The child soldier problem is an escalating and growing phenomenon around the world. It is a complex issue as it involves a wide range of areas such as human rights, politics and cultures. A comprehensive legal framework is in place to protect children in armed conflicts, yet they are still being targeted, recruited and deployed in armed groups and organizations. The purpose of this study is to conduct an exhaustive examination of current international law, de lege lata, regarding child soldiers aged 15-18. The legal-dogmatic method will be used to identify the merits, but above all the shortcomings and problems of the legislation. The result shows that international law treats children differently in terms of age and when they are no longer considered child soldiers. The findings demonstrate the difficulties between the two frameworks of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in relation to child rights and protection issues. Furthermore, it has been discovered that the international law regarding child soldiers is outdated, contradictory and inconsistent, as society and warfare have changed since the adoption of the documents. The lack of legal sanctions against recruiters and enablers complicates the situation even further.

This Thesis investigates the French asylum seeker legal framework and refugee integration effects based on evidence in government data, non-governmental organizations, and external sources. Specifically, the policies of the protected rights of asylum seekers from history to modern day in relation to its efficiency and respect to human rights. Despite the development of past models through reforms, some shortcomings and discrepancies still exist that adversely affect asylum rights and responsibility sharing among EU nations. A potential system that benefits the applicant in addition to the host country is possible by implementing a model that takes into consideration asylum preferences, socioeconomics, and ethics. My project aims to encourage everyone to advocate for human rights, be familiar with the asylum policies of the European Union and to educate others on a topic that is affecting many on a global scale.

<p>In this thesis I argue that it is an implication of the acceptance of the human right to water and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) that violations of the human right to water can invoke the Responsibility to Protect. Extreme violations of the right to water can invoke the responsibility to react, and ultimately the responsibility to prevent and rebuild. Although this is the case, I argue that the human right to water is unlikely to invoke R2P on its own. Instead, water issues are more likely to compound with issues of poverty, weak political institutions, poor leadership and social tension to create situations that have the potential for mass atrocity. Furthermore, I provide an analysis of the actions that will need to be taken before, during and after an intervention to fulfill the responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild and the actors that can and/or should take such action.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The purpose of this thesis is to prove the existence of the right to adequate healthcare through a critical analysis of the law of obligations, constitutional law and international law framed in the wider focal point of South African medical law. The Constitution only makes provision for the right to access to health care. Conclusively this thesis will have to establish a link between a minimum standard in health care and the Constitution. It is submitted that the most efficacious method of establishing this link is with the duty of care, which is intrinsically linked to the doctor-patient relationship. If a critical analysis of the doctor-patient relationship can establish a clear link between the duty of care and state liability then such a link can successfully be applied to the Constitution. If this link is transposed onto the Constitution, a critical evaluation of the rights in the Bill of Rights will then reveal the most applicable right that can house the right to an adequate standard of health care. Such an analysis is only part of the solution however. In order to make this right effective, the international body of medical laws must be critically analysed and juxtaposed against this adequate standard. This carries the dual purpose of adding normative content as well as determining the current state of South Africa’s obligations under international human rights law, and to what extent those obligations have been discharged. Finally, and most significantly, the right to adequate healthcare, as it was forged in the international legal analysis, will be transposed onto the current South African jurisprudence of socio-economic rights. This practical application will then be reflected onto the new National Health Care Insurance to show conclusively that the current governmental approach of effecting health care is wholly inoperable and will ultimately result in significant harm and extensive human rights violations. This is based on the government only considering access to health care sufficient to discharge its duties and being totally incapable of effectively managing its resources. The core outcome for this thesis is to prove the existence of the right to adequate healthcare. Secondary outcomes are tracing the history of medicine to illustrate the creation and evolution of the doctor-patient relationship, a critical analysis of the application of medical ethics to South African law of obligations, a critical analysis of the Constitution and its fundamentals, an exhaustive evaluation of South Africa’s duties and accomplishments under its international obligations and effectively applying the right to adequate healthcare which is diametrically opposed to the current course South Africa is taking to provide health care. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Public Law / unrestricted

