Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis attempts to understand the impact of international human rights and environmental NGOs on affecting domestic policy and law. In particular, it looks at how State-NGO relations, civil society, and accountability affect the success of international NGOs in enacting change in domestic policy. The focus is on four countries with some of the largest human rights and environmental abuses: Argentina, China, India, and Russia. Through these countries, this thesis shows that NGOs have the most influence when State-NGO relations are strong, civil society is active, and NGOs are accountable to both the State and citizens. A key component to the success of international NGOs is the State’s willingness to change. When a NGOs interests align with the State, NGOs are able to push for and achieve the largest results. The contrast between the success of human rights and environmental NGOs highlights this as many times States will not recognize their human rights abuses, but are willing to improve their environmental degradation. As a result, NGOs have been met with more success in advocating for change in environmental policy than human rights.

Terrorism, in one way or another, touches everyone's lives. Its affect could be as small as watching media stories on the nightly news and waiting longer in a security line at the airport or as significant as losing a loved one in an attack. As individuals come to grips with living with increased terrorist violence, individual nation-states and the international community have to prepare themselves to prevent, react to, and counter terrorism. This thesis examines whether international law provides an adequate framework for states victimized by terrorism to respond within the law. It highlights how international law currently addresses terrorism and the benefits and disadvantages of applying national and transnational criminal law and international human rights law compared with international humanitarian law to terrorism. Three case studies, the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, the 5 September 1972 attack against Israeli athletes in Munich, Germany, and the 11 March 2004 bombings of the train system in Madrid, Spain, investigate how international law has been used in actual terrorist incidents, lending insight into how international law has been interpreted and used in the face of terrorism. They also allow analysis of other factors besides international law that impact a victim-state's response. Finally, this thesis proposes criteria that can be weighed by victim-states and the international community in order to develop an appropriate response to terrorist incidents and recommendations for modifications to international law that will maintain international law's relevance as the international community fights terrorism. / Master of Arts

The purpose of this research paper is to examine how international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) are applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention center. This paper was completed through the research of international treaties, court cases, and secondary sources that thoroughly discussed issues pertaining to Guantánamo and international law. This paper first examines the differences between the two laws by looking at the particular roles each is meant to play in the subject of international law, as well as how the two have been applied thus far to the situation at Guantánamo. Second, the paper discusses the topic of whether or not IHL and IHRL should be mutually exclusive, or can be interpreted alongside each other. In addition, a discussion of the opposing viewpoints on this topic will be presented including the United States argument of lex specialis, and the opposing arguments of the international community. Chapter three will cover the topic of extraterritorial application and how it affects the international treaties and court cases that deal with issues pertinent to Guantánamo. The fourth chapter discusses the effects that Guantánamo has on the reputation of the United States internationally, and how it affects human rights around the world. Chapter five discusses possible recommendations in order to achieve the long-term goal of ending the Guantanamo Bay controversy, and protecting and promoting human rights everywhere.

In a world shaped by the simultaneous forces of globalization and fragmentation, very few armed conflicts remain isolated from any foreign involvement and confined to the territory of one State. On the contrary, many begin as internal conflicts that gradually acquire international characteristics of varying degree and nature. Yet, the law of armed conflict forces each such conflict into one of two legal categories: it must either be a non-international, or an international armed conflict. Accordingly, the prevailing approach in the literature is to examine what type of conflict, if any, corresponds to a certain situation in reality at a given time. In contrast, this thesis opts for a dynamic approach, focussing on the combination of factors that transform a prima facie non-international armed conflict into an international armed conflict. It argues that four such modalities of internationalization have emerged thus far: (1) outside intervention; (2) State dissolution; (3) wars of national liberation; and (4) relative internationalization by way of recognition of belligerency, unilateral declarations, or special agreements. Since some situations feature more than two conflict parties, the thesis puts forward an autonomy-based interpretive model, which enables to determine whether such situations should be seen as a single internationalized armed conflict or a number of independent international and non-international armed conflicts. On the basis of this comprehensive map of conflict internationalization, the thesis turns to the effects brought about by this process. It analyses two areas of the law of armed conflict considered to be regulated differently in the two respective types of conflict, namely matters of combatant status and belligerent occupation. It argues that fighters belonging to non-State armed groups participating in internationalized armed conflicts are in principle eligible for combatant status and it proposes an interpretive model for the determination whether they in fact meet the relevant criteria in practice. Finally, the thesis argues in favour of the applicability of the law of belligerent occupation to internationalized armed conflicts. To substantiate this claim, it delineates the temporal, geographical, and personal scope of the law of occupation in such conflicts. In its totality, the thesis analyses the meaning, process, and effects of conflict internationalization and on this basis argues for a particular interpretation of the concept of internationalized armed conflict in international law.

