Category: Uncategorized

Your Human Rights: Know them. Engage them. Defend them

Constitutional Change, Constitutional Law, ECHR, Human rights, Human Rights Act, Knowledge Exchange, Law and Legal, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

On 23 and 24 February, the Global Justice Academy (GJA), Strathclyde Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law and Newcastle Forum for Human Rights and Social Justice, along with other partners in the Northern UK Human Rights Network, hosted a sandpit webinar on responding to the Ministry of Justice Human Rights Act Reform Consultation. The events brought together experts across public law, international law and human rights to offer concise insight on the key issues raised by the Ministry of Justice consultation on human rights reform.

 

 

Human rights experts’ preliminary views of the consultation paper are that the UK government aims to dismantle important human rights protections. The events were designed to assist individuals with different levels of engagement with human rights to distil the main legal tensions presented in the consultation paper and respond to the questions posed therein. The underpinning purpose is to assist those who have little time or experience responding to government consultations to develop their own responses by the consultation deadline of 8 March 2022.

 

Speakers included:

  • Ed Bates, Leicester University
  • Helen Fenwick, Durham University
  • Elisenda Casanas Adam, Univeristy of Edinburgh
  • Hélène Tyrrell ,Newcastle University
  • Conall Mallory, Newcastle University
  • Lynsey Mitchell, University of Strathclyde
  • Lewis Graham, Wadham College, Oxford University
  • Dimitrios Kagiaros, Durham University
  • Nicole Busby, University of Glasgow
  • Elizabeth O’Loughlin, Durham University
  • Douglas Jack, University of Strathclyde
  • Alison Seaman, University of Edinburgh

The recording of day 2 can be found HERE.

If you would like to develop your own response using the working document developed by the speakers and other contributing colleagues, it can be accessed here: March 2022 – Consultation Response – Mod Bill of HR – Shareable. We encourage you to build on our work and add your own thoughts. In a democratic society it is essential that we use our voices to let the government know our views.

The Human Rights Act has protected the people of the UK for two decades. Use your voice to let the Ministry of Justice know that we will not give it up without a fight.

Useful documents:

  • Ministry of Justice, Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill of Human Rights, consultation paper
  • Independent Human Rights Act Review, Final Report
  • Joint statement, Amnesty International Scotland, the Human Rights Consortium Scotland, JustRight Scotland, Making Rights Real, and the Scottish Human Rights Commission
  • Scottish Government Response to consultation paper
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Interpretive Convergence at the European Court of Human Rights: Strength in numbers or a cause for concern

Case Law, ECHR, Europe, Global Justice Academy, Human rights, International Law, Law and Legal, Uncategorized


On 25 January, the Global Justice Academy hosted its first event of the new year, ‘Interpretive Convergence at the European Court of Human Rights: Strength in numbers or a cause for concern?’. In this seminar, Dr Conall Mallory, Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle School of Law, presented his current research on the voting patterns of the judges within the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In particular, his research scrutinizes judgments of the ECtHR that seem to often be unanimous with infrequent dissents. Drawing on extensive quantitative data analysis he furthermore explores potential wide-ranging implications on the authority of the court, the cohesion of Convention rights and the credibility of the judges.

It is widely acknowledged that the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) are peppered with grey language that requires the judges to interpret the Convention’s specifications. The fact that the 17 grand chamber judges, deriving from various cultural, legal, educational, professional and linguistic backgrounds unanimously agree on the interpretation of highly contentious human rights provisions, motivated Dr Mallory to further investigate the judges’ convergence. In the two ECtHR judgments Banković v Belgium and Al-Skeini v United Kingdom which were both concerned with the extraterritorial application of human rights law, the Court in both cases voted unanimously. However, the second case substantially deviated from the principles set out in its previous judgment.

Analysing approximately 400 Grand Chamber judgments between 1998 and 2021, Dr Mallory considered each judge’s individual vote on individual issues. He found that almost every time there was coherence across the judges’ votes. The judges took differing stances in only 10% of the votes on individual questions on whether a Member State had violated an article of the Convention.

Image credit: ECHR

Scholars before Dr Mallory have examined the motivation and incentives behind judges’ decision-making process in the courtroom. These previous studies revealed that judges tend to vote strategically, whether for individual benefits, to embed personal ideologies in judgments, or to pursue broader goals serving stakeholders. However, Dr Mallory’s research is focused more on the general legal culture of the Court and the implications for the Court as a whole. He suggests that by predominantly voting unanimously the judges aim to seek sociological legitimacy to remain a credible force in the European human rights adjudication. Contrary to normative and legal legitimacy, sociological legitimacy is concerned with the external perception of the court. In order to secure its authoritative and influential status the court attempts to project legitimacy in a manner that is compatible with the objectives of stakeholders.

In international law, sociological legitimacy is characterized by judicial constraint, consistency, coherence, and fair and unbiased decision making. The convergence of the judges voting pattern in Dr Mallory’s data implies that the court’s strategy is to adhere to those standards through voting in agreement. Notably, Dr Mallory was also able to identify voting patterns regarding the affected context of the violation. Namely, the Court disagrees more when voting on potential violations of the right to privacy and freedom of expression.

