Search results

This paper explores the health rights of prisoners as defined in international law, and the mechanisms that have been used to ensure the rights of persons in detention to realise the highest attainable standard of health. It examines this right as articulated within United Nations and regional human rights treaties, non‐binding or so‐called soft law instruments from international organisations and the jurisprudence of international human rights bodies. It explores the use of economic, social and cultural rights mechanisms, and those within civil and political rights, as they engage the right to health of prisoners, and identifies the minimum legal obligations of governments in order to remain compliant with human rights norms as defined within the international case law. In addressing these issues, this article adopts a holistic approach to the definition of the highest attainable standard of health. This includes a consideration of adequate standards of general medical care, including preventative health and mental health services. It also examines the question of environmental health, and those poor conditions of detention that may exacerbate health decline, disease transmission, mental illness or death. The paper examines the approach to prison health of the United Nations human rights system and its various monitoring bodies, as well as the regional human rights systems in Europe, Africa and the Americas. Based upon this analysis, the paper draws conclusions on the current fulfilment of the right to health of prisoners on an international scale, and proposes expanded mechanisms under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment to monitor and promote the health rights of prisoners at the international and domestic levels.

The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection.

One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts.

The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.

This article describes and clarifies the human rights of persons with disabilities in the context of detention in light of the recently adopted and already in force Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Convention). Focusing on the Convention, the article sheds light on the legality of certain forms of detention affecting persons with disabilities, the substantive and procedural requirements for their detention, and on their rights in relation to conditions of detention. This article also provides an account of the different treatments and practices inflicted on persons with disabilities in prisons and other institutions and assesses whether they constitute torture and ill treatment. The authors argue that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities represents a paradigm shift that requires States to modify and adopt laws, policies and practices that fully respect the right to liberty of persons with disabilities, and their equal enjoyment of rights while in detention, including the right to be free from torture and ill treatment.

Trafficking¹ in human beings is gross.² It constitutes one of the most egregious violations of human rights.³ The vile nature of human trafficking is also hinged on the fact that it commodifies human beings. Hence its categorisation is modern slavery.⁴ So much of trafficking activities follow the pathways5 of other transnational forms of organised crimes and irregular cross-border movement of people.6 In response to this egregious crime, several international, regional and country laws and instruments have been used or proposed for combatting human trafficking.7 These instruments forbid trafficking in human persons and provide several preventive measures, prosecution of perpetrators and protection of victims of human trafficking.8 The number of state parties to the United Nations Protocol to prevent suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol), demonstrates the global commitment to combatting human trafficking. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on legal systems, and the capacity of both state and private institutions to combat human trafficking, has added a knotty twist to the global problem of human trafficking. This essay looks at the trends of human trafficking in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlights international law and policy approaches that state parties and civil society organisations should adopt to counteract the changes and sustain the fight against human trafficking. Thus, the essay contributes to updating the legal and policy approaches to combat human trafficking in this era.

This chapter is about child labour as slavery in modern and modernizing societies in an era of rapid globalization.

For the most part, child slavery in modern societies is hidden from view and cloaked in social customs, this being convenient for economic exploitation purposes.

The aim of this chapter is to bring children's ‘modern slavery’ out of the shadows, and thereby to help clarify and shape relevant social discourse and theory, social policies and practices, slavery-related legislation and instruments at all levels, and above all children's everyday lives, relationships and experiences.

The main focus is on issues surrounding (i) the concept of ‘slavery’; (ii) the types of slavery in the world today; (iii) and ‘child labour’ as a type, or basis, of slavery.

There is an in-depth examination of the implications of the notion of ‘slavery’ within international law for child labour, and especially that performed through schooling.

According to one influential approach, ‘slavery’ is a state marked by the loss of free will where a person is forced through violence or the threat of violence to give up the ability to sell freely his or her own labour power. If so, then hundreds of millions of children in modern and modernizing societies qualify as slaves by virtue of the labour they are forced – compulsorily and statutorily required – to perform within schools, whereby they, their labour and their labour power are controlled and exploited for economic purposes.

