Uganda is Africa's largest refugee hosting country and third in the world with more than 1.25 million refugees as of June 2017. The majority of refugees there are children. Uganda's refugee regime and hospitality date back to the days of World War II, prior to the country's independence, when it hosted refugees from European countries. Since then, the country has generously continued to open its borders to anyone seeking international protection and assistance mainly from the conflict affected countries in the East, Horn and Great Lakes Region of Africa. In compliance with the 1951 UN Convention and its 1976 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and the OAU 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, Uganda enacted the Refugees Act No.21 of 2006 and the Regulations Act of 2010 to effectively manage refugee needs. The increase in the number of refugees in Uganda amidst the limited resources at its disposal poses serious challenges in meeting its international obligation to safeguard the rights of refugee children's access to education. This thesis examines the country's responsibility under international law to protect, promote and fulfil the right to access education for refugee children, particularly aimed at understanding the challenges of provision of education to strengthen multi-level response. Research finds international and regional instruments sufficient for the protection and guarantee of education for children. However, the main refugee treaties fail to adequately provide the right to education for refugee children. The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees has provision for education rights but makes no reference to refugee children while the OAU 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa provides neither the right to education nor rights to children specifically. The analysis of Uganda's policy and laws on safeguarding refugee children's right to education revealed glaring shortfalls. The laws fail to provide adequate protection to refugee children's education rights. Notwithstanding the existence of an enabling legal and policy framework in Uganda that ensures access to education for nationals, refugee children continue to face legal and structural barriers in accessing post-primary education. The paper shows that both international and national laws guaranteeing the right to education for refugees limits the extent to which it is exercised. At national level, this is not only discriminatory but also inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution of Uganda relating to education and child rights.

International treaties consist of horizontal obligations between two or more states and are enforced when one state holds another accountable. But human rights treaties are fundamentally different. Human rights treaties consist of vertical obligations between a state and its citizens. Because of the nature of the obligations states will rarely hold one another accountable. And yet, despite the absence of this traditional enforcement mechanism, human rights treaties can change state behavior. Why do human rights treaties change behavior and what lessons can be drawn to encourage compliance in other areas of law? This professional report uses qualitative examples and existing quantitative studies and to examine state compliance with three human rights treaties: the Convention against Torture (CAT), the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The report then examines whether different explanations for state compliance can explain actual compliance records. The findings suggest that no single factor can explain state compliance with human rights treaties. Concern for reputation, the presence of civil society groups, the existence of a strong judiciary, and citizen interest in enforcing the law are all partial explanations for compliance. These factors interact with one another, improving or undermining enforcement. The findings suggest that domestic factors are an important part of international law compliance and that acceptance of a law by the domestic public is vital to compliance. The findings further suggest that international law enforcement can be carried out at lower levels of governance. Finally this paper suggests how the lessons from human rights compliance can be applied in other areas, specifically, in domestic law enforcement. Many of the factors which encourage compliance with international law may be used to encourage compliance with domestic laws. The same enforcement delegation that improves compliance with human rights law may improve compliance with domestic law. / text

This thesis evaluates Canada‘s compliance with human rights-based complementary international protection. Through an analysis of the roots of international refugee protection, it first links the evolution of the latter with the development of human rights law instruments. It then defines complementary protection as the corpus of legal bases for asylum claims outside of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It uses various human rights instruments to outline international protection obligations, which take three different forms of complementary protection. The first one consists in independent protection mechanisms outside of the Refugee Convention, the most important being the formulation of non-refoulement in the Convention Against Torture. The others are rights that expand the application of existing protection mechanisms, and protection mechanisms established by the UNHCR outside of existing international treaties. This thesis argues that Canada‘s application of these norms reflects partial compliance with its obligations, as it acknowledges important humanitarian concerns regarding international protection, while attempting to preserve its prerogative to exclude individuals based on national security.

No abstract available. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / gm2014 / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted

This minor dissertation argues that there is more than a disjuncture between theory and practices, particularly for refugees and migrants and doctors in South Africa. The core idea of the Bill of Rights is that socio-economic rights are for everyone. Yet, its application suggests everyone means all citizens in the post-apartheid period, rather than all residents in South Africa. In the international domain, the human rights discourse calls on states to recognise responsibility extending to all peoples residing in a sovereign nation- state; but progressive realisation can hamper this aspiration. By employing progressive realisation within South African law, the idea that the state pays for what it can and makes future efforts to change, socio-economic rights for everyone currently cannot be achieved. This dissertation examines how Constitutional Court rulings on access to healthcare and relevant statutes have not been uniformly granted to everyone causing a disjuncture between law and practice.

The issue of divergence in human rights protection (adjudication) between the law of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and European Community/Union (EC/EU) law has been in the centre of academic attention for decades. The position that there are instances of divergence and there is a risk of divergence between the two legal orders has gained authority in academic discourse despite the fact that its premises were subject to challenges on numerous occasions. The claim that human rights protection in EC law is divergent from that under the ECHR appears to suffer from certain shortcomings. First, it is not clear how the divergence claim addresses the question of incommensurability that unavoidably emerges in a comparison of judgments originating from different jurisdictions. Second, the divergence claim has largely eluded to address the quality of flexibility possessed by ECHR and EC human rights law. Both legal orders operate mechanisms of flexibility that enable a treatment of differing human rights solutions other than rejection. In reaction to these problems the present thesis advances the arguments of flexibility and similarity. The flexibility argument holds that the issue of divergence is largely neutralised by the ability of ECHR law (and to a lesser extent of EC law) to react to the problem of divergence flexibly. This entails that the human rights solutions of Community courts could often be accommodated within the flexible framework of ECHR law. The similarity argument provides that the style of human rights protection in ECHR and EC law is similar. The comparison of styles is based on a general system of analysis that aims to avoid the problem of incommensurability. The two arguments are not independent - the success of each argument depends on the availability of the other. The limits of flexibility are found in the requirement of similarity and the impreciseness of the similarity argument is corrected by the potentials inherent in the flexibility argument. On this basis, the relationship between ECHR and EC law could be described as a flexible status of non-divergence.