Dr Mallory concluded his talk by addressing the question whether this interpretative convergence is a cause for concern. In his opinion, the findings are not as alarming as one might think at the first glance. However, the voting patterns may suggest a sense of group thinking in the courtroom which may lead judges to develop a personal aversion for dissenting. This should be considered seriously, as the Court’s apparent strategy in striving for sociological legitimacy through convergent voting may create cascade conformity – meaning that judges who would normally disagree abandon their conviction and follow suit with the other judges. Returning to the initial consideration of the divergent rulings in Banković v Belgium and Al-Skeini v United Kingdom, Dr Mallory observed that the main problem is the fact that the court, depending on the composition of judges, may deviate so fundamentally in its judgments that it will fail to offer reliability and consistency.

 

 

This post was written by Juliane Müller. Juliane is currently reading the LLM in International Law at the University of Edinburgh. She is from Germany, where she completed her LLM in Law at the University of Mannheim. Juliane is also an Ambassador for the Global Justice Academy.

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Strengthening the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill

Children's Rights, Devolution, Human rights, Incorporation, Scotland, Uncategorized

This post is 2 of 2 by Dr Kasey McCall-Smith examining the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill. This post highlights how stronger interpretive tools could strengthen the Bill and deliver a brighter future for children in Scotland. Dr McCall-Smith serves on the Expert Advisory Group on UNCRC Incorporation convened by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and the Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights (Together). @KMSonIntlLaw

 

In a previous post I presented some of the key triumphs of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill (Incorporation Bill) that is currently before Scottish Parliament. This post suggests some ways in which the current Bill could be strengthened in terms of the interpretation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) rights incorporated through Schedule 1 of the Bill. Expanding the interpretive scope further would better support the progressive realisation of children’s rights, shore up protection for children with intersectional vulnerabilities and ensure that Scotland becomes ‘the best place in the world to grow up’.

Match the Interpretive Tools Available to the Courts With Those of Scottish Ministers

One of the clearest ways in which the Scottish Parliament could strengthen the Incorporation Bill is to further enhance the interpretive tools available to courts when determining a question in connection with the UNCRC. At present, section 4 of the Bill outlines the ‘things’ that courts or tribunals ‘may take into account’ as: (1) the preamble of the UNCRC; (2) the articles directly incorporated through Schedule 1 of the Bill; and (3) provisions of the UNCRC and the articles that are not included in Schedule 1. The glaring gap is the failure to include the interpretive opinions or instruments of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that oversees the international implementation of the Convention. These opinions/instruments include Concluding Observations on UK periodic reports, Final Views (on individual communications), General Comments and reports on general discussion days – in which the UK and Scotland have actively participated in both government and civil society capacities. Including these as interpretive reference tools is important in order to keep on top of international developments in children’s rights, progressively realise UNCRC rights and to ensure that interpretations in Scotland track the specific advice of the CRC in terms of its engagement with the collective UK and broader international community. Notably, if the UK were to ratify the Third Optional Protocol on an Individual Communications Procedure (addressed in s5), that process would generate further instructive opinions on the implementation of children’s rights in the UK that should, arguably, be a strong push factor for the UK.

The omission in section 4 of the Bill is intentional considering that Part 3 of the Bill brings these instruments in for the purposes of Scottish Ministers making, amending and remaking a Children’s Rights Scheme that will document the arrangements put in place to fulfil their duties outlined in the Bill. Section 12(2)(a) details that

(2)  In preparing the proposal, the Scottish Ministers—

 

(a) must have regard to

 

(i)  any report of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child under paragraph 5 of article 44 of the Convention that the Scottish Ministers consider to be relevant, and

 

(ii)  any other reports, suggestions, general recommendations or other documents issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child relating to the implementation of the Convention, the first optional protocol or the second optional protocol by the United Kingdom that the Scottish Ministers consider to be relevant, …

Though UNCRC Article 44(5) only make specific reference to the periodic reporting process, further practices, such as issuing general comments and holding days of discussion, has become a regular practice of the CRC and a key way in which the Committee can assess the most current information on children’s rights implementation. Section 12(2)(a)(ii) appears to accommodate the variable modalities of interpretation generated by the Committee but the granular reference to suggestions or general recommendations under UNCRC Article 45(d) implies that the same tools of interpretation are not available to the courts. The variable reference to the use of treaty body jurisprudence as an interpretive tool is further complicated in that General Comments are specified as a tool when reviewing a Children’s Rights Scheme in section 13(2) of the Bill but not expressly included when developing the Scheme under section 12.

While not viewed as binding by most States, the products of the treaty bodies are extremely important resources for interpreting children’s rights and UK courts have increasingly made reference to them when determining legal questions relating to children. Furthermore, general international law recognizes the role of the treaty bodies as the ultimate interpreters of their respective treaties. Clarifying that the treaty body jurisprudence should be included in the judiciary’s interpretation toolkit would help encourage culture change and reinforce the value of international human rights interpretation. Even if under Scots law the judiciary has the power to take anything it deems appropriate into account, if we are going to entrench the UNCRC in Scotland, there must be a tether to the jurisprudence of the CRC Committee.

Maximizing the Availability of Interpretive Tools

To be even more effective, the interpretive tools should be expanded to include relevant resources from other treaty bodies, such as the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that oversees the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In cases where interference with children’s rights involves the intersection of various identities, cross-referencing across the treaties is the best way to ensure the highest attention to the individual’s needs. The recent experience of the right to education during the Covid-19 pandemic illustrates the value in maximizing the sources available in the interpretive toolkit.

