Despite the existence of a robust international human rights legal framework, Traveller accommodation continues to be a complex and controversial area of human rights in Ireland. Among the many challenges are a lack of delivery of existing legislative obligations, the criminalisation of nomadism, political volatility and an enduring and institutionalised racism. Collectively, these difficulties have resulted in a form of assimilation in practice among Irish Travellers. In order to unpack this complexity and explore routes to improved delivery of accommodation, this thesis moves past doctrinal and policy accounts of Traveller accommodation rights to an empirically-informed analysis of what takes place in practice. This thesis is centrally concerned with the question of how the international human right to culturally appropriate housing is operationalised in Ireland in the case of Traveller accommodation and how that operationalisation might be improved upon. I argue that, to the extent that it is operationalised, this is done through hybrid structures that are often informal or, at least, not formally constituted. This implicates the sub-question: would a formal recognition of hybridity result in improved operationalisation of this right? I argue that it would.

Post-conflict law is an area of law that is a composite of a number of different legal categories. The fragmented nature of post-conflict law leads to a lack of clarity in relation to a number of different issue areas. These have been discussed under the rubric of ‘the jus post bellum’ concept which has attracted a considerable amount of attention from international lawyers. Its proponents argue that it is useful in terms of clarifying the law as it applies during transitions. Several theories of the jus post bellum can be identified. This thesis evaluates the practical and theoretical application of two jus post bellum theories in relation to child soldier perpetrators in transitional criminal justice in post-conflict Colombia.

The clash between religious belief and sexual orientation has become a key flashpoint in modern rights struggles. A decade after the first recognition of lesbians and gay men in UK equality law, the conflict continues to be played out in domestic courts and in the European Court of Human Rights. This conflict is a microcosm of the wider relationship between law, religion and homosexuality, and the discursive techniques deployed by legal and political actors – of which liberal rights discourse plays a key role. This thesis uses a Foucaultian-informed Queer lens to analyse the discourses and underpinning structures that limit the inclusion of non-heterosexuals in the public sphere. Recent case law has highlighted a shift in religious conservative discourse, which now disavows homophobia while seeking reasonable accommodation of religious rights and conscientious objection to homosexual equality in employment and the provision of goods and services. This perpetuates the notion that religion deserves special treatment because of a necessary relationship between religious belief and disapproval of homosexuality. This binary approach not only negates the experience of Queer religious people; it also masks the state’s constructive delegation of homophobia through religious exemptions to equality law. These effects represent harms to gay people, constituting degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Liberalism’s universal human subject of rights was constructed through the heteronormative and theonormative prism that still permeates equality law. Queer theory’s problematisation of the liberal rights paradigm offers a useful challenge to established norms and to the supposed neutrality of the state when adjudicating between conflicting rights. This thesis represents my contribution to the conversation between liberalism and Queer theory.

Over the past 30 years, the solicitors’ profession has become increasingly diverse. However, the existing literature demonstrates the persistence of structural inequalities as the profession continues to be stratified on a gendered, classed and raced basis. This thesis will explore the position of Muslim women within the solicitors’ profession, and their battle for inclusion within historically closed legal spaces. Drawing upon the feminist frameworks of embodied intersectionality and Critical Race Theory, I aim to develop a greater understanding of the fluid and contingent nature of marginalised identity. Contextualised within an increasingly volatile and hostile society, I focus on how Muslim women’s professional experiences are contoured through complex interactions of gender performance and expectation, religious obligations, community and socio-economic location. Whilst this group have gained a degree of attention within the literature, I contribute new understandings to the experiences of this under-represented, and under-researched group. Thus, the heterogeneous diversity of Muslim women provides the much needed complexity to previous literature concerning women and BAME groups. Through a constructivist grounded theory approach, this thesis analyses with the narratives of 12 Muslim women across legal sectors. Through their voices, I seek to identify the pervasive structural barriers facing this group within the profession, and the reflexive strategies used to progress. I engage with these women’s experiences of negotiation to understand the interactions between their professional and personal obligations, and the resultant impacts on their career trajectories, family relationships and personal wellbeing. Departing from the discourses of passive victimhood, I seek to (re)construct Muslim women as powerful agents in procuring structural change, through their influence as role models, and cultural and institutional entrepreneurs. Their stories have also revealed new, novel contributions to the professional literature: including focus on the Islamic constructions of motherhood, and the provision of prayer within legal spaces.

