cameroon, in order to analyse the different expressions that typify instances of use depicting verbal or linguistic violence in their discourse. The types of words, phrases and linguistic forms identified and analysed characteristically describe these texts as authentic lexicon specific to discourse of conflict and violence within Cameroon in the context of social tension and the Anglophone crisis. The objective being to create more public awareness on the devastating consequences of violence to unity, human dignity, insecurity, peace and living together in Cameroon. To handle complex sociolinguistic data of this sort, the mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology was used to collect online reports from content creators, trained and untrained media practitioners and to analyse these from a sociopragmatic perspective in order to describe its impact on the readers and Cameroonians in situ. The qualitative discourse analysis used was based on a combination of different theoretical frameworks including the Critical Discourse Analysis, Speech Act Theory, Semantic theories, communicative acts, and sociopragmatics relevant to pragmatically explain some of the vocabulary, frequently occurring in the corpus and characteristic of the lexemes of violence, referred to as linguistic violence. Note that words carry and transmit powerful vibrations and emotional energy discharges capable of igniting feelings of hatred, anger, insecurity, intolerance, bitterness, and consequently gruesomely unacceptable acts of human rights abuses. Equally, after the analysis, findings reveal that the different discourse types employ different performative speech acts and stylistic devices including connotation, imagery, symbolism, synonymy, polysemy, and neologism in the forms of verbal abuses, insults, minimisation, and stigmatisation that characterise the contemporary Cameroon society, which suffers from verbal abuses and indecent language use that communicates specific hate-filled and hurtful messages characteristic of linguistic violence in Cameroon, with an urgent need to be addressed. After the analysis, several findings reveal an unprecedented increase in violence and atrocities committed by both separatists and government military on the Anglophone population in particular and on Cameroonians as a result of the Anglophone crisis in violation of human rights and dignity. While suggesting the need to seek for a genuine and an inclusive dialogue, tolerance, the use of polite and decent speech acts, for peace to return is imperative, findings equally reveal that conflict and acts of violence has greatly enriched the Cameroon English language vocabulary, compounding old words to take on new meanings and introducing new words with connotative meanings from other languages like French, local and Pidgin English languages.