During the UK lockdown one of the most common complaints was the breach of the right to education for children. Children with disabilities or socio-economic vulnerabilities or both were particularly impacted by the closure of the schools. While the Committee on the Rights of the Child has issued guidance on implementing the right to education (now rather dated), both the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Committee on Racial Discrimination have provided far greater guidance in how to address the right to education for children that often suffer inequality due to their intersectional identities. To construct a minimum core to the right to education and offer guidance on how to deliver that under normal and extraordinary circumstances, such as those created during the pandemic, it is incumbent on decision makers to canvass the wide range of materials that are available. This does not mean that they must follow the treaty body interpretations to the letter. However, opening up the possible tools to which decision-makers may avail themselves is a clear step forward toward a holistic, human rights based approach to interpreting children’s rights.

Make it Stronger to Make Rights Real

The consistent political rhetoric about adopting the ‘gold standard’ children’s rights through incorporation of the UNCRC is not just about putting the static articles of a 30 year-old treaty into Scots law. It is about recognizing the dynamism and evolution in children’s rights and their capacity to exercise them in the pursuit of creating a stronger, more inclusive society. Effective implementation will require the synthesis of a broad range of law and policy that responds to lived experience. The interpretive tools offered by the UN human rights treaty bodies provides an easy starting point for decision-makers. Explicit reference to these tools across all interpreters of children’s rights under the proposed UNCRC Incorporation Bill would go a long way in ensuring that we make children’s rights real in Scotland.

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Military Occupation of the Palestinian Territories and Beyond

Uncategorized

In this guest post, LLM in International Law student and GJA Ambassador, Felix Mayr, reflects on a recent Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law event on the military occupation of the Palestinian Territories and other occupied lands.

On Thursday 17 October 2019, the University of Edinburgh held an event presenting new scholarly work on the law of occupied territory, a field which has experienced a renaissance since the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq. The relationship between the law of occupation and other areas of international law, such as human rights and environmental law, has become a pressing legal problem in a range of contexts. The relationship between the law of military occupation and long-term military, political, and economic, domination – a scenario which the law of occupation was not intended to regulate – is raised by the 52 year occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, which has developed its own intricate legal architecture to manage the occupation. The panel was followed by a lively discussion among scholars including Professor Orna Ben-Naftali (Emile Zola Chair of Human Rights, Striks School of Law, Tel Aviv), Dr Marco Longobardo (Lecturer in Public International Law, Westminster Law School, London), and Stavros-Evdokimos Pantazopoulos (Legal and Policy Analyst, Conflict and Environment Observatory).

The ABC of the OPT: A Legal lexicon of the Israeli Control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory (CUP 2018), presented by Professor Ben-Naftal, questions what role law has played in structuring and sustaining the ongoing regime of “control” of Israel over the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). She argues that Israel’s occupation is far from acting in a space of lawlessness; by contrast, it is “filled to the brim” with legalism. This law, while seeming to be arbitrary, is in reality carefully crafted to create a precise order: this order, however, is designed to create uncertainty among those affected by it, rather than offering certainty – a core tenant of the rule of law. She argues that the control of the Palestinian territories is probably “the most legalized such regime in world history”. It is therefore a “legal laboratory”, and “careful scrutiny of the experiments carried out in Israel’s legal laboratory may well generate lessons that are relevant to other situations, and indeed to the course of the development of international law itself”.

Dr Longobardo’s The Use of Armed Force in Occupied Territory (CUP 2018) can be seen as an attempt to identify and clearly delineate the legal framework relating to the legality of the use of force in occupied territories. The author takes a broad approach to its topic by contextualizing it within three different bodies of international law: jus ad bellum, international humanitarian law and international human rights law. While occupations have become a subject receiving more and more scholarly attention, Longobardo suggests that the law pertaining to those occupations has been relatively under-studied. He asserts that the very existence of an occupation means that an armed conflict is already ongoing, rendering jus ad bellum irrelevant in the occupation context. Further, as jus ad bellum is only operative before a conflict starts, it cannot necessarily act as a justification for armed force used during an occupation.

Stavros-Evdokimos Pantazopoulos discussed his work on protecting the environment in times of occupation, with a focus on the obligations of an occupying power in relation to environmental law. Firstly, he considered the applicable law in the situation where the occupying power has established its control over an occupied territory, focusing on the conservationist principle or the “no harm” (or Trail Smelter) principle. He then further investigated the specific obligations of an occupying power when parts of the environment are classified as ‘property’, while also attempting to shed light on the requirements imposed on an occupying power regarding the use and management of natural resources situated on occupied territory. He concluded by explaining the role of international human rights law in protecting the environment in times of occupation, arguing that the current trend in environmental law to apply human rights approaches – for example, by using the formula of human rights language – should not be followed, since this might conceal the emancipatory prospects of other discourses. He argued that this approach can also be justified due to the incompatibilities between human rights and environmental law, such as the anthropocentric and instrumental approach to environmental protection or the failure of human rights to capture the collective nature of environmental law.

This event offered a rich discussion of the various legal constructs that are, and could be, applied to occupied territories. Ultimately, the unique insights offered by the speakers illuminated the legal discourse surrounding military occupation in many unexpected ways.

 

 

The Distinction Principle and the Guantánamo Military Commissions

Uncategorized

In this guest post, LLM in International Law student and GJA Ambassador, Felix Mayr, reflects on a recent Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law event on the principle of distinction and the application of contemporary international law.