Through the figure of the transgender prisoner, this thesis examines both the transformative potential, and the limits, of law and human rights, in redrawing the lines of sex/gender and expanding the possibilities and liveability of transgender lives. The prison, with its sex-segregated estate and binary gender society/regime, is a particularly useful site to examine how transgender people and their bodies are problematised in broader society. It magnifies the challenges faced by law and human rights in attempting to alter certain historically entrenched “truths” about sex/gender and transgender people. Drawing on post-Foucauldian legal scholarship, queer, feminist and transgender literature, and risk theory, the thesis examines the impact of recent human rights-based legal developments on English and Welsh prison policy, and considers the potential of human rights discourse to alter the prison administration’s governance of sex/gender, as it relates to transgender prisoners. It focuses on three areas: prison allocation and segregation, gender presentation and access to medical treatment. The thesis identifies an emerging tension between human rights and risk in the prison’s construction and governance of transgender prisoners. It reflects on a particularly deeply-entrenched anxiety about the gender authenticity and bodies of transgender women prisoners, especially those who transition whilst in prison and wish to transfer to the female estate. It concludes by arguing that there are certain inescapable “truths” that society cannot seem to get beyond, and that, whatever law and policy say, both bodies and normative gender performance still matter in cultural and institutional constructions of “authentic” gender and risk.

This thesis examines the legal responses to child trafficking in Saudi Arabia (SA). It primarily examines whether SA has created a legal response that accounts for all trafficked children regardless of the type of exploitation they experience and whether the enforcement of the law accurately reflects the law. SA‟s response has been influenced by, and created alongside, Islamic, international and regional responses. Therefore, the thesis examines SA‟s legal approach to child trafficking in light of the responses adopted on all three levels. Given that SA is an Islamic State and that its legal system is based on Islamic law, the thesis examines the Islamic law framework in relation to child trafficking in order to determine whether there is support for the prevention and eradication of this crime according to international standards. Findings reveal that Islamic law opposes and prohibits trafficking in children and its related acts of exploitation. Therefore, it is clear that rules of international law and the principles of Islamic law are complementary to one another in effectively and comprehensively combating child trafficking. In relation to the protection aspect of child victims of trafficking, it is suggested that Islamic law can serve as an important vehicle for the enforcement of international human rights law in the Muslim world. Thus, recommendations are advanced to that effect. An examination of the Islamic, international and regional approaches to the trafficking of children, in light of the legal responses and enforcement practices of SA, reveals that, although SA has developed anti-trafficking legislation, it fails to enforce the law in practice. The main conclusion reached is that there is a need for SA to improve its laws and enforcement practices against child trafficking in order to align itself to accepted standards at all three levels. The thesis also examines the legal responses, laws and practices of another Islamic jurisdiction, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), towards the trafficking of children. This is done in order to distil lessons, if any, for SA, from the UAE. The UAE was chosen as a case study for the comparative analysis because of the legal, cultural and religious similarities between SA and the UAE. The analysis of the UAE response to combat child trafficking presents a more progressive and successful approach in comparison with SA. The findings reveal that there are lessons which SA can learn from the UAE.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the wider Gulf region is an epicentre for global business. A hallmark of this prosperous oil-producing region is the reliance it has on migrant workers sourced from South Asia. Unfortunately these largely unskilled migrant workers have been subjected to poor employment practise and due to their vulnerability they experience an unprecedented amount of employment disputes. A combination of the UAE’s immigration and labour law manages not only the entry and stay of these migrant workers but also the avenues available for resolving their employment disputes. Furthermore, it is these policies and their enactment that have become the focus of international criticism for failing to provide the necessary protection to migrant workers from unscrupulous employers. This study has examined these domestic policies in light of both international and Islamic law and has advocated a case for reform. Moreover, the fieldwork conducted includes a detailed quantitative investigation based on the opinions of migrant workers into the challenges presented by the nature of the UAE’s employment dispute management systems. The results have shown that the employment dispute resolution system has yielded some negative outcomes showing that the service provided by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation is in need to continual review and assessment. Although the UAE has been taking positive steps to remedy the issues migrant workers have been experiencing, it is anticipated that this research can be a positive driver for empowering that process.