There is enough evidence on how climate change consequences will adversely affect Africa despite the fact that it is the continent that has least contributed to the problem. The international climate change regime recognises Africa's vulnerability to climate change and provides for special treatment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC). Thus, the international climate change regime presents an opportunity for African countries to adapt and mitigate the consequences of climate change through the UNFCCC mechanism. However, the international climate change legal regime has not been able to adequately assist African countries to address the consequences of climate change under the vulnerability principle. Although the current international climate change regime requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Africa needs to take steps itself to address the problem, because it is most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. The African Union (AU) could play a great role in ensuring that the international climate change regime addresses the consequences of climate change in the region. This could be done through fostering strong African common positions during international climate change negotiations. A strong common position could strengthen African bargaining power and might result in more funding, capacity building and technology development and transfer for adaptation and mitigation programmes under the UNFCCC-Kyoto Conference of Parties. However, reaching a strong common position requires the cooperation of the AU member states. In this context, African regional integration is an opportunity for the AU to foster such cooperation among member states. The Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (the Abuja Treaty), the Constitutive Act of the AU and the Protocol on the Relations between the AU and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) prioritise regional economic integration and call for states' cooperation, but the call has not yet been heeded. To realise deep and viable African integration, there must be a well-structured institutional and legal framework that defines the relationship between the AU, the AEC and the RECs. African regional integration is also seen as an avenue whereby the AU can create its own regional climate-change regime. In this regard, the AU's and RECs' normative framework on climate change is examined in order to assess whether it adequately integrates climate change issues. This study finds that although Africa is most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, the AU's and RECs' normative framework on climate change is weak and inadequate to address the problem. The Framework should integrate climate change issues in order to achieve sustainable development. The AU should also ensure that member states ratify the relevant treaties and protocols (the Maputo Nature Convention and the Protocol establishing the African Court of Justice and Human Rights) that have not yet been ratified in order that they may become operational. The Maputo Nature Convention puts sustainable development in the forefront of attention as a reaction to the potentially conflicting environmental and developmental challenges facing the continent (such as climate change), but it is not yet in force. This work finds that human rights law can strengthen the AU's role in addressing climate change through its normative framework. The human rights approach to climate change under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (the Banjul Charter) is a viable avenue because human rights law forms the basis for states' responsibility based on human rights obligations and principles. The extraterritorial application of the Banjul Charter presents an avenue for AU institutions such as the Human Rights Commission and the African Human Rights Court to curb the effects of climate change through a human rights lens. The future of the AU is presented within the context of a set of recommendations that identify strong African regional integration as an avenue through which the AU can foster the cooperation of member states to address the consequences of climate change in the AU's and RECs' normative frameworks. General recommendations are made on the need for the international climate change regime to pay more attention to issues of funding, capacity building and technology development and transfer on the basis of the vulnerability principle and in relation to the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Also, the AU needs to strengthen its legal and institutional structures to ensure deep African integration that is capable of addressing common challenges such as the consequences of climate change. / PhD (Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

There is enough evidence on how climate change consequences will adversely affect Africa despite the fact that it is the continent that has least contributed to the problem. The international climate change regime recognises Africa's vulnerability to climate change and provides for special treatment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC). Thus, the international climate change regime presents an opportunity for African countries to adapt and mitigate the consequences of climate change through the UNFCCC mechanism. However, the international climate change legal regime has not been able to adequately assist African countries to address the consequences of climate change under the vulnerability principle. Although the current international climate change regime requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Africa needs to take steps itself to address the problem, because it is most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. The African Union (AU) could play a great role in ensuring that the international climate change regime addresses the consequences of climate change in the region. This could be done through fostering strong African common positions during international climate change negotiations. A strong common position could strengthen African bargaining power and might result in more funding, capacity building and technology development and transfer for adaptation and mitigation programmes under the UNFCCC-Kyoto Conference of Parties. However, reaching a strong common position requires the cooperation of the AU member states. In this context, African regional integration is an opportunity for the AU to foster such cooperation among member states. The Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (the Abuja Treaty), the Constitutive Act of the AU and the Protocol on the Relations between the AU and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) prioritise regional economic integration and call for states' cooperation, but the call has not yet been heeded. To realise deep and viable African integration, there must be a well-structured institutional and legal framework that defines the relationship between the AU, the AEC and the RECs. African regional integration is also seen as an avenue whereby the AU can create its own regional climate-change regime. In this regard, the AU's and RECs' normative framework on climate change is examined in order to assess whether it adequately integrates climate change issues. This study finds that although Africa is most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, the AU's and RECs' normative framework on climate change is weak and inadequate to address the problem. The Framework should integrate climate change issues in order to achieve sustainable development. The AU should also ensure that member states ratify the relevant treaties and protocols (the Maputo Nature Convention and the Protocol establishing the African Court of Justice and Human Rights) that have not yet been ratified in order that they may become operational. The Maputo Nature Convention puts sustainable development in the forefront of attention as a reaction to the potentially conflicting environmental and developmental challenges facing the continent (such as climate change), but it is not yet in force. This work finds that human rights law can strengthen the AU's role in addressing climate change through its normative framework. The human rights approach to climate change under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (the Banjul Charter) is a viable avenue because human rights law forms the basis for states' responsibility based on human rights obligations and principles. The extraterritorial application of the Banjul Charter presents an avenue for AU institutions such as the Human Rights Commission and the African Human Rights Court to curb the effects of climate change through a human rights lens. The future of the AU is presented within the context of a set of recommendations that identify strong African regional integration as an avenue through which the AU can foster the cooperation of member states to address the consequences of climate change in the AU's and RECs' normative frameworks. General recommendations are made on the need for the international climate change regime to pay more attention to issues of funding, capacity building and technology development and transfer on the basis of the vulnerability principle and in relation to the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Also, the AU needs to strengthen its legal and institutional structures to ensure deep African integration that is capable of addressing common challenges such as the consequences of climate change. / PhD (Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