 

On 15 October 2019, The Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law held a panel discussion exploring the principle of distinction as defined in international humanitarian law. The primary aim of the panel was to Illuminate some of the legal questions concerning the evolving notion of distinction, focusing on the current US point of view. The panel featured both experts from academia and practice, including James Connell and Benjamin R. Farley, two of the defence lawyers in the 9/11 military commission case taking place in Guantánamo Bay, as well as Dylan Craig, senior professorial lecturer of International Relations at American University’s School of International Studies (SIS) in Washington, DC, and Katharine Fortin, Assistant Professor at Utrecht University.

The notion of distinction has proven to impact a variety of issues, including: the obligations of non-state actors in armed conflict; the prosecution of different actors through military commissions; how the distinction principle has been shaped by the US War on Terror; as well as human rights breaches linked to the unlawful detention of individuals inappropriately categorised under international humanitarian law (IHL).

Dylan Craig argued that there are grey zones of formalized war, more aptly framed as interstices where state power and jurisdiction are mismatched. These “sovereign interstices” can be imagined as a black and white chess board. They can be deemed inextricable from the negative spaces of the great war-regulating sovereign orders, but they are, on the other hand, also characterized by recurring characteristics among the fighters who are recruited to fight proxy wars within them. States and the notion of sovereignty have changed greatly in the last four hundred years since the Westphalian Peace, but interstitial fighters have changed far less in comparison, and the same can be said of the recurring styles in which they are employed by their patrons. He argued that there has never been a “static” concept of sovereignty, but one that changes slightly a few times over the course of a hundred years. Hence, he concluded that we might be on the verge of establishing a new concept of sovereignty, reminding the audience that it is up to us, not only as academics but also citizens and human beings, to determine what this concept should look like. Closing on an optimistic note, he argued that events such as Guantánamo Bay give us a chance to productively respond to these incidents.

Katharine Fortin explained that the title of the panel captures the somewhat chaotic state of the legal approaches that have developed to deal with armed groups in the area of IHL, especially with regards to the US. She argued that through a system of judicial self-referencing the US have taken an exclusive stand point in explicit contradiction to the stand point of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The US’s own definitions of legal terms such as “hostility” or “membership” (regarding armed groups) has led further and further away from internationally acknowledged rules into an exclusive US approach to the notion of distinction.

According to James Connell, the US has turned its own system on its head since the war on terror began after the events of 9/11. This is due to the fact that military commissions were seeking a way to hold terrorists to account, by twisting existing legal terms and principles to then reach the desired outcome. This has led to a problematic situation in which “pure” civilians can be (and are) subject to military commissions. The blurring concept of the notion of distinction has proved to be particularly problematic against the background of the authority of military commissions to decide upon executions.

Benjamin Farley similarly observed that the US is struggling with the principle of distinction, dividing the law of war into two concepts: the liability to detain and the notion of being targetable. Anyone not falling into either one of these categories can be deemed as a civilian and remains protected by general law. However, civilians who pose a security threat have also become liable to detention for (at least) a restricted period of time, often without a chance for legal review of their detention. Through a system of picking-and-choosing from legal categories by analogy, the US has created a confusing concept regarding the categorization of civilians as members of an armed group. He argues that these conflicts have now become transnational, surpassing the former concept of non-international conflicts, and the application of the distinction principle has not developed coherently.

Overall, the panel presented a vital discussion, building not only on the presentations by the speakers but also from stimulating questions and ideas raised among students, lawyers and other members of the audience. Most importantly, the speakers were able to make the work of military commissions come alive, explaining the dilemma of navigating legal rules adopted in response to narrow and often ill-conceived political agendas.

Just Justice – how can we achieve the fair distribution of legal resources?

book review, Innovative Initiative Fund, Law and Legal, Uncategorized

The Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory organised an author-meets-critics workshop on the manuscript of the book Just Justice by Frederick Wilmot-Smith. This workshop was funded by the Global Justice Academy’s Innovative Initiative Fund.  Lucas Miotto, a PhD candidate in the Edinburgh Law School, introduces the key issues and questions raised by this soon-to-be-published book.

Resources must be fairly distributed. Hardly anyone would disagree with this statement. Besides, most people would agree that the fair distribution of resources is something valuable which we should care about. And people do care about it. Many of the heated debates about social security, social benefits, education, public health and immigration which have recently caught the attention of the public and the media are – or at least are connected to – debates about the fair distribution of resources. It is no exaggeration to say that debates about the fair distribution of resources are at the core of past and present public debate.

Just as we talk about the distribution of economic or educational resources, we can talk about the distribution of legal resources. The public needs lawyers and courts. Like any other resource, lawyers and courts are scarce and access to them doesn’t come for free. So, how about the fair distribution of legal resources? What sort of distribution would count as fair? Curiously, and unfortunately, questions like these are under-appreciated. Not only has the public been timid in addressing questions about the fair distributions of legal resources; an in-depth philosophical treatment of the topic has been entirely missing. Frederick Wilmot-Smith’s Just Justice attempts to correct this.

The book directly engages with many puzzles associated with the fair distribution of legal resources. It starts by questioning the very object of distribution. What should be fairly distributed? To say ‘access to lawyers and courts’ would be too simplistic an answer. The object of fair distribution, Wilmot-Smith argues, is broader than this. Of course, he doesn’t deny that it is important to fairly distribute access to legal resources such as lawyers and courts. But the questions about the fair distribution of these legal resources hang on a broader debate about the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of the justice system. It is only after we have sound principles for the fair distribution of such benefits and burdens that we will be able to address the fair distribution of legal resources (e.g., access to lawyers and courts).

