{"title":"How are the Paris Principles on NHRIs Interpreted? Towards a Clear, Transparent, and Consistent Interpretative Framework","authors":"Hinako Takata","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2040863","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2040863","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although they fall outside of the traditional sources of international law, the Principles relating to the Status of National Institutions (Paris Principles) have enjoyed an authoritative value in international human rights law. International human rights bodies have increasingly permitted Paris Principles-compliant national human rights institutions (NHRIs) to participate in their activities not as part of the state but in the institutions’ own capacity, and have required states to establish NHRIs or strengthen existing NHRIs in accordance with the Paris Principles. How, then, are the Paris Principles interpreted? This study critically analyses the three principles governing the interpretation of the Paris Principles – the dynamic interpretation principle, the normative gradation principle, and the overall evaluation principle – through a comprehensive examination of the practice of the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), and makes recommendations for their improvement and consolidation.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77555616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Right to Adequate Shelter for Asylum Seekers in the European Union","authors":"I. Westendorp","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2085007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2085007","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Asylum seekers who enter the European Union (EU) need temporary housing while awaiting the outcome of their asylum application procedures. It is unclear, however, which conditions must be fulfilled to achieve the goal defined by the EU that asylum seekers enjoy an ‘adequate standard of living’, including housing. Because this goal is only described in general terms, there are large differences in asylum seekers’ accommodation in and among EU member states. This article argues that multiple purposes would be served if the EU would adopt a right to adequate shelter for asylum seekers as a common accommodation standard with well described material conditions. In order to determine whether there would be a legal basis for a right to adequate shelter, and which conditions should be met, the article presents relevant sources of human right law and EU law. It also consults scholarly articles, NGO reports, blogs, and newspapers. An examination of the actual reception circumstances shows that several problems need to be addressed. Based on this analysis, I argue that the conditions for adequate shelter encompass safety, dignity, adequate structure, appropriate space and facilities, and temporariness.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78049240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constitutional Rights in Socialist East Asia","authors":"Tien-Duc Nguyen, P. Viola","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2096777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2096777","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT China, North Korea, and Viet Nam are three essentially socialist countries that have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. A salient commonality among them is the homogeneity of their cultural roots and the socialist legal tradition, which have continued to influence every facet of government and society. These lingering cultural and legal affinities have generated a different understanding of constitutional rights in relation to liberal counterparts. For strategic purposes, China and Viet Nam have faced a pressing need to remodel their rights conceptions to a certain universalist degree, while North Korea has remained almost immune to the globalisation of constitutional rights. To overcome historical negligence and cultural insensitivity, this article seeks to probe the interplay of various strands of values in shaping constitutional rights of socialist East Asia. It also demonstrates various implications from the study of socialist constitutional rights that could contribute heuristically and practically to the rights discourse.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86108305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Tug of War: Pursuing Justice Amid Armed Conflict","authors":"Bård Drange","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2097787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2097787","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Despite its prevalence in armed conflicts globally, the pursuit of justice and human rights during armed conflict has received relatively little attention compared with efforts taken post-conflict. In this article, I discuss the trajectory of state-led measures to tackle human rights abuses while violence is ongoing, with a focus on the interplay between actors seeking to expose and those seeking to conceal human rights abuses. This expose–conceal framework is used to study the search for justice for abuses committed by paramilitary groups in Colombia in the 2000s. I argue that various domestic and international human rights advocates and civil society organisations clashed with the Colombian Government over questions of accountability. Persistent efforts to expose or conceal abuses produced a tug-of-war dynamic, where the two sides pulled the political debate and judicial frameworks in their preferred direction. This article contributes a conflict studies perspective on the establishment of national-level institutions to advance human rights in a context of high impunity and amid armed conflict. Going forward, I argue that more attention to the during-conflict period can enhance our understanding of how the pursuit of justice plays out after conflict.