Practice Of Human Rights Research Articles

Goodbye to Afghans

The Genealogies of complicity and struggle between Afghanistan and Pakistan date back to a single-page Agreement of 1893 (Duran line) and the invasion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1979. The squabble of the World towards Pakistan with its inglorious policy to deport undocumented 1.7 million refugees to a war-stricken country is inhuman and wrong and leaves them as political pawns. The Mass Exodus of Afghan Refugees and the anti-immigrant policy of Pakistan trigger some legal questions: Why is Pakistan deporting Afghans at this point? Who hears the voice of suffering at the dark noon? What happens next to these deportees? The existing article is poignant in examining the status of human rightslessness of sans-papiers under the human rights paradigm in Pakistan. In tandem with this, the paper also discusses the human rights dimension from the lens of the perplexing situation that prevails in Afghanistan. This article is percolated by axiomatic development in the theory and practice of human rights supplanted by wretched migrants. Thus, this paper offers a series of fragments of thought concerning some ways of understanding the changing human rights paradigms in Afghans.

Mind the Gap: Conflicts in the Implementation of Kenya’s Lake Turkana Wind Power Project

Renewable energy projects are increasingly being implemented at scale to meet global climate goals, often targeting lands on the margins of the state and affecting the livelihoods of Indigenous or marginalized populations. This article argues a need for project-developers, investors and rights advocates to consider the potentially significant ‘gap’ between their expectations that the rights of local populations will be settled at the start of a particular investment and the conflicts over rights, recognition and benefits that emerge during implementation that risk derailing investments. This is particularly relevant for renewable investments, as their claims to global and national benefits divert attention from their local impacts. Empirically, this is explored through the case of the Lake Turkana Wind Power project in Kenya. Based on interviews and literature review, the article examines the relations between the key stakeholders in this project by acknowledging their various ‘ways of seeing’ rights. Ruling elites often see rights as settled once they have been written into law and investors assume that rights have been dealt with at the project’s start, but local populations typically begin exploring their rights following project-induced changes. The interaction of stakeholders with such diverse views has important implications for the practice of human rights in the context of renewable energy investments.

A spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights

In recent years, there have been significant challenges to women’s rights. In addition to external attacks, internal challenges include a dichotomous, oppositional and gendered framework of human rights, as well as the problem of burnout and trauma in the field. Feminists have been addressing these problems by offering a reconceptualisation of rights, developing the concept of spiritual activism, emphasising the power of erotics and pleasure in activism, as well as incorporating self- and collective-care practices. Taking into account feminist contributions and work that still needs to be done, as well as my own personal experiences in the fields of human rights, self-development and spirituality, in this article I engage with the concept of care and spirituality to propose changes in the conceptualisation and practices of human rights, with a view to developing a feminist spiritually orientated (self-)care approach to human rights.

Uncertain Solidarities: The Politics of an Impartial Human Rights Stance in Occupied Palestine

Abstract: Protective accompaniment is a non-violent intervention strategy used by international civil society organisations working in the occupied Palestinian territories. This article explores one accompaniment organisation's discourse and practice of human rights based impartiality. Firstly, the universalising rhetoric of human rights is shown to be a strategic device which acts to obscure the specifics of a mission to protect Palestinian subjects. Secondly, examining accompaniment as praxis in the West Bank, a 'non-partisan' stance is shown to result in an embodied and ideological withdrawal from those being accompanied. Despite Palestinian calls for international support which commits to physically and ideologically being 'with the people', it is argued there are significant limits to accompaniment's potential to support the struggle against settler-colonialism.

The Ayotzinapa case (Mexico) and the role of the European Parliament as a moral tribune to promote human rights worldwide

ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of the European Parliament as an international moral tribune for the promotion of human rights through a qualitative case-study design. It focuses on the emblematic Ayotzinapa case, which involved the enforced disappearance of 43 young rural students and the killing of other six civilians in Mexico in September 2014. The paper innovatively analyses the parliamentary diplomacy activity of four Members and their respective political groups: Franziska ‘Ska’ Keller (Greens/EFA, Germany), Josep-Maria Terricabras i Nogueras (Greens/EFA, Spain), Estefanía Torres Martínez (GUE/NGL, Spain) and Teresa Jiménez-Becerril Barrio (EPP, Spain), during the 8th parliamentary term (2014–2019). It addresses: How does the European Parliament, acting as an international moral tribune, exercise its role in promoting human rights in practice? Importantly, how do individual members and their political groups contribute to fulfilling this role? The research findings reveal that the phenomenon of parliamentary diplomacy on human rights is highly complex, challenging the mainstream notion that the European Parliament is a monolithic player acting as a moral tribune in international relations. Results also provide important insight for understanding the (micro-)processes of parliamentary diplomacy and their relevance for human rights advocacy within the European Union’s external relations and its Member States’.