The core part of the book puts forward principles for the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of the justice system. In a nutshell, the principles defended in the book support the establishment of a justice system in which benefits and burdens are equally distributed among citizens. Practical implications are myriad, and some of the institutional reforms required to meet the proposed principles radically clash with established views about the justice system. The book, however, doesn’t shy away from defending these radical implications and objecting to established views. In fact, some of these implications are defended at length. For, example, the book has an entire chapter dedicated to defending the view that the justice system should be financed by everyone – which is perhaps the most controversial implication of the principles defended throughout the book. Discussions about the privatisation of legal resources and alternative dispute resolution systems also receive an extensive treatment. The book is no doubt an extremely timely and important contribution to legal philosophy and to the public debate in general. It sharply allies care for philosophical rigour with readability and public relevance.

The Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory had the pleasure of hosting an author-meets-critics workshop to discuss Frederick Wilmot-Smith’s Just Justice on May 24th, 2017. The event, jointly organised by Luís Duarte d’Almeida and Euan MacDonald, featured a total of eight commentators – ranging from philosophy to criminal law and political science – each of which focused on a different chapter of the book manuscript.

Participants were keen to engage in discussion and offered both critical remarks and constructive feedback. As a result, discussion was very lively, friendly and informal. We look forward to the publication of Just Justice, and we would like to express our gratitude to the Global Justice Academy, whose support made this event possible.

Turning Off the Light: Protecting Survivors of Torture (Peace and Conflict Series)

Human rights, Peace and Conflict Series, Torture, Uncategorized

Publicising Human Rights violations and holding perpetrators of torture accountable has been guiding practice for much human rights work. As Prof. Tobias Kelly shows in this contribution to the GJA’s Peace & Conflict blog series: rather than shining light into dark places, many victims want the lights switched off. Kelly suggests that that the need for protecting victims may be more important than the need to hold perpetrators accountable.

By Tobias Kelly

Perpetrators need to be held to account and victims need redress. This has been the central principle of human rights work against torture for the past fifty years. However, collaborative work we have been carrying out in Kenya, Bangladesh and Nepal suggests that for many survivors- especially amongst the poorest and most vulnerable in society- the emphasis might be in the wrong place. What most survivors want, above all else, is to feel safe and secure, and accountability has only an indirect relationship with the desire for protection.  » Read more

Keeping Guantánamo on the Map

Human rights, International Law, Law and Legal, Student Ambassadors, Terrorism, Torture, Uncategorized

Vivek Bhatt, a Student Ambassador with the Global Justice Academy (GJA), has written this blog following a panel event he attended at the Edinburgh Law School. The event, hosted by the GJA, explored the continuing relevance of legal and political issues arising from detention at Guantánamo Bay.

The United States acquired control of Guantánamo Bay in 1903, when it entered into an agreement with Cuba for the perpetual lease of the 45 square mile area.[1] Guantánamo Bay has since been operated as a naval base, and in the 1990s, it was ‘refashioned as a detention camp for those seeking asylum in the United States.’[2] From 1991 to 1996, more than 20,000 Cuban and 36,000 Haitian asylum seekers were interned in Guantánamo Bay.[3] And, in November 2001, merely days after the declaration of a ‘global war’ against terrorism, a US Military Order authorised the indefinite detention and trial of ‘enemy combatants’ at the camp. The US promptly began transferring individuals captured during its international counterterrorist operations to Guantanamo Bay. A total of 770 have been held there through the course of the war on terrorism. Only 8 men have been convicted, with more than 500 released during the Bush administration, 198 released during Obama’s presidency, and 9 killed in custody. 41 remain in detention, with 14 considered high value detainees and 26 designated as ‘forever prisoners,’ individuals whose knowledge of practices at Guantánamo Bay renders them too dangerous to be released.

The legal justifications provided for detention at Guantánamo Bay have been vague, at best. Those transferred to the camp are characterised as ‘enemy combatants’ under the laws of armed conflict, even though many have been captured outside areas of fighting.[4] The camp’s location in Cuba has, furthermore, allowed officials to assert that detainees are not entitled to the protections of the US legal system. According to Harold Koh, Guantánamo Bay is effectively a ‘rights-free zone’ constructed by the US. [5] Its detainees, writes Agamben, ‘[Are] legally unnameable and unclassifiable beings.’[6] After the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture in 2014, it was finally confirmed that many of these detainees have been subjected to ongoing torture practices as part of their interrogation. The camp has, therefore, come to symbolise the legal and ethical dubiousness of the war on terror, with the ‘visceral image’ of the orange Guantánamo jumpsuit now engrained in public memory and popular culture.[7] Fifteen years on, however, International attention to the legal and political issues arising from detention at Guantánamo Bay is waning. Some, it seems, believe the worst is over, while others may simply have accepted that the goings on at the camp are part of an inevitable, ‘new’ reality of the war on terror.