Under globalization, such enslavement has almost reached global saturation point.

This chapter examines how international human rights law is shaping the politics of immigration. It argues that migrant human rights are neither conceptually nor practically incompatible with an international order premised upon state territorial sovereignty, and that the specific aesthetics of the contemporary international human rights system, namely its formalistic and legalistic tendencies, has facilitated its integration with a realm of policymaking traditionally reserved to state discretion. An exploration of two areas in the emerging field of migrant human rights traces the multi-scalar transnational legal processes through which these norms are formulated and internalized.

This paper aims to provide an overview and viewpoint on current international initiatives relating to the human rights of older people.

The paper provides a review of recent and current developments in relation to the human rights of older people and some discussion of these issues.

In addition to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there are separate conventions on the rights of women, children and persons with disabilities. However, there is currently no universal, binding legal instrument on the human rights of older people, although work is in progress at international level in an attempt to remedy this lack.

This brief paper aims to provide an overview of a complex current issue for those not familiar with the topic, so it is not able to provide an in-depth analysis of the topic.

Social workers and other human services professionals, particularly those who work with older adults, including those working in the health-care sector, should have knowledge and understanding about this important issue.

Many older people face inequalities that result from existing gaps in the protection of their rights. This includes issues relating to Intersecting forms of discrimination that adversely affect some older adults. Individuals should be able to age with dignity so they can lead dignified, self-determined and secure lives – and need protection of their human rights to enable them to do so.

This paper provides a viewpoint on current international initiatives concerning the human rights of older people.

Purpose: The United States became a member of the United Nations’ (UN’s) core anti-racism treaty, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), but has not passed the UN’s core gender equality treaty, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This chapter explores why the United States passed only one of the conventions. It reviews the power, misinterpretation, and compliance theories that explain why only one of the treaties was ratified. In addition, it offers a fourth explanation of the nation’s behavior – that of relative cost.

Findings: This chapter shows that CEDAW’s mandates, which are specific in nature, are costlier with respect to public services, educational resources, and programs to alleviate cultural prejudices, than are the more broadly framed ICERD mandates. This chapter finds this difference as a driving factor for the nation to enter into the race convention and not the women’s rights pact.

Methodologies: Methodologies used in this publication include feminist and legal analyses and the examination of US policies as well as statements made by political figures.

Originality: This chapter makes contributions to legal and feminist scholarship by providing insight into the nation’s adoption of ICERD, and its failure to ratify CEDAW despite its stance that it is a supporter of women’s rights. The implications of this study are that while the power, misinterpretation, and compliance theories are useful to understand the apparent discrepant response to the two treaties, relative cost as defined by the different ways in which the treaties are framed is also useful in explaining the United States’ failure to ratify the gender equality treaty. Though CEDAW is more specific in its identification of equality issues and is costlier than ICERD, the advancement of both gender and racial equality in the United States falls short of international standards.

This chapter examines the delicate balance achieved by apex courts in new democracies when dealing with impunity for rights violations during times of transitional justice. While international law has clearly rejected amnesties for past rights violations, domestic politics sometimes incorporate amnesties as part of larger peace settlements. This puts courts in the difficult situation of balancing the competing demands of law and politics. Courts have achieved equipoise in this situation by adopting substantive interpretations and procedural approaches that use international law’s rights-based language but without implementing international law’s restrictions on amnesties. In many cases, courts do this without acknowledging the necessarily pragmatic nature of their decisions. In fact, oftentimes courts find ways of avoiding having to make any substantive decision, effectively removing themselves from a dispute that could call into question their adherence to international legal norms that transcend politics. In doing so, they empower political actors to continue down the road toward negotiated peace settlements, while at the same time protecting the courts’ legitimacy as institutions uniquely situated to protect international human rights norms – including those they have effectively deemphasized in the process.