This research analyses, by using legal doctrinal and comparative methods, non-traditional regular purchasing arrangements (NTRPA) in seven public procurement systems carefully selected to ensure a wide coverage: the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement (2011), the World Bank, the US federal procurement system, the EU system and three EU Member States: UK, Romania and France. We define NTRPA as arrangements designed to meet on-going, recurrent or indefinite requirements for a long-term period through purchasing from the free market, and where the parties, at the initiative of the purchaser, go through a number of procedural stages (for example, 'suitability') and/or establish some contractual terms, but not all, in advance of the moment when an actual need for specific items arises, followed by placement of subsequent contracts or orders whenever the actual needs for items arise, based on the procedural stages conducted in advance, or based on the terms agreed beforehand. Such arrangements include, for example, framework agreements, dynamic purchasing systems and qualification systems (in the EU), and indefinite delivery contracts and multiple-award schedules (in the US). The varied terminology reflects the even wider variety of the arrangements themselves and of the approaches that legal instruments take in regulating them. The research examines how NTRPA are regulated in selected procurement systems, why they are regulated as they are, and assesses considerations that tend to promote or detract from fulfilment of certain objectives of the regulation of NTRPA. A common structure related to the 'core' elements of the underlying commercial process of such 'transactions' is used both for the examination of individual arrangements in each system and for wider comparative perspectives amongst them. By 'de-constructing' NTRPA as currently regulated into basic elements by reference to the 'core' commercial purchasing process, a corpus of guidance and a perspective are 're-constructed' regarding: (i) relevant landmarks for regulating NTRPA by reference to the particular objectives envisaged by individual procurement systems; and (ii) relevant landmarks for interpretation by practitioners, particularly from a teleological point of view, in areas where existing legislation or regulations applicable to their procurement systems are silent, inconsistent or unclear. 'Relevant landmarks' refer to aspects worth being considered in a wide context by policy makers, legislators or practitioners when introducing or reviewing public procurement regulation regarding NTRPA, or when actually implementing such arrangements. These landmarks do not refer to (and do not imply) a 'single recipe' for non-traditional regular purchases, but to an 'orientation guide' to quite complex a phenomenon.

This thesis analyses the notion of control in the law of military occupation. It addresses the following research question: what does control denote and what are its implications for military occupation? More specifically, it demonstrates that in present-day occupations, control as such occurs in different forms and variations. The polymorphic features of occupation can be seen in the way states establish control over territory either directly or indirectly, and in the manner in which they retain, relinquish or regain it. The thesis also evidences that control found in Geneva Convention IV 1949 affords the most favourable and practicable protection to civilians and comes forward with a very adaptable application with the view of enhancing and reinforcing the protection of civilians. The thesis encompasses five chapters. Chapter I deals with control in general international law, revealing that different forms of control are used by different branches of international law for different purposes. Chapter II offers a clear test for establishing control over territory for the purposes of military occupation in International Humanitarian Law. Chapter III untangles the concept of indirect effective control, which gives rise to situations of military occupation by an intermediary. Chapter IV deals with relinquishing control over territory, thus establishing a test for occupation ending, determining the end of occupation to be at variance with assessing its beginning. Finally, Chapter V analyses the effect of control on a state’s substantive obligations both under International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law.

Far-reaching reforms are influencing every aspect of governance within the People’s Republic of China, including in its criminal justice system. Against this backdrop, this thesis critically considers current concerns regarding torture and other ill-treatment in China. It assesses to what extent persistent allegations of ill-treatment of detainees indicate endemic practices; examines the effectiveness of nascent torture prevention measures and identifies the factors that may enable resilience of abuse. Overall, it investigates whether torture prevention is effective within the PRC legal framework or whether it can become so on the current reform trajectory. To do so, the thesis sets out the scope of available legal protections against torture and ill-treatment in China, and assesses these in light of international law requirements so as to identify protection gaps and broader obstacles to prevention. The analysis examines these through the lens of three different justice processes: the criminal, administrative and Party. These are representative of China’s wider criminal justice system and the different routes through which persons can be deprived of their liberty. The analysis finds that while the criminal justice system is becoming more regulated, even here protection gaps remain. In the administrative and Party justice processes, almost all key safeguards against torture are missing: these remain legally ‘grey’ spheres. All three justice processes thus fail to protect every category of detainee and torture and ill-treatment continue. The thesis identifies the key factors contributing to the resilience of torture and ill-treatment in China and the required reforms. The analysis concludes that while China is taking significant steps towards preventing torture and ill-treatment, these have insecure foundations and suffer from fundamental deficiencies that can only be addressed by further legal, structural, institutional and political reform. This China case study can provide valuable lessons for other countries where ill-treatment has become endemic.