This was the topic of ‘International Law and Guantánamo Detention Operations: Why it Matters,’ a panel event hosted by the Global Justice Academy and the Edinburgh Law School on 9 February 2017. The event aimed to examine the range of international law and human rights issues relating to detention operations in Guantánamo Bay, and was opened by Kasey McCall-Smith, lecturer in public international law at the Edinburgh Law School. Dr McCall-Smith provided an overview of the breaches of international law at Guantánamo Bay. She began by pointing out that the United States is not solely responsible for these breaches; the international community has facilitated the detention programme at Guantánamo Bay, and has failed to react to the grave violations of human rights that have occurred there. The violations of human rights at Guantánamo Bay begin with rendition flights, which transport terrorists to the camp for interrogation, and have been allowed to land at various airports throughout Europe. Various areas of international law are relevant to rendition, but particularly the prohibition of enforced disappearance. Once at Guantánamo Bay, detainees have been denied their right to visits from a consular official of their national State, protected under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.[8] As Dr McCall-Smith pointed out, various provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have also been violated in the course of detention and interrogation at Guantánamo Bay. These include the right to non-discrimination,[9] the right to liberty and security of person,[10] the right to be heard before a court,[11] and the right to be treated with respect for the inherent dignity of the person.[12]

Meanwhile, Jacques Hartmann, a senior lecturer in Law at the University of Dundee, spoke of his research into arbitrary detention in non-international armed conflicts. This topic is particularly relevant to Guantánamo Bay, given that most of those taken to the camp are captured as enemy combatants. To Dr Hartmann, the detention of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay is symptomatic of a much larger problem: the lack of treaty provisions that explicitly address detention in non-international armed conflict. The lack of an express provision leads many to infer the authority to detain from the authority to use lethal force. Yet Dr Hartmann warned against such inferential reasoning, reiterating that any detention without legal justification is arbitrary, and is thus prohibited under both international human rights and humanitarian law.

As suggested above, the most widely discussed human rights violation at Guantánamo Bay is the continued use of torture. This was the focus of an address given by Dr Mitch Robinson, an international law specialist at the United States Department of Defense. He characterised Guantánamo Bay as a concentration camp; the only people detained there since November 2001 have been Sunni Muslim men. Dr Robinson spoke of one of his clients, a Saudi national who was accused of financing terrorism, and was in the CIAs’ torture programme for three and a half years. Though reports from early questioning suggested that he ‘does not appear to be a financing mastermind,’ the client was repeatedly deprived of sleep, sodomised and water-boarded, among other things. Robinson proposed a strategy for global human rights litigation relating to Guantánamo Bay. He refers to this strategy as ‘collateral advocacy’ for detainees’ human rights through domestic courts, regional human rights bodies, the UN’s human rights treaty bodies and high commissioner for human rights, international non-governmental organisations, civil society, and the application of legal or diplomatic pressure by other States.

Andrea Birdsall, lecturer in international relations at the University of Edinburgh, pointed out that as the international community has become aware of torture practices in Guantánamo Bay, the US government has moved along a ‘continuum of denials.’ This began with literal denial, a phase in which the Bush administration simply argued that the US Government does not commit acts of torture. This was, however, challenged by the release of the torture memos,[13] which made clear that torture was being used as a government policy. This led to ‘interpretive denial,’ in which it was argued that detainees were not subjected to torture, but to ‘enhanced’ or ‘increased pressure’ phases of interrogation that did not entail the ‘near-death’ experiences that would constitute violations of international or US domestic law. In the final stage, ‘implicatory denial,’ it was admitted that ‘mistakes had been made’ in the interrogation of suspected terrorists, but it was argued that the measures taken were justifiable in times of crisis. To Dr Birdsall, the US government’s treatment of terrorist suspects does not signify the demise of the anti-torture norm. Instead, the discourse surrounding Guantánamo Bay has legitimised the international law prohibition of torture, reinforcing a shared global understanding of the prohibition’s non-derogability.

The panel concluded that the programme of detention and interrogation at Guantánamo Bay warrants continued attention from scholars, lawyers, governments, and international civil society. There are three reasons for this conclusion. Firstly, violations of human rights are ongoing; Article 14 of the Torture Convention, for example, requires States parties to rehabilitate victims of torture, an obligation the US government has not fulfilled in relation to Guantánamo detainees.[14] Secondly, Guantánamo Bay is unlikely to be closed in the foreseeable future, and conditions may in fact worsen in coming years. And, finally, the prominence of human rights violations at the camp presents an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to reflect upon the state of the international rule of law, and to reify the value of the fundamental rights protected within the international legal order.

About the author

Vivek Bhatt is an Edinburgh Global Research Scholar, and is reading for a PhD in Law. He holds an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and a Master of International Law from the University of Sydney. Vivek’s research interests span public international law, international political theory, and counterterrorism. His current research relates to the engagement of individuals in the international legal system through the course of the war on terror.

[1] Fleur Johns, ‘Guantánamo Bay and the Annihilation of the Exception’ (2005) 16(4) The European Journal of International Law 613, 616.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Mary Ellen O’Connell, ‘The Choice of Law Against Terrorism’ (2010) 4 Journal of National Security Law & Policy 343, 353.

[5] Quoted in Joan Fitspatrick, ‘Spekaing Law to Power: The War Against Terrorism and Human Rights’ (2003) 14 European Journal of International Law 241, 242.

[6] Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Kevin Attell trans., University of Chicago Press, 2005) 3.

[7] This phrase was used by Mitch Robinson, a panelist at ‘International Law and Guantánamo Detention Operations: Why it Matters’, hosted by the Global Justice Academy and Edinburgh Law School on 9 February 2017.