Best Practices of Human Rights in a Democratic Country

This article has displayed the state of human rights practices and provisions in a democratic nation, Nepal. Democracy, progress, the rule of law, and the preservation of human rights and fundamental freedoms are all inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing. Nepal, being a democratic nation hence ensures human rights to its citizen. From the past few decades to the present date, a number of progresses have been made in the practices and provisions. The backward and underprivileged groups have been rendered their rights in accordance with the 2015 Constitution. Nevertheless, the Nepalese government has continuously neglected the Commission's recommendations to examine and prosecute human rights violations in accordance with the obligations of the Constitution. The government of Nepal should focus on the human rights movement which is also facing enormous difficulties from numerous activities that contravene the essential spirit of the constitution, democratic norms, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This paper has presented the progression in human rights provisions and practices and even made suggestions to be more proactive in ratifying the Rome Statute as soon as feasible in order to improve Nepal’s international image.

ASEAN’in İnsan Hakları Perspektifinin Dönüşen Niteliği: Vizyon ve Uygulama

The matter of human rights was not a priority topic in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regionalism in the 20th century. However, human rights have become an important issue of cooperation in the ASEAN regionalism in the 21st century. From this point of view, this article analyzes the motivations that guide ASEAN cooperation regarding human rights, the historical development of the cooperation process and the problems faced by cooperation in the field of human rights in practice. The article’s main argument is that while ASEAN has strengthened collaboration in human rights in theory in the 21st century, it has not developed a similar behavior in practice, and there is an imbalance between the theory and practice in cooperation concerning human rights. This study shows that ASEAN’s traditional method of collaboration based on consensus-based decision-making and non-binding institutions has caused to a decrease in the effectiveness of cooperation over human rights and means that ASEAN is unable to reply effectively to human rights violations.

Does the Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights Fit the Practical Conception of Human Rights?

Abstract This article investigates how the practice of European human rights, organised around the European Convention on Human Rights, can be brought into conversation with the practice conception of human rights advanced by Charles Beitz in the Idea of Human Rights. The article argues that this is a challenging task. Following Beitz’s construction of the human rights practice composed of (a) a global practice, (b) political discursive practice, (c) triggering a range of international action for corrective concern, (d) when states fail to protect urgent individual interests, the article identifies two main challenges: (1) the regional and legal-political character of the European human rights practice and (2) the lack of fit between the heuristic of urgency of individual interests and the European human rights practice. Having identified these challenges, however, I conclude that putting European human rights practice and the practice conception into a conversation reveals new knowledge at the intersection of moral and legal accounts of human rights. A closer engagement with the practice conception enables a better understanding of the key abstract features of European human rights practice. A closer engagement with this practice accentuates the normative case for making sense of predominantly legal and regional practices of human rights.

Resistance and Reform as Responses to Human Rights Criticism: Relativism at FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

AbstractThe language of human rights is a prominent tool of choice to push for moral principles such as justice, equity, and fairness in the social, economic, and political spheres. Simultaneously, the concept and practice of human rights have attracted critiques. Relativism is one such enduring critique. Relativists advocate due and reasonable consideration towards cultural diversity and specificity of diverse human communities, within the limits allowed by universality of human rights. The relativist critique featured prominently in the debates surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup 2022. Commentators have spoken about Qatar’s scrutiny often moving beyond legitimate human rights criticism, uninformed activism being counterproductive; and the appropriateness of, largely, Western and maximalist ideals of human rights being applied without accounting for local needs and peculiarities. In this Article, I bring together the literature on the relativist critique and the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 as a case study, to examine the usefulness and limitation of human rights as a language of critique to achieve meaningful transformative change in sporting contexts. I focus on the debates surrounding the rights of migrant workers and the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community; and argue that while human rights advocacy had a notable impact in relation to FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, it is a tale full of cautions and lessons.

Objectives of State Human Rights Protection Activities in the Russian Federation

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.