- Sexual Violence against Women in Armed Conflicts - the Role of the International Criminal Tribunals The purpose of my thesis is to describe and analyse a development of a regulation in the international humanitarian law and international criminal law and the contribution of decision making of international criminal tribunals in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda with a special focus on sexual violence against women during armed conflict. The reason for my research is the fact that during armed conflict women worldwide are permanently exposed to danger of sexual violence and it is necessary to stress this issue continuously. The thesis is composed of seven chapters. Chapter One is introductory and describes the current state of sexual violence in armed conflict. Further it explains what fields of international law the sexual violence is subject to and it provides a structure of the thesis. Chapter Two examines the international humanitarian law. The chapter is subdivided into four parts. Part One deals with the international humanitarian law in general. Part Two characterises the specificity of sexual violence. Part Three analyses the development of norms protecting women under international humanitarian law until the adoption of the Geneva conventions in 1949. Part Four analyses the regulation in the...

The illegal targeting of healthcare in armed conflict is nothing new but its continuance and impunity at a time when the protection of it has formally never been higher, for instance through the UNSC Resolution 2286, motivated this study. Therefore, the thesis analyses how the illegal targeting of healthcare affect humanitarian actors operating in Yemen as well as the local population. How the population and humanitarian actors perceive and interpret the violent targeting of healthcare was explored as well.    This study is based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 11 media outlets and 25 documents provided by humanitarian actors. As a theoretical framework the humanitarian principles, international humanitarian law and the politicisation of humanitarian aid were addressed. Moreover, securitization theory was used in order to explain how humanitarian actors securitize the targeting through language. The results show that consequences of the illegal targeting for humanitarian organisations are limited access to the field as well as the closing of facilities and withdrawal of staff due to security issues. For the Yemeni population consequences are a limited access to healthcare as well as a loss of trust in the safety of medical facilities and therefore they often take the decision to not seek medical care. The analysis shows that humanitarian actors present the illegal targeting as a threat to the survival of beneficiaries and connect this to their own organisational survival and through that securitize the illegal targeting.

This dissertation examines monitoring of state compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In subjecting this particular monitoring regime to systematic analysis, the dissertation sheds light on the more general question of the effects of international law on state behavior. The project first places the de facto monitoring regime that governs IHL in the broader context of other monitoring regimes in international politics. Here the decentralized nature of the monitoring regime that governs IHL is highlighted. The central role played by a non state actor, the ICRC, in both the initial codification of the law and its monitoring is partial indication of the tepid interest of states in securing compliance with the law. This chapter likewise examines variation in the IHL monitoring regime across time to explain how exogenous changes in the nature of war in the post-World War II period led to the obsolescence of the institution of the protecting power and its replacement by an ad hoc monitoring system with the ICRC at its center. The informality of this institutional arrangement proved an asset, as it was not hamstrung by the same considerations that bedeviled its competitors, the protecting power and the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission (IHFFC). The dissertation proceeds to introduce an original dataset and to test via statistical analysis a set of hypotheses about the conditions under which states grant access to the ICRC as a monitor of IHL compliance. Though both regime type variables and variables related to the military-strategic context prove significant, there is substantial evidence that states make strategic use of monitor access, for instance offering partial but incomplete access as a way to accrue at minimum cost the benefits of signaling compliance. There is further evidence that, while some indicators of military urgency decrease monitor access as realists would predict, other such indicators have the opposite effect. I read this as indication that offering a degree of access holds some political value to warring states and thus is an incentive for states to offer partial access even absent full commitment to the law. This intermediate level of access that appears so attractive to states is thus a potential moral hazard. The next chapter examines the strategic decisions, not of states, but of the ICRC itself, probing in particular the circumstances under which it is most likely to break its confidentiality policy and "go public." Examining the full universe of ICRC press releases from 1995 to 2005, I find evidence that the organization is particularly likely to choose a policy of silence in situations in which states refuse it access. This decision may sometimes be problematic. As in the case of the Algerian civil war, the organization may hold its tongue during a civil war in which IHL violation is rampant only to happily announce that it has been welcomed back into the state once the opposition has been routed. This chapter also finds evidence for the relevance of a cultural variable. Because ICRC neutrality is particularly suspect in contexts in which a politicized strand of Islam is a salient conflict dimension, the ICRC tends toward a general policy of silence in such conflicts. A notable exception, nevertheless consistent with the general logic explicated here, is the Israeli Palestinian conflict, in which the ICRC has been unusually critical of Israel in an attempt, I argue, to demonstrate the organization's credibility to Arab and Muslim audiences.

Tesis (magíster en derecho económico, inversiones, comercio y arbitraje internacional) Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Heidelberg / In 2010 a malicious computer worm attacked Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz. It was the first computer worm that caused physical damage, and because of this, Iran had to suspend its nuclear program approximately for two years. The case caused great concern among the international community and raised the issue of protecting the population. This paper will address the issues of cyber war and its relationship with International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law.

The United States has justified targeted operations against suspected terrorists as a legitimate tool in the war against terrorism. In response to international criticism that a November 2002 targeted killing operation in Yemen violated human rights standards, the US asserted that the right to life was suspended during war. While this assertion is prima facie incorrect, many legal experts, scholars and authors agree in principle that a military response to international terrorism -- along with the concomitant dilution of the right to life -- is not only appropriate, but also complies with international law. However, the modern jus ad bellum limit the circumstances in which a state may lawfully resort to armed force. A fulsome understanding of international humanitarian law and the characteristics of groups such as Al Qaeda reveals that international law does not permit states to employ their military forces to responde to the international crime of international terrorism.