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77864901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The problems of genocide: permanent security and the language of transgression","authors":"F. Hassellind","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2036414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2036414","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75953176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prosecutorial Discretion at The International Criminal Court","authors":"Debolina Basu Bhatt","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2021.2015104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2021.2015104","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82689044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pushing Boundaries: Building a Community of Practice at the Intersection of Human Rights and Economics","authors":"Allison Corkery, G. Isaacs, Carilee Osborne","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2075628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2075628","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT One criticism of the human rights framework is that it has not – and therefore, some argue, cannot – meaningfully contest the hegemony of neoliberal economic thinking. In this article, we argue that the manner in which the disciplines of human rights and economics ‘speak past each other’ is a critical factor in this perception. While there has been a notable push to strengthen interrelations between the two fields, for the most part this has primarily been through the application of human rights norms to specific economic issues, rather than as a challenge to the logic underpinning economics, as a discipline. The article draws from a year-long project to build a community of practice at the nexus of human rights and economic justice, primarily in South Africa. South Africa is an illustrative context in which to explore cross-disciplinary engagement. While it has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world and a vibrant human rights community, the government has neglected rights in economic policymaking. This article considers the theoretical, methodological, and strategic opportunities and challenges involved overcoming such contradictions. In particular, we argue for the usefulness of a law and political economy (LPE) approach to build out the interrelations between the two fields.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74652615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Artificial Intelligence Systems Challenge the Conceptual Foundations of the Human Rights Legal Framework","authors":"S. Teo","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2073078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2073078","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Few recent developments have captured the human imagination as much as those within the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The increasing pervasiveness and ubiquity of AI affect both individual lives and society at large. Yet the human rights concerns raised in connection to AI have primarily concentrated around infringements of enumerated discrete rights, such as to privacy, non-discrimination, and freedom of expression and information. While it is important to examine the discrete rights under threat, a fundamental disconnect is present at the foundational level between human rights and AI, because AI systems increasingly challenge the notions of how, by whom, and what human rights violations are being committed. This paper takes a problem-finding perspective and argues that the conceptual foundations of the human rights protection framework are facing a serious challenge. The legal-positivist framing of the discrete rights themselves is examined through an analysis of the misaligned harm typology between the objects of human rights protection and the threats posed by AI systems. The paper highlights three main misalignments, from the perspective of saliency, temporality, and causality of harms, and argues that these misalignments challenge the structural enabling conditions for the exercise and meaningful protection of human rights.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72467205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the Vantage Point of Vulnerability Theory: Algorithmic Decision-Making and Access to the European Court of Human Rights","authors":"Zuzanna Godzimirska, Aysel Küçüksu, Salome Addo Ravn","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2078028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2078028","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The past two decades at the European Court of Human Rights have been marked by various efforts to reduce its backlog of cases through changing the substantive, procedural, and formal practices surrounding access to the Court. Proposals aimed at facilitating these efforts have also rested on the unarticulated premise that solving the ECtHR's backlog problem necessarily involves an either-or choice between improving the Court's efficiency and shrinking individual access to it. This article departs from that premise. Drawing on Martha Fineman's ‘theory of vulnerability’ and her vision for social justice, the article lays out a proposal that allows for the coexistence of efficiency and individual access through a hybrid decision-making (HDM) model. First, we show that from a vulnerability theory perspective, better access to human rights courts is a key component of a just human rights system. Second, we argue that in order to be just, procedures need to be context-sensitive and adopted in ways that acknowledge humans' inherent vulnerability. To support the argument, we draw inspiration from the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, whose current practices help illustrate the point that more equitable access to justice need not be a relic of the past.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78008358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preventing Disasters and Displacement: How Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Can Advance Local Resilience","authors":"Miriam Cullen, J. Munro","doi":"10.1080/18918131.2022.2061237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2022.2061237","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article builds on the widespread recognition that disaster is not a ‘natural’ phenomenon but occurs where exposure to a particular hazard coincides with pre-existing vulnerabilities to it—which might be social, economic or environmental—to increase personal susceptibility to harm. It argues that the impacts of climate change impose an increasingly pressing need to revive the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights as a priority, not only through their express incorporation into disaster risk planning, policies and domestic law, but by rethinking how they are implemented to include and empower the people who need them most.","PeriodicalId":42311,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Human Rights","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79298782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}