For many sets of reasons, including the unequal power relationship between them and most underdeveloped states, and probably more in Africa than anywhere else in the world, non-state actors (NSAs) like states are involved in the violation of human rights. With the phenomenon of globalization, their role has become even more pronounced with some of the traditional functions of the state being performed by them, with implications for human rights, especially socioeconomic rights. Unfortunately, state-centred traditional international law has proved to be ill-equipped to hold NSAs directly accountable and liable for their violations of human rights. NSAs are only expected to adhere to non-binding voluntary standards, such as codes of conduct. Yet, if properly interpreted and enforced, the African Charter for Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) can be relied upon to hold them accountable. Against this backdrop, the study interrogates the existing universal and regional human rights laws and systems with the view to identifying any rules, principles, case law or literature that can help hold NSAs directly accountable for human rights violations. For better advocacy and protection of human rights on the African continent, it makes a case for a paradigm shift away from a state centred to a holistic approach that would include NSAs and ensure that they are also bound to protect human rights and become accountable for their violations. / Private Law / LL.M.

No description available.

The duality of the United States’ relationship with international criminal law and human rights atrocities is a fascinating theme that weaves through all of American history, but most distinctly demonstrates the contradictory nature of American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century. America is both protector of human rights and perpetrator of human rights atrocities, global police force and aggressor. The Cold War exacerbated the tensions caused by American military dominance. The international political and physical power of the American military allowed the United States to do as it pleased in the 20th century with few consequences, but that power also brought watchfulness from the global community and an expectation that the United States would intervene when rogue states or leaders committed crimes against humanity. The international legal community has expected the United States to act and illegally intervene in some situations, but to pursue policy changes peacefully through diplomatic channels on other occasions.