From welfare state to savage capitalism: human rights and neoliberalism at the end of 20th century

At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, the world experienced a process of profound material, economic, social and technological transformations. Trade liberalisation, labour deregulation and mass impoverishment were the hallmarks of this period. In neo-liberalism, human and social rights are foreshadowed, but, from the outset, they are made to be ineffective. That said, from a dialectical-historical-materialist perspective, the present study revolves around the question of whether the political, economic and social phenomenon called neoliberalism is politically compatible with the practice of human rights. The hypothesis is that human rights would not be inured by the neo-liberal world project, insofar as savage capitalism relegates these rights to the place of ideals that are positively stated on the abstract level, but never put into effect in the world of facts. In conclusion, it is observed that Joaquín Herrera Flores’ theory of human rights, the theoretical framework adopted, is not in harmony with the neoliberal world-system, because it is that one, in ideology and in practice, a call for constant struggle against exactly everything that this system represents, there being no room for rights as objects given by a mercadological-transcendental nature.

Islandness in human rights, human rights in islandness: Missing voices

Island Studies literature has rarely engaged with human rights law to scrutinise how the development of human rights standards and/or their (in)efficient implementation on islands contour the lives of islanders and islandness itself. Along similar lines, human rights research and practice do not systematically take into account islandness and Island Studies research. The present article explores the mutual reticence between human rights law and Island Studies, suggesting, though, that both fields can offer each other important opportunities for development. It advocates, in particular, that it is high time for a cohesive human rights and islands approach which is based on the human rights-based approach of islandness and the islandness-based approach in human rights. A potential cross-fertilisation between human rights law and Island Studies can be very promising not only for the advancement of the respective fields from a scholarly point of view, but also for a more efficient understanding of islandness and protection of human rights in practice.

Christianity, Human Rights, and American Political Polarization

Over the course of the twentieth century, American conceptions of rights became more global. This development—usually described as a move from “civil rights” to “human rights”—was especially acute in American Christian communities. The role of Christianity deserves our attention because of the religion's important role in the conceptualization, popularization, and practice of human rights in the United States and, thanks to Christians’ overseas networks, to every corner of the world.1The increasingly global understanding of rights, however, did not lead to the liberalization of rights for American Christians. True, human rights talk contributed to important milestones in religious pluralism and the Civil Rights movement, and often served as a gateway to democratic liberalism for some groups resistant to the American liberal tradition. Human rights, however, were not only a liberal project. Conservatives also embraced human rights but in starkly different ways. The divergent interpretations of human rights were not merely a reflection of the growing political divide in the second half of the twentieth century. Christian activists’ adoption of human rights helped forge new alliances and exacerbated the divide between liberal and conservative Christianity, and between political liberalism and political conservatism.

Teaching Human Rights History

This article reflects on methods of teaching a master seminar on Human Rights in Canadian History at Carleton University in 2020 in conjunction with theoretical approaches to the topic. The reflection is organized around the following themes: Open-Ended Definitions of Human Rights, Pedagogies of Inquiry and Freedom of Thought, Teaching Evolving Ideas and Practices of Human Rights in Time and Place, Histories of “The Quest for New Rights.”

Obstacles to and opportunities for protecting human rights at the city level: The case of Madrid City Council Human Rights Plan (2017–2019)

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the concept idea of ‘human rights city’ and explores its practice. It starts from the concepts of human rights cities and subsidiarity to explain what a human rights city is and delves into the existing literature identifying the challenges to guarantee human rights in local contexts, such as the legal framework, education and training, the institutional structure, and the resources. Our article is based on an empirical-based study of Madrid Human Rights Plan (2017–2019). We carried out semi-structured interviews, focus group, and participant observation to grasp the obstacles that civil servants encounter in the implementation of the Plan. We identify five types of obstacles that we classify as conceptual, ideological, legal, organisational, and budgetary. Our study questions the idea that the local context, just because of its proximity to the citizenry, is the best equipped level of government to guarantee human rights. Without proper training and resources human rights can be lost in translation. Through the identification of such obstacles in a specific case study, we contribute to the academic debate on human rights in practice with the aim of fostering its guarantee in local contexts.

Subaltern subjectivity and embodiment in human rights practices

Abstract This article problematises the representation of subaltern resistance in practices of human rights. It critiques the normative framing of the subaltern by those practices, a framing which it argues contributes to their subjugation. Against such framing, the article follows the 2011 Egyptian uprising through the film Rags & Tatters, offering a practice of freedom beyond human rights and through self-recollection.