[8] Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, signed 24 April 1963, 596 UNTS 261 (entered into force 19 March 1967) art 36.

[9] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976) art 2.

[10] Ibid art 9(1).

[11] Ibid art 9(4).

[12] Ibid art 10(1).

[13] See, for example, Philippe Sands, ‘Torture Team: The Responsibility of Lawyers for Abusive Interrogation’ (2008) 9 Melbourne Journal of International Law 365, 366.

[14] Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, opened for signature 10 December 1984, 1465 UNTS 85 (entered into force 26 June 1987) art 14.

Trafficking in the UK: Demands and Dilemmas for Justice

Human rights, Inequalities, Local-Global Connections, Sexual Violence, Student Ambassadors, Uncategorized

Mahlea Babjak is reading for a PhD in Religious Studies and is researching human trafficking in South Asia.  She is a Global Justice Academy Student Ambassador for 2016-17. Here, Mahlea reports on the recent Tumbling Lassie seminar on Trafficking in the UK.

The Faculty of Advocates, as well as other lawyers and justice advocates, gathered on the 28 of January 2017 to hear from key stakeholders fighting human trafficking in both the UK and abroad, due to the interlinking nature of trafficking networks.

The seminar opened with a short history of The Tumbling Lassie, followed by a compelling talk led by Andrew Bevan of International Justice Mission (IJM). When Andrew stated that the IJM’s mission to “rescue thousands, protect millions and prove that justice for the poor is possible” was an ambition being met (with IJM currently protecting an estimated 21 million), I was filled with hope and reminded that seemingly impossible justice goals are never beyond reach.

Andrew traced the story of one woman whom IJM worked with in India. The woman was trafficked for labour and enslaved at a brick kiln under debt bondage for forty years. Our hearts grew heavy as we felt the weight of one brick that Andrew passed around the seminar from the kiln. Andrew is passionate about seeing students, businesses and lawyers in Scotland becoming advocates in anti-human trafficking. As Andrew stated, you can “use what’s in your hands to respond” to the global justice issue of human trafficking.

We then heard from the Solicitor General for Scotland, Alison Di Rollo, who emphasised her (and the Lord Advocate’s) desire to “make the invisible visible” by improving our ability of detecting, challenging, and reporting cases of trafficking in the UK (see photo).

Alison’s talk drew widely on the general approach of the justice system in Scotland and about their commitment to safeguarding human trafficking victims rights, working collaboratively with NGOs and academics, and prosecuting traffickers. While many would be surprised to hear that trafficking is indeed happening in Scotland and the UK widely, Alison noted common destinations in Scotland and discussed several cases as examples and stressed that improving our ability to detect victims of trafficking as critical.

Alison’s talk led nicely to Bronagh Andrew’s of TARA (Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance), a sector of Community Safety Glasgow. Alison shared about how TARA offers a support service to trafficking survivors and helps to identify victims of sexual exploitation. TARA has a unique survivor-led approach, which has provided survivors with hope as their survivors re-learn how to trust people and the legal system. The work of TARA has empowered survivors through TARA’s ability to support survivors on a long-term basis, until the survivors express that they feel they’ve regained a sense of agency.

The final speaker was Parosha Chandran, an award-winning human rights barrister and receiver of the ‘Trafficking in Persons Hero Award 2015’ from former US Secretary of State, John Kerry. Parosha spoke about establishing rights recognition for victims of trafficking and she over-viewed some of the ground-breaking trafficking cases she has worked on over the past 15+ years, which have come to shape anti-trafficking efforts in the UK. A theme that would be interesting to explore further from Parosha’s presented cases is the often out-dated relationship between the justice system and Home Office. Since much of Parosha’s discussion was technical, legal language, she has offered to share her powerpoint that outlines the major human trafficking cases in the UK if requested by email.

Overall, this event sparked both hope within attendees and a desire to see more anti-human trafficking seminars combining major UK law firms and legal advocates. I would highly recommend people mark their calendars in advance for whenever the next Tumbling Lassie seminar may be.

More about the author

Mahlea is also the Emerging Fields Researcher for Tiny Hands International, an NGO fighting human trafficking globally through border and transit monitoring. Mahlea can be contacted at: mahlea@tinyhands.org.

The Tumbling lassie

If anyone is interested in this field and would like to get in touch with The Tumbling Lassie directly, you can email them here: tumblinglassie@gmail.com 

Should we have hope for the human rights project?

Blog, Human rights, Student Ambassadors, Uncategorized

Vivek Bhatt is reading for a PhD in Law, and is a Global Justice Academy Student Ambassador for 2016-17. He recently attended and spoke at a conference hosted by the University of Sussex’s Human Rights Research Centre. The conference theme was Challenging Human Rights Disenchantment.