Thèse de doctorat réalisée en cotutelle avec la Faculté de droit de l'Université Aix-Marseille 3. / La présente recherche a pour objectif d’expliquer et d’évaluer le processus d’émergence du droit au respect des modes de vie minoritaires et autochtones, qui se manifeste devant deux juridictions et une quasi-juridiction : les cours européenne et interaméricaine des droits de l’homme et le Comité des droits de l’homme des Nations Unies, dont les jurisprudences feront l’objet d’une comparaison. Un tel sujet soulève plusieurs questions, dont celles de savoir à quel stade de ce processus nous en sommes, quel est le niveau de juridicité de la norme, mais aussi, quelle est la signification de ce droit, quels en sont les apports et comment se produit sa mise en œuvre. En proposer une interprétation éclairée suppose d’évaluer la référence au concept de mode de vie faite par les requérants, les juges et les experts. Cette démarche implique d’avoir recours à l’interdisciplinarité, plus précisément à certaines études anthropologiques. Cela requiert également un examen du discours des juges, des experts et des requérants pour en observer les convergences et les décalages. Quant aux résultats de recherche, le rôle de plusieurs acteurs au processus d’émergence de la norme nouvelle – les requérants, les juges ou les experts et les États – est souligné. Cela confirme la théorie de la polycentricité en matière de construction de certaines règles de droit international. La juridicité du droit au respect des modes de vie minoritaires et autochtones et sa force varient en fonction des systèmes, mais il possède toujours les caractéristiques propres à la norme juridique internationale. Cette dernière consacre un droit spécifique appartenant aux peuples autochtones et tribaux ou aux membres de peuples autochtones et minoritaires. Elle protège un rapport au territoire, soit un mode d’appréhension et d’exploitation, mais aussi de circulation et d’établissement sur celui-ci, ainsi que des activités. Les requérants roms, tribaux ou autochtones participent, bien qu’officieusement, à la définition juridique de leurs modes de vie, puisque les requêtes qu’ils déposent devant les juridictions supranationales constituent le fondement des interprétations judiciaires. Malgré ce processus de codétermination, certains décalages persistent entre les positions des divers acteurs impliqués dans la détermination du sens de la norme. Ils sont liés à l’impossibilité pour les juges d’appliquer au cas d’espèce une protection de leurs modes de vie, à l’éloignement entre la position des requérants et celle de l’État défendeur ou encore à la protection des droits des tiers. Une double surdétermination de la norme est donc constatée, par les conceptions des juges ou des experts, mais aussi par celles des requérants. Elle comporte certains risques d’essentialisation et d’idéalisation des modes de vie minoritaires et autochtones, de paternalisme, de victimisation ou de discrimination vis-à-vis des requérants ou de leurs communautés, sachant que ces risques sont tous à même de dénaturer le sens et la portée de la norme. Pour autant, cette dernière est porteuse d’avancées théoriques. Celles-ci ont trait à la coexistence, au sein de territoires identiques, entre groupes aux identités différentes, à l’amélioration de la qualité de vie des requérants et au processus de reconnaissance. La place occupée par la volonté des États, l’importance pour les juges de préserver leur légitimité, de même que le caractère idéaliste ou dogmatique de l’interprétation proposée, en limitent les apports théoriques. Il ressort de cette réflexion que la bonne articulation des divers discours en présence et l’émergence d’une norme efficace tiennent d’abord à l’énonciation et à la clarté des revendications des requérants minoritaires et autochtones. Elles tiennent ensuite à la réceptivité des agents qui les reçoivent – juges et experts – ainsi qu’au contexte politique, social et culturel qui les entourent. Cette analyse met ainsi en évidence l’importance d’exploiter la marge de manœuvre dont dispose chaque acteur du processus d’émergence dans la détermination du sens et de la portée des normes. / This research aims to explain and evaluate the emergence of a right of minorities and indigenous peoples to the respect of their ways of life, appearing before the European court of human rights, the Inter-American court of human rights and the United Nations Human rights Committee. The decisions and communications stemming from these tribunals will be analyzed and compared. This topic raises several questions regarding the legality of this norm, its meaning, effectiveness and limits, but also its implementation. In order to offer an interpretation of the content of that right, we need to evaluate the references made to it by the claimants, the judges and experts, which implicates an interdisciplinary approach focused on anthropological studies of law. This leads us to examine the discourses of judges, experts and claimants, to compare them and to observe their confluences and discrepancies. The results of this study show us that the emergence of this new norm is dependent upon the intervention of several agents – the claimants, the judges, the experts of the Committee and the States. This observation therefore confirms the polycentric process of construction of international legal rules. As to the legality and the effectiveness of the right of minorities and indigenous peoples to their ways of life, they vary according to the legal system, even if this right always corresponds to a legal rule. This rule consecrates a specific right belonging to indigenous and tribal people or to the members of indigenous people and minorities. It protects a relationship to the territory, i.e. a way to comprehend and to exploit it, to circulate on it and to inhabitate it. It also protects some activities. The indigenous, tribal and romas applicants unofficially take part in the legal definition of their ways of life, as the requests they submit to the international tribunals are cornerstones of judicial interpretations. In spite of a process of co-determination of the norm, gaps are observed between the positions of the different actors participating to the determination of the norm. They are either related to the impossibility for some judges to apply the right to a way of life to the case, to the distance between the positions of the claimants and the states, or to the protection of third parties. Consequently, a process of double distortion of the content of the norm appears, due to the judges’ or experts’ conceptions, but also to those of the claimants. It leads to the emergence of several problems, such as essentialism and the idealization of minorities and indigenous ways of life, paternalism, victimization or discrimination towards the claimants or their communities. These problems can alter the meaning and the impact of the norm. Nonetheless, the right to the respect of those ways of life has some theoretical effects related first to the coexistence, on a same piece of land, of different groups possessing diverse identities. They are also related to the improvement of the applicants’ quality of life and to the recognition process. However, the State’s willingness still occupies a large space in international law, as does the importance, for judges, to protect their own legitimacy. Moreover, some decisions seem too ideal or dogmatic. Those factors limit the effect of the norm. Thus, the articulation of judicial discourses and the efficiency of the norm are first contingent to the enunciation and to the clarity of the claimants’ requests. They are dependant of the receptivity of the agents whose role it is to receive them (judges and experts) and to the political, social and cultural context within which they take place. This last factor brings to light the importance for each agent participating to the elaboration of the norm to use, as much as he can, the margins he possesses.