Gerd Oberleitner

Human rights of women : international instruments and African experiences

* Part 1: Human Rights of Women - International Instruments * 1. International Human Rights Law - The Relevance of Gender - Christine Ainetter-Brautigam * 2. Human Rights of Women at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations - Dorota Gierycz * 3. Charter-based Activities regarding Womens Rights in the United Nations and Specialized Agencies - Dorothea Gaudart * 4. The Prohibition of Gender-specific Discrimination under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - Manfred Nowak * 5. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women - Andrew Byrnes * 6. Women and Humanitarian Law - Francoise Hampson * 7. The European Human Rights System in Comparison with other Regional Systems - Wolfgang Benedek * Part 2: Human Rights of Women - African Experiences * 8. Introduction to the African System of Protection of Human Rights and the Draft Protocol - Henry Onoria * 9. Womens Rights under Islam - Khadija Elmadmad * 10. Women, Culture and Human Rights with Special Reference to the Practices * of Female Genital Mutilation, Polygamy and Brideprice in Africa - Esther M. Kisaakye * 11. Modern-Day Missionaries or Misguided Miscreants? NGOs, the Womens * Movement and the Promotion of Human Rights in Africa - Joe Oloka-Onyango * 12. Women in the Armed Forces in Uganda: Human Rights Issues - Apollo Makubuya * 13. Women Prisoners and Female Staff in Uganda Prisons - Kurt Neudek

A Decade of Mainstreaming Human Rights in the UN: Achievements, Failures, Challenges:

With the UN report ‘Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform’ of 1997 UN specialised agencies, funds and programmes were asked to consider human rights as a cross-cutting issue and to mainstream human rights in their respective policies, programmes and activities. A decade later, the results of mainstreaming human rights are uneven, ill explored and the whole process is still little understood. Some organisations (such as UNDP and UNICEF) record significant progress, while others – in particular international financial institutions and ‘technical’ UN agencies – still display ignorance and rejection when it comes to mainstreaming human rights. This article traces the experiences of UN specialised agencies, funds and programmes in mainstreaming human rights and records their achievements and failures as wells as the challenges ahead.

Menschliche Sicherheit: Frieden in Gerechtigkeit oder „Versicherheitlichung“ des Friedens?

Seit seiner Vorstellung im Human Development Report 1994 ubt das Konzept der menschlichen Sicherheit (Human Security) trotz analytischer Schwachen einen merkbaren Einfluss in normativer, institutioneller und operativer Hinsicht in internationaler Politik, in den internationalen Beziehungen und im Volkerrecht aus. Menschliche Sicherheit fordert einen Paradigmenwechsel weg von nationaler Sicherheit hin zu einem umfassenderen Sicherheitsverstandnis, in dem das Individuum der eigentliche Referenzpunkt von Sicherheit ist. Dabei ist der einzelne Mensch als Trager internationaler Menschenrechte gegen gesellschaftliche und naturliche Bedrohungen zu schutzen und zu Resilienz gegenuber solchen Bedrohungen zu befahigen. Angesichts einer solchen inhaltlichen Orientierung an den Menschenrechten und an Gerechtigkeitserwagungen stellt das Konzept menschlicher Sicherheit eine Dimension des gerechten Friedens dar.

Blurring Boundaries: Human Security and Forced Migration

In Blurring Boundaries scholars from law and social sciences offer a critical account of the main topics of forced migration and advance a much-needed fresh view on forced migration through the lens of human security.

Whose Security? Introductory Remarks on People on the Move and the Reclaiming of Security

In Blurring Boundaries scholars from law and social sciences offer a critical account of the main topics of forced migration and advance a much-needed fresh view on forced migration through the lens of human security.

