Abstract
De Coninck J, The EU's Human Rights Responsibility Gap Deconstructing Human Rights Impunity of International Organisations (Bloomsbury Publishing 2024)
Can the EU be held legally responsible for its contributions to human rights harms in its Integrated Border Management policy? Or do systemic legal design flaws in the EU's human rights responsibility regime give rise to a significant responsibility gap?
This book delves into these pressing questions, offering a transversal analysis of applicable legal frameworks under international and EU law. Divided into three parts, the book first analyses the international and EU human rights responsibility frameworks, revealing both ‘normative incongruency’ as well as ‘liability incongruency’. Part two applies these frameworks to specific illustrations within the four tiers of the EU's Integrated Border Management, exposing the critical points where responsibility falters. Building on these findings and drawing from shared responsibility and relationality theories, part three briefly introduces ‘Relational Human Rights Responsibility’ as an alternative method to ascertaining human rights responsibility of the EU specifically, and international organisations more generally.
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Durovic M and Poncibò C (eds), The European Convention on Human Rights and Private Law Comparative Perspectives from South-Eastern Europe (Bloomsbury Publishing 2024)
In this book a team of expert contributors address challenging issues concerning the relationship between private law and the rule of law and human rights, with specific focus on case studies from South-Eastern Europe.
The book examines the broadening application of human rights to the private law fields and the resulting effects. Contributors offer a truly interdisciplinary perspective drawn from comparative law, civil law, procedural law and public law. By so doing, for the first time, they offer insights into the fascinating questions the region poses for private law and human rights.
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El-Malak L, Stolen Nation: The Right to Reparation of Palestinian Refugees (I.B. Tauris 2024)
While Palestinians continue to face the threat of expulsion from their homes, identifying legal mechanisms that can be used to assert Palestinian's property rights is needed more than ever. This book provides a legal analysis of the right to reparation of Palestinian refugees under international law for the destruction and expropriation of their property during the Nakba. Discussing the legal landscape related to property ownership prior to the creation of the State of Israel and the legal basis for the right to reparation under international law, Lena El-Malak advocates for a law-based approach to enforce this right and the form it should take.
The book demonstrates how the legal rights of Palestinian refugees, specifically as related to their properties, have been marginalized and excluded from the political discourse of the “peace process”. Here, the legal rights of Palestinian refugees are demonstrated, challenges for invoking these rights in international and domestic courts are determined, and forms of restitution and compensation outlined. This study offers a timely contribution to provide a comprehensive legal, as opposed to a political, economic or historical analysis, of the right to reparation of Palestinian refugees for their property losses. Additionally, the book seeks to demonstrate the importance of adopting a legal framework in any future negotiation for a peaceful resolution to this long standing struggles for liberation.
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García Escobar G, Plurality as the Core of Human Rights Universality: Rediscovering the Spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 through the Right to Self- Determination (Peter Lang 2024)
“Liberal universality” is the dominant framework of human rights in the literature. This paradigm asserts that human rights norms must be interpreted by prioritizing individualism, secularism, and autonomy in all spheres of life. According to this perspective, religiously grounded and duty-oriented visions should not be part of human rights standards, and in some cases, they must be excluded from international debates. This situation is due to a lack of academic scrutiny of the difference between human rights as internationally recognized norms and human rights standards or interpretations as developed by international mechanisms through this paradigm. The case study of the current development of sexual and reproductive health and rights reveals key problems with this interpretative framework: its questionable neutrality, its reduced notion of viewpoint diversity, and its top-down approach that disregards people's real concerns. This book proposes to go back to basics by rediscovering the notion of “pluralistic universality” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which welcomes interdependent and religiously grounded worldviews that are more compatible with non-Western cultures and some Western traditions. In this sense, the book encourages a redefinition of the universality of human rights in the light of the right to self-determination, as a tool to foster bottom-up approaches, intercultural dialogue, and global consensus for the development of universally acceptable human rights standards. In this way, these standards will enjoy greater legitimacy because they will reflect an international agreement that is responsive to local realities and one that accepts reasonable disagreement in controversial issues.
The increasing number of voices questioning the legitimacy of the implementation of human rights will lead to a widespread loss of faith in the concept of human right itself. Reverting this tendency is an urgent task that reveals the gap between the norms ruling the monitoring bodies and their actual performance. In accepting this challenge, this book will be a necessary source of study for anyone concerned with the purpose and practice of human rights.
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Hanc J, Sitarz O, and Jaworska-Wieloch A, On the (Non) Existence of the Right to Religious Freedom of Persons Deprived of Liberty: A Reconstruction of the Normative Standard Based on Polish and German Regulations in Comparison with Empirical Studies (Peter Lang 2024)
This book is the result of research conducted in Polish post-criminal isolation units related to the accessibility of religious practices and services for people incarcerated there. The study covered individuals from 35 units, including prisoners from 15 penitentiary facilities and 4 detention centres, as well as juveniles from 8 youth educational centres and 8 correctional facilities. The research also involved educators from those units who presented the religious life of convicts and detainees from their own perspective. The empirical part was preceded by considerations on the social and individual significance of religion and an outline of international and national (Polish and German) standards of religious freedom, including in post-criminal isolation units.
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Khair S, Alam S, and Muhammad Ekramul Haque (eds), Implementation of Sustainable Development in the Global South: Strategies, Innovations, and Challenges (Hart Publishing 2024)
This open access book hinges on three broad but interlinked elements: sustainable development as a concept, sustainable development in the Global South, and implementation challenges.
