This thesis will assess the United Kingdom’s implementation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and other Cruel Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It will first focus on a contextual analysis of the problem of torture, examining the circumstances in which it has historically been used, philosophical and theoretical perspectives on the practice and the political aspects of torture, including its effect on international relations. This will illustrate the circumstances in which torture is used, the motivation behind it and the way in which it affects its victims. The argument will then be made that, in view of the uniquely grave nature of the practice of torture, it is insufficient for States to merely criminalise it and punish the offenders. They must actively seek to eradicate it from society and ultimately prevent it from occurring. It is against this aim that the thesis will examine the compliance of the United Kingdom with its obligations under the Convention. This examination will look first at the international regime for the prevention of torture, focusing on the work of the United Nations Committee Against Torture. The engagement of the United Kingdom with this body will be explored in detail and the argument made that more needs to be done in order to ensure that the Committee’s recommendations are put into effect and that treatment contrary to the Convention is prevented from taking place. The final part of the thesis will assess the United Kingdom’s State practice with a focus on key institutions of the State including the courts and the legislature. This part of the thesis will seek to explore the extent to which the practices of these institutions is consistent with an overall aim of preventing torture and the extent to which they show awareness of the Convention and its requirements of the Convention in the discharge of their functions. The conclusion will be drawn that, while the Human Rights Act has gone some way towards improving compliance, more needs to be done to insure a complete implementation by the United Kingdom of its obligations under the Convention and full prevention of torture. The State must actively engage with the Committee and the organs of the State must consider the Convention Against Torture in the discharge of all of their functions to ensure that these aims are achieved.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 415-433). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

In recent decades, international courts have proliferated the international system - a trend often referred to as the "judicialization" of international law and politics. States create international courts to promote greater compliance with international law, and have increasingly embedded these actors within various international regimes. Scholars have primarily analyzed the consequences of the judicialization trend based on international judges' authority for interpreting and applying international law, adjudicating international disputes, and rendering binding rulings. However, international courts, especially when conceptualized as international organizations, also perform a variety of activities beyond adjudication. This study theorizes international courts' agency, in both its judicial and non-judicial dimensions, to explain how international courts aim to influence actors' behaviour and promote greater compliance within their international legal regimes. As a foundation, it conceptualizes the various approaches through which international courts can promote compliance with international law, showing how international courts can appeal to actors' logics of consequences and appropriateness, either through their own agency or through using intermediary actors. An original dataset on the prevalence of these approaches across all twenty-three permanent international courts reveals significant variation in whether and how international courts have expanded their approaches for promoting compliance. International courts' level of autonomy influences their capacity for entrepreneurship and developing their approaches. Furthermore, their levels of acceptance and accessibility affect their adoption of particular approaches. Drawing on archival and interview research, ten case studies of a range of global and regional international courts, operating in a variety of issue areas and contexts, elucidate international courts' variable expansion of approaches based on these core variables. The study shows that international courts are dynamic and strategic actors, which address challenges and exploit opportunities to increase their influence and promote compliance within their international regimes.

Over the last decade, the effects of an unprecedented rise in global temperature due to climate change, on the enjoyment of human rights, especially the right to life, have been subjects of intensive scholarly attention. Gallons of juristic ink have been spilled on the need for States to adopt policy measures aimed at combating climate change. However, recent findings show that policy measures and projects aimed at mitigating climate change are in turn producing even more serious human rights concerns, especially in developing countries. These human rights issues include: mass displacement of citizens from their homes to allow for climate change mitigation projects; lack of participation by citizens in project planning and implementation; citing and concentration of projects in poor and vulnerable communities; lack of governmental accountability on projects and the absence of review and complaint mechanisms for victims to obtain redress for these problems. These secondary human rights impacts of policy measures and projects aimed at mitigating climate change have not received sufficient attention in existing literature. The aim of this research is to examine and analyse the effects of climate change mitigation projects, specifically Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, on the enjoyment of fundamental human rights. It considers how lessons from the approval and execution of CDM projects could inform thoughts on the value and requirements for mainstreaming human rights safeguards into international climate change regimes in general. It analyses the legal and theoretical prospects and paradoxes of adopting the United Nations Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) as a framework through which human rights standards may be systemically integrated and mainstreamed into extant and emerging international legal regimes on climate change.

Univ., Diss.--München, 1999.

Thesis (LL.M.)--The Judge Advocate General's School, United States Army, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (LLMC Digital, viewed on Mar. 22, 2010). "April 2007". Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis engages with a dynamic discourse on the human rights approach to human trafficking. Building on the traditional doctrine of human rights, the thesis demonstrates that human trafficking is not a human rights violation, save for a state involvement in it, either directly or through a failure to observe its positive obligations imposed by the existent human rights. In situations that do engage human rights law, the thesis defends an argument that conceptually, human trafficking falls within a domain of the right to be free from slavery, servitude and forced labour. This argument is grounded in both a doctrinal and a conceptual analysis. In particular, the thesis conducts a unique conceptual and legal analysis of Article 4 of the European Convention of Human Rights offering an original interpretation of the concept of exploitation in the context of practices associated with trafficking and 'modern slavery'. This type of inquiry is missing in the existent scholarship. The thesis also conducts a detailed analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on positive obligations to protect vulnerable individuals arising out of 'absolute' rights. In addition to providing a complete analysis and classification of these positive obligations, the thesis draws attention to the important difference between the scope of the right and the scope of state responsibility in situations of private infringements of 'absolute' rights. Accordingly, the thesis demonstrates that whereas the prohibition contained in these rights is absolute for the state, positive obligations in situations of their infringements by private individuals are of a limited scope. The analysis of the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court is supplemented by a comprehensive discussion of the obligations established in the trafficking-specific instruments. The thesis explains how victim protection provisions contained in these instruments may inform human rights obligations, yet, it demonstrates that these do not represent such obligations on their own. This analysis provides a roadmap for practitioners and activists when arguing cases before the Strasbourg Court and domestically. In addition to this practical dimension, the thesis intends to provide an important contribution to the scholarship on human rights law, and on human trafficking specifically.

No description available.

Originally presented as the author's dissertation (doctoral)--Freiburg/Schweiz, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-258).