International Human Rights Law

[Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School; and a Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and the author of Transitional Justice (OUP, 2000).] As one enters the main building of Humboldt University in Berlin, one finds a famed quotation from Karl Marx, which has survived the post-Communist transition: “The philosophers have only interpreted...

This week we are hosting another great online symposium, this time on the 20th anniversary of Ruti Teitel's seminal book, Transitional Justice, (OUP, 2000). The book's abstract: At the century's end, societies all over the world are moving from authoritarian rule to democracy. At any such time of radical change, the question arises: should a society punish its ancien regime or let bygones by...

[Brian McGarry is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University.] On 2 September, Canada and the Netherlands issued a Joint Statement indicating their intention to intervene in the ongoing ICJ proceedings instituted by The Gambia against Myanmar. The Joint Statement is ambiguous in regards to certain details which are key to understanding the intervention’s likelihood of success. While it remains to be seen whether the...

[Brian McGarry is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University.] On 2 September, Canada and the Netherlands issued a Joint Statement indicating their intention to intervene in the ongoing ICJ proceedings instituted by The Gambia against Myanmar. The Joint Statement is ambiguous in regards to certain details which are key to understanding the intervention’s likelihood of success. While it remains to be seen whether...

[Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott is a consultant at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law.] Reading further might disappoint those interested in investor-state dispute settlement. I will not be analysing the minimum standard of treatment with which the ISDS aficionados are familiar. Instead, I offer some thoughts relating to a minimum standard of treatment in the context of labour practices, specifically those of entities within the international law community....

[Ursula Gernbeck is a public prosecutor at the Munich I Public Prosecutor's Office and previously worked in the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice; she gives her personal opinion here; Katrin Höffler and Kai Ambos are professors of law at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. The authors thank Dr. Lucia Sommerer, LLM (Yale) for preparing this English version.] Rarely have protests in the recent past...

[Claire Methven O’Brien is Senior Researcher and Strategic Adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and Baxter Fellow and Lecturer at the Law School, University of Dundee.] Human society faces unprecedented and interlinked global challenges: climate change, catastrophic environmental destruction, the concentration of global wealth and power into the grasping hands of a tiny few, while insecurity and denials of basic social and economic rights dog...

[Markus Krajewski holds the Chair in Public and International Law at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.] As noted by Surya Deva in this blog, the 2020 Second Revised Draft for Legally Binding Instrument (LBI) on Business and Human rights is “negotiation-ready”. However, he wonders if states and the European Union are ready for negotiations. This contribution argues that the EU should be...

[Elizabeth Mangenje and Timothy Fish Hodgson are Legal Advisors at the International Commission of Jurists.] The newest draft of the “Legally Binding Instrument to Regulate, in International Human Rights Law, the Activities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises” was published in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, a public health emergency which has had extensive impacts on human rights globally. In the context of the right to...

[Neela Ghoshal is a senior LBGT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.] People whose identities do not fit into a rigid female/male gender binary have, in many countries, been on a years-long quest to obtain official documents that reflect their identities by using a non-binary “X” marker in lieu of the typical “F” or “M.”   If you have never questioned your assigned gender, you may...

[Dhananjay Dhonchak is a student in law at The National Academy of Legal Studies And Research in Hyderabad, India.] Introduction The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued guidelines in January 2020, expressly stating that gestures like kneeling would constitute a ‘protest’ within the meaning of rule 50 of the Olympic Charter (OC). The contentious rule 50 prohibits any ‘kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda’ at all Olympic venues...