The advent of the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda have contributed to the deepening of the concept of sustainable development within global and national policy schemes. The fact that sustainable development is crucial for our very survival is no longer a contested issue; rather, the key concern now is how this can be achieved equitably by reconciling competing priorities and concerns of the Global South and the Global North. While the Global South countries are eager to adopt and integrate the 2030 Agenda in their respective policy frameworks, local contexts are often at odds with the global model of sustainable development.
The book examines national capacities and institutional arrangements in countries in the Global South. It considers the challenges of integrating sustainable development in national policy frameworks. This includes the role, interactions, and inter-dependence of different branches of international law in, inter alia, protecting human rights, promoting access to justice, ensuring environmental justice, guaranteeing social protection, and safeguarding the rule of law for sustainable societies. This book explores the emerging patterns and processes of development projects that have either succeeded or failed, critical reflections on what has been achieved and whose interests the projects served, and the costs and benefits of particular interventions.
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Khan BU and Bhuiyan JH (eds), Human Rights after 75 Years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Reflections from the Global South (Brill | Nijhoff 2024)
This book aims to contribute to the global observance of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 1948. It considers nature and development of international human rights law. It considers how human rights interact with other regimes such as intellectual property, foreign direct investment, corporate social responsibility, international environmental law, humanitarian law, refugee law, economic law, and criminal law.
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Mayer S and Lempp J (eds), The EU as an Actor in Central Asia: External Impacts, Regional Responses (Springer 2024)
‘The European Union has matured as an actor in Central Asia but research has not followed suit. This is changing with this volume. Longtime Central Asia watchers with insights into EU policies offer a tour through the EU kitchen of foreign policymaking and discuss the Central Asian reaction to Brussels menu.’ – Jos Boonstra, Senior Researcher and Coordinator of the Europe-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM) initiative at the Centre for European Security Studies in Groningen, The Netherlands.
This volume explains the behavior of the European Union (EU) towards Central Asia. In so doing, the responses of regional actors which impact the EUs regional conduct, and the effects of competing external governance providers (particularly Russia and China), are considered. The current literature often from an interdisciplinary, descriptive area studies angle reveals some research gaps. Scholars chiefly explore the impacts of the EU on Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, while action of the EU itself with its decision-making, preferences, and underlying drivers, remains underspecified. Focusing more explicitly on the EU, chapters in the book are systematically organized along a set of shared, overarching questions.
Ultimately, the authors depict and explain EU action and assess how successful the organization has been in achieving its stated regional objectives in a number of policy fields: Economic Development and Trade; Security; Democratization and Human Rights; Water; and Education.
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Raza F, Religious Accommodation and Its Limits (Hart Publishing 2023)
On what grounds should religious accommodation claims be limited? When do religious claims harm the autonomy of others? This book proposes an original model of religious accommodation which can be applied in secular liberal democracies where religious diversity has been a hotly contested issue. Addressing the complex question of limitations to the right to Freedom of Religion or Belief and how these limitations might be determined, it examines how religious claims can harm the autonomy of others and emphasises the need for an appropriate balancing of competing interests. Drawing on a range of case study examples from jurisdictions including the US, Canada, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Union's Court of Justice, the UK, Germany and France, this is a timely contribution to the debate on how a legal duty or policy approach in favour of religious accommodation can be applied in practice. Moreover, the proposed model offers criteria that may be used to guide the implementation of equality and diversity policies in contexts such as employment and education. The book will be of interest to academics, legal practitioners and policy-makers in the field.
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Romano CPR and Boggio A, The Human Right to Science: History, Development, and Normative Content (Oxford University Press 2024)
Recognized as early as 1948, the right to benefit from progress in science & its applications (known more succinctly as ‘the right to science’) has long confounded international legal scholars & practitioners. While it is key to properly framing the relationship between science, technology, & society, the right to science continues to be poorly understood & very rarely invoked by those who could benefit from it.
The Human Right to Science: History, Development, and Normative Content offers a thorough and systematic analysis of this pivotal human right. After discussing the aims, methodology, and key definitions, the book examines the historical origins of the right to science, from the American Declaration of Human Rights to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It then turns to mapping the development of the right within the United Nations system (including UNESCO) and its spread to regional regimes. Finally, the book breaks down the normative content of the right to science into twenty-two distinct rights, grouped in four clusters: the right to scientific progress, to responsible scientific progress, to participate in scientific progress, and to benefit from scientific progress. For each, the book describes in detail the legal basis, content, corresponding obligations, and indicators. The book closes by recommending the adoption of a Science Treaty to fully realize the potential that the human rights framework can offer to the regulation of science and technology.
Authored by two leading experts in international law and science policy, The Human Right to Science meticulously explores the right's origins, development, and normative content. In doing so, it uncovers previously unarticulated entitlements and obligations, offering new insights on human rights interconnections.
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Tarvet R (ed), European Minorities in Times of Crisis: Negotiating Identities (Routledge 2025)
Over the last decade, Europe has been struggling to cope with a series of significant and challenging global crises. Dramatic scenes from the so-called migrant crises, global financial crises, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have sent shockwaves across Europe's borders and have triggered drastic and sometimes even unprecedented responses from nation states. Caught between the shockwaves and counter-measures are Europe's national minority communities. With little say or influence in national discussions on which measures to take in response to each crisis and often situated in peripheral or border regions, it is likely that these communities have been subjected to shifts in power balances and this may have even impacted their regional, national and transnational identities. By combining various sociological and anthropological methodologies with case studies from across Northern, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, this book stresses the importance of listening to the unique concerns of minority communities in times of crisis. Starting in the Arctic circle and working down in a reverse C-shape through Europe, each stop along the journey visits a different national minority community, where we learn about their multicultural, multilingual and transnational lifestyles and the distinct challenges they have faced in recent years. This book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Human Geography, Border Studies, European Studies, Sociology, Politics, Minority Studies and Language studies.