The past few years have been uncertain times for the human rights project. On one hand, the human rights discourse seems ubiquitous in contemporary international affairs. Yet on the other, the authority, legitimacy, and efficiency of international human rights law are continually being challenged. 2016, for example, saw the escalation of the refugee crisis resulting from conflict in Syria and Iraq, the rejection by several African heads of state of a UN dialogue on the human rights of same-sex attracted individuals,[1] and the election of a new American head of state, who – from the outset – has expressed an unwillingness to abide by key international human rights laws, the Convention against Torture, and the Refugee Convention.[2] In light of such developments, disenfranchisement and frustration with international human rights law seem inevitable. While some suggest that human rights are admirably idealistic but ultimately unenforceable,[3] others claim that the human rights project is but a vehicle for capitalism, the entrenchment of global power disequilibrium, and Western neo-colonialism.[4]

It was against this troubling backdrop that the Sussex Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Sussex hosted its inaugural conference, titled Challenging Human Rights Disenchantment 50 Years on from the ICCPR and ICESCR. The interdisciplinary conference brought together human rights advocates, lawyers, and philosophers, with speakers considering various forms of human rights disenchantment, and the ways in which they can be challenged. Mona Rishwami – Chief of the Rule of Law, Equality, and Non-Discrimination branch of the OHCHR – opened the conference with an outline of the developments that galvanised the human rights movement and the profession of human rights law. Rishwami suggested that although the current legal framework for human rights was conceived in the aftermath of the Second World War, it articulates concerns and ideals that are pertinent to contemporary human experience. She was followed by Professor Pamela Palmater, who – as an indigenous woman – argued that human rights activism should no longer be left to members of the world’s most marginalised communities. Citing the disproportionate number of indigenous women in custody and the infrastructural underdevelopment of indigenous nations within Canada, Palmater suggested that human rights violations are rife even within States that are reputed as bastions of human rights. To Palmater, human rights law generates demands for state accountability, demands that we must all amplify within and beyond academic circles.

Following a series of thematic sessions featuring speakers from the UK and abroad, the esteemed Professor Andrew Clapham delivered a closing address. Professor Clapham shared anecdotes about the many ways in which he has been confronted by human rights disenchantment, from being told that human rights ‘are for girls,’ to seeing politicians and the press tell ‘lies’ about the competence and function of regional and international human rights bodies. While Professor Palmater highlighted the importance of human rights advocacy by individuals, Professor Clapham addressed the roles of academics and lawyers. He suggested that we must defend human rights as a binding and legitimate body of law, dispel pervasive fictions about the function and reach of human rights bodies, and challenge rhetoric that characterises human rights law as vacuous idealism.

Though they focused on different issues, Palmater and Clapham made a common argument: that there exist innumerable human rights issues around the world today, and their resolution requires engagement with individuals outside the realms of human rights law and academia. This, to Palmater, is in order to encourage widespread human rights activism. To Clapham, meanwhile, it is in order to legitimise human rights as a valid and functional category of law that can – and does – influence governance and society. Clapham’s argument resonated with Charlesworth’s description of international law as a ‘discipline of crisis’;[5] we can challenge human rights disenchantment by encouraging sceptics to look beyond the law’s most prominent failings, and to recognise the ways in which human rights laws exist as practice, constituting everyday realities.

As a participant, I left the conference with conflicting intuitions. I had spent the day speaking and hearing about the emancipatory promise of human rights, but simultaneously reading news about a travel ban in the USA and a possible escalation of torture practices in the context of the war on terror. Yet there was meaning to be found in this apparent clash between theoretical optimism and reality. Not that we should give up on human rights altogether, but that the human rights project is most important and meaningful precisely when the reasons for disenchantment with it seem most convincing. Human rights provide a basis for critical discursive and legal engagement with political institutions by academics, social movements, lawyers, and jurists. International human rights law also serves as a reminder that each individual is entitled to certain liberties and securities by virtue of his or her humanness. The policies of the Trump administration may be conspicuous and shocking, but they should not diminish the significance or urgency of other human rights issues around the world. As moral claims and as law, human rights require us to reflect on and respond to all instances of marginalisation, deprivation, and violence. This includes not only the suffering of migrants in constitutional democracies, but also indigenous communities, persecuted religious minorities, and same-sex attracted individuals, among others.

We should, therefore, have hope for and promote the human rights project. As Professor Palmater implied, inaction and despair would merely aid the demise of something we recognise as intrinsically valuable. The inaugural conference of the Sussex Centre for Human Rights Research highlighted not only the diversity of current human rights scholarship, but also the number of domestic, regional, and international practices that can be influenced (and improved) by human rights considerations. More information on the conference proceedings and speakers, including a copy of the programme, can be found at: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/schrr/pastevents/challenging-human-rights-disenchantment.

About the author

Vivek Bhatt is an Edinburgh Global Research Scholar, and is reading for a PhD in Law. He holds an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and a Master of International Law from the University of Sydney. Vivek’s research interests span public international law, international political theory, and counterterrorism. His current research relates to the engagement of individuals in the international legal system through the course of the war on terror.

[1] Permanent Mission of the Republic of Botswana to the United Nations, Statement of the African Group on the Presentation of the Annual Report of the United Nations Human Rights Council (4 November 2016) United Nations PaperSmart < papersmart.unmeetings.org/media2/7663738/botswana.pdf>.

[2] See, for example, Mark Mazzetti and Charlie Savage, Leaked Draft of Executive Order Could Revive C.I.A. Prisons (25 January 2017) The New York Times < https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/executive-order-leaked-draft-national-security-trump-administration.html?_r=0>.

[3] See, for example, Eric Posner, The Twilight of Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 2014).

[4] See, for example, David Kennedy, ‘Reassessing International Humanitarianism: the Dark Sides’ in Anne Orford (ed), International Law and its Others (Cambridge University Press, 2006) 131, 133-5.

[5] Hilary Charlesworth, ‘International Law: A Discipline of Crisis’ (2002) 65(3) The Modern Law Review 377.

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