Shifting Wrongs to Rights: Lessons in Human Rights from the Situation of Mothers Impacted by Albinism in Africa

AbstractDebates about legitimizing human rights in Africa have centred on making universal human rights principles relevant to local social and cultural contexts. Localizing human rights norms requires seeing human rights in terms of relevance to specific situations rather than as the application of abstract principles. In this paper, scholars and advocates analyse the challenges in the practice of human rights, with a focus on mothers impacted by albinism, whether as mothers of children with albinism or as mothers with albinism themselves. Women and girls impacted by albinism are particularly vulnerable to human rights violations and reflect the unfulfilled promise of the United Nations principle to ‘Leave no one behind’. On account of intersecting factors—including denial of humanity; gendered stigma, discrimination and disenfranchisement; lack of access to the social determinants of health; and violence—mothers impacted by albinism are truly amongst those ‘furthest behind’. Drawing on the frameworks of vernacularization and culturalization, we conceptualize and contextualize human rights in relation to the unique experiences of mothers impacted by albinism in Tanzania, South Africa, and Ghana. Our analysis takes up four particularities that pose challenges to protecting the rights of mothers impacted by albinism: personhood as foundation for human rights; the communal nature of human rights; proportionality and human rights; and the intersectional nature of human rights. These particularities shed light on human rights practice for mothers impacted by albinism and carry implications for human rights practice more broadly.

Operationalising the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights through Human Rights Due Diligence: A Critical Assessment of Current States Practices

The past one decade had witnessed how the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) shaped the global standard for responsible business, while it had also indicated the ineffectiveness of implementation. At present, the potential of human rights due diligence to operationalise the UNGPs tends to be recognised by both state and non-state actors. States around the globe are undertaking various approaches to institutionalise human rights due diligence to fulfil their duty to protect under international human rights law. Against this backdrop, the paper aims to explore current practices of human rights due diligence institutionalisations and provides a holistic assessment of different models adopted by state actors. The research result argues that among the three major models, i.e., NAPs Model, mHRDD Model and BHR Treaty-based Model, the NAPs Model is a more optimal solution to operationalize the UNGPs. This judgment bases on not only the innate merits of the NAPs Model but also on its potential to avoid adverse impacts resulting from unilateral legislation and to foster consensus for a business and human rights treaty.
 
 Received: 5 March 2022 / Accepted: 7 May 2022 / Published: 5 July 2022

Indigenous Peoples on the Move: Intersectional Invisibility and the Quest for Pluriversal Human Rights for Indigenous Migrants from Venezuela in Brazil

ABSTRACT Indigenous migrants are often treated without regard for their status as Indigenous Peoples, as if their migrant status would hierarchically supersede their Indigenous one. The flow of Indigenous migrants from Venezuela to neighboring countries has largely increased over the years. Currently, there are several Indigenous Peoples from Venezuela in Brazil. This evaluative interdisciplinary research addresses the relations between Indigenous and migration human rights protection with consideration for decolonial perspectives. It questions how living coloniality impacts Indigenous migrants' rights, leading to their intersectional invisibility, and how decolonial views on human rights may help overcoming these challenges. It claims that a decolonial perspective on human rights rooted in the pluriverse may situate human rights as emancipatory scripts when led by Indigenous cosmologies. Ultimately, this article aims to contribute to critical understandings on the intersectional oppression faced by Indigenous migrants and, by calling for a shift towards pluriversal approaches to their human rights, illustrate possible paths to the realization of Indigenous migrants' rights and the need to decolonize their lived realities. This may inform potential directions for decolonizing the human rights agenda as well as the law and practice of human rights in the case of Indigenous migrants in Latin America.

Autonomous Interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights and Margin of Appreciation

Summary The article is devoted to the problem of interpretation and application in practice of the European human rights standards through autonomous interpretation, as well as to the definition of the role and significance of the doctrine of margin of appreciation in this process. The relevance of the subject matter of research is due to the need to implement effective mechanisms for ensuring and protecting key human rights and freedoms in Ukraine, the establishment of the European principles of law and the European identity. The purpose of the study is a comprehensive analysis of the formation and evolution of the doctrine of autonomous interpretation in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights by studying and synthesizing judicial practice on the application of autonomous interpretation and elaboration on this basis of a system of autonomous concepts that reflect the common European vision of fundamental human rights and are also a kind of foundation of the European human rights law. The methodological basis of the paper are philosophical, general scientific and special research methods, in particular, dialectical, historical, logical, systemic, sociological, and comparative methods. The study concludes that it is through autonomous interpretation based on the European consensus that the European Court of Human Rights establishes imperative standards for the interpretation and application of human rights in practice, which prevents certain violations by particular member states of the Council of Europe, as well as supports the convergence and harmonization of different national legal systems, which contributes to the formation of the most homogeneous legal environment and the European system of human rights protection. The practical feasibility of the study is aimed primarily at applying autonomous concepts in practice, prima facie, by the judiciary.