This thesis is the first major study of the UK Supreme Court’s use of jurisprudence from foreign domestic courts in human rights cases. It contributes to the debate on judicial comparitivism by asking when, how and why the Supreme Court uses foreign jurisprudence, as well as whether the Court should be making greater use of it. The research findings are drawn from quantitative and qualitative analysis of judgments handed down by the Supreme Court during its first four years (2009-2013). These are supported by evidence obtained through interviews with ten Justices of the Supreme Court, one Lord Justice of Appeal and the eight Supreme Court Judicial Assistants. In the absence of legislative guidance, the use of foreign jurisprudence is neither consistent nor systematic. Different Justices use foreign jurisprudence to different degrees and for different reasons. The main use of foreign jurisprudence is as a heuristic device: it provides the Justices with a different analytical lens through which to reflect on their own reasoning about a problem. Some Justices also use foreign jurisprudence when interpreting a common legislative scheme and to support their conclusions. As a result, the Justices use foreign jurisprudence differently according to the audience to whom their reasons are addressed. Thus foreign jurisprudence can assist the Supreme Court to enter into dialogue with the Strasbourg Court. However, this thesis does not support theories of transjudicial dialogue with other domestic courts; the evidence does not indicate that the Supreme Court considers itself to be part of global conversation. Further, the use of foreign jurisprudence is limited by practical barriers including, but not restricted to, time pressures, the availability of comparative resources and the greater use of plurality style judgments. These barriers are worth addressing if the Supreme Court is to fully utilise the heuristic value of foreign jurisprudence.

Doctor of Philosophy / The hypothesis of this work is that international human rights law and not international humanitarian law is the legal framework that applies to United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations in collapsed States where the peacekeepers do not become a party to an armed conflict. In order to test this hypothesis the work begins by examining what is meant by peacekeeping and charts the evolution of peacekeeping from its origins as a passive ad hoc activity to the modern highly complex operations capable of providing the foundations for the recreation of civil society. Chapter two of the work builds on the first chapter by analysing the UN’s theoretical approach to peacekeeping through its major reports. This chapter provides insight into the development of peacekeeping as a theoretical construct and then into a central tool in the UN’s attempt to implement the Charter. Chapters three and four analyse peacekeeping as practiced by the UN in operations conducted under Chapters VI and VII of the UN Charter. This analysis leads to the conclusion that as a matter of practice the UN and the State parties that have provided the troops to perform peacekeeping under UN control have acted in accordance with international human rights law and that as a result there is evidence of State practice to support an argument that as a matter of customary international law international human rights law applies as the framework for peacekeeping in collapsed States. With a clear grounding in the practice and theory of peacekeeping the work then examines the competing claims of international humanitarian law and international human rights law as the legal framework for peacekeeping operations. Suggestions are made with regard to the triggers for international humanitarian law to apply and the conclusion is drawn that the vast majority of UN operations between 1949 and 2003 were conducted beneath the threshold for the application of international humanitarian law. The final chapter of the work analyses the practical application of a human rights framework to peacekeeping and concludes that it provides a flexible and adaptive tool for the restoration of peace and the reconstruction of civil society. As a result of the analysis of UN peacekeeping theory, practice and the competing claims of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, the work concludes that international human rights law provides the framework for UN peacekeeping in collapsed States and that international humanitarian law will only apply where peacekeepers cross the threshold into armed conflict.

<p>The aim of this research is to ask questions as to why child right laws for the protection of child soldiers have failed to protect children in the Darfur region of Sudan despite the<br /> fact that Sudan is a member to many of these children&rsquo / s rights instruments. Can conflict transformation therefore be of any help? This is research seeks to address the question posed above.</p>

The increasing frequency and/or severity of climate-related disasters has pushed “environmental refugees” onto center stage, capturing headlines the world over. Although the urgency implied by the “refugee” terminology is apt, the legal reality is that few “environmental refugees” can enjoy the protections of refugee law—a system of law that was created in the post-World War II era to respond to the ongoing needs of Jews displaced during the War and whose stringent requirements reflect the particular historical moment of its creation. Despite evolutions in other areas, refugee law does not typically provide recourse for environmental harms. By contrast, human rights law, at both the international and domestic levels, has continued to evolve to recognize environmental and social environmental rights; for example, the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2010 recognized a human right to water. Issues related to water scarcity or water (mis)management may already be causing affected individuals to leave their homes, and concerns about water availability in the near future necessitate the development of legal tools for protecting these populations. This paper draws on human rights law, as it exists in the international system and as applied in Colombia, to create a framework that may provide greater protection for so-called “water refugees,” given the increasing salience of displacements related to water, the lack of movement in refugee law regarding environmental displacements, and the promise of social and economic rights discourse. / text