Governing internal armed violence

Towards a human rights law of internal armed conflicts? As discussed earlier, the law of non-international armed conflicts, as laid down in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and later in Additional Protocol II of 1977, and as still largely expressed in customary law, is strongly influenced by human rights law and borrows from its language. This seems comprehensible, because such conflicts usually occur on the territory of a state and involve questions of how a government relates to those under its jurisdiction, albeit in hostilities. Given that an internal armed conflict is (at least mostly) confined to the territory of a given state, the extra-territorial application of human rights is also less of a problem (“internationalized” conflicts which spill across borders or involve non-state actors on various territories notwithstanding). And because the law of non-international armed conflict provides only for minimum guarantees, the argument that it is lex specialis is also less tenable than in international armed conflicts. At the same time, it has repeatedly been highlighted that the lower level of protection under humanitarian law is legally illogical as well as morally reprehensible: “[w]hat is inhumane, and consequently proscribed, in international wars, cannot but be inhumane and inadmissible in civil strife.” This leaves potentially more space for human rights to fill gaps.

War as emergency: derogation

The idea and law of derogation Under international human rights law, derogation allows certain human rights to be temporarily suspended in light of national emergency situations which may include armed conflicts. Such derogation provisions can be found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR). They seem to reflect the idea of a defence of necessity in international law and transpose it into human rights law. They are escape clauses which allow states, in an allegedly “realistic” perspective, to suspend human rights so as not to be unduly restricted in defending their very existence. Their message is that, when things really go wrong, there is still a way out, as states are not bound to adhere to human rights obligations if this means committing “state suicide.” What seems to reflect common sense is, however, difficult to capture as a legal phenomenon. Derogation clauses, as well as the whole idea of derogation remain opaque in international legal and international relations scholarship. They function in a complex matrix of concerns to guarantee human rights as inherent entitlements and protect citizens and domestic institutions effectively in situations of violence, while at the same time securing the stability and existence of the state and its institutions. Infringements of certain rights, particularly civil liberties as understood in domestic legal systems, were seen as acceptable under strict limits so as to ensure the overall functioning and survival of state and society. “Fundamental” liberties, such as the prohibition of torture and the right to life, were deemed as sacrosanct while other, seemingly less important, rights could be derogated. Derogation remains a paradox for the way it allows the suspension of rights precisely in times when they are most needed. The way in which states deal with the human rights obligations in situations of crisis can be seen as the acid test for their commitment, given that it is precisely in such situations where human rights protection against abusive and overreacting security forces in defence of a state apparatus under threat becomes important.

Human rights in armed conflict: history of an idea

Human rights in armed conflict: history of an idea The law of war has a tradition which stretches back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Regulating warfare and stipulating rules for the appropriate behaviour of warriors was a matter of concern for philosophers and priests and for politicians and military leaders since antiquity. Their views, orders and customs were refined in the European Middle Ages and codified since the late nineteenth century so as to create the law of armed conflict – or international humanitarian law – of today. The history of this law is usually presented as a linear development from its ancient roots to twenty-first century humanitarian norms which unfolded within a clearly delineated space, i.e., war. Apart from developments of the past decades, human rights have no particular place in this script. International humanitarian law and human rights, it is argued, have historically evolved along entirely different and separated lines and have “totally different origins.” If any relation between the two is acknowledged in a historic perspective than it is a sequential one: humanitarian law is often seen as a “precursor” or “trailblazer” of human rights and as one of their most important sources.

The OSCE and human security

Introduction Is the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concerned with human security? Considering the OSCE’s broad approach to security and its longstanding activities in the area of promoting individual security and human rights in the OSCE area, this may seem a strange question. Yet, until recently the OSCE’s work has largely been disconnected from the emerging practice of and the global debate over the concept of human security. This article examines — in the light of the practice and theory of human security since the concept emerged in the 1994 United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report — whether or not the OSCE ‘does’ human security, and if (and how) a ‘human security approach’ could benefit the organisation. The article analyzes the consequences of the emergence, development and application of human security for the OSCE and asks if the lessons which can be drawn from this ‘history’ of human security should motivate the OSCE to engage more seriously with the concept.