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States have been increasingly engaging in a practice of ex gratia payments during armed conflict as a way to win ‘hearts and minds’ or mitigate local animosity from combat operations that cause civilian loss or damage. These represent voluntary payments for damages which are not the result of a violation of the laws of war. This practice provides a contrast to reparations, which are the result of a legal obligation to remedy breaches of law. This article critically assesses how these two concepts interact with each other. Analysing the current practice, this work argues that ex gratia payments can represent another barrier for victims seeking redress. Crucial here is that these payments are seen as both an explicit and implicit waiver of any future claims. This ignores the potential for synergy between the two concepts on both moral and operational grounds. To better facilitate this potential synergy, this article takes inspiration from some of the human rights jurisprudence surrounding reparations programs and considers ex gratia payments in light of their standards instead of accepting them as a blanket waiver. This would align these payments better with both the operational and moral imperatives underlying these payments.

The contribution analyzes judgment No. 10656/2022 of the Corte di Cassazione, wherein the Court has ruled on a passive extradition from Italy to Russia following a request issued by the latter in relation to a Russian former kbg member currently suffering from multiple sclerosis, after an arrest warrant had been issued against her for a common crime committed in Russia. The Corte di Cassazione, when considering the appeal well-founded, pointedly specifies which assessments shall be undertaken – also in light of the obligations arising from the European Convention on Human Rights – by the Italian judicial authority (i.e., the Corte d’Appello) called upon to decide on an extradition request involving a seriously ill individual, taking into account the detention conditions in the requesting State as well as the punishments prescribed therein in terms of the potential risk for the individual of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.

The arrest of a mother may have far reaching consequences for her child(ren). This article discusses the question whether in Dutch criminal proceedings these potential effects are sufficiently taken into account before, during and after the mother’s arrest. In order to answer this question, the potential negative effects the arrest may have on the children involved will be discussed. Next, attention will be paid to the international and European legal frameworks and their relevance for arresting mothers. The right of the child to be informed about the arrest, and European case law concerning the arrest of parents in the presence of their children, will be discussed. Finally, a critical analysis will be given of how the arrest of mothers is dealt with according to Dutch law and practice. Practical experiences will be drawn from fieldwork conducted in two Dutch detention centres.

This article explores a pair of powerful but competing symbols in the Chilean human transitional justice process: ‘pobres viejitos’ (poor little old men) and country club prisons. The symbol of the ‘pobres viejitos’ is used very effectively by conservative elements of Chilean society to argue the futility or even inhumanity of punishing perpetrators of human right violations so long after the commission of their crimes. In turn, to victims and more liberal segments of society, the country club or ‘five star’ prison for human rights violators stands as a symbol of impunity and the failure of the Chilean state to do justice for the crimes of the dictatorship. This article examines the power of these symbols in undermining support for transitional justice efforts, as well as the externalities of the debate. The fate of the ‘pobres viejitos’ and whether to release the from even their relatively comfortable places of confinement has bled into debates on penal reform for other elderly prisoners. This mostly negative externality suggests the need for international and regional courts (or countries not in the throes of transitional justice processes, particularly delayed ones) to lead the way on the articulation of human rights norms related to the trial and punishment of elderly prisoners.

The Yearbook of International Disaster Law aims to represent a hub for critical debate in this emerging area of research and policy and to foster the interest of academics, practitioners, stakeholders and policy-makers on legal and institutional issues relevant to all forms of natural, technological and human-made hazards. This Yearbook primarily addresses the international law dimension of relevant topics, alongside important regional and national dimensions relevant for further development of legal and policy initiatives.Volume Four features a thematic section on the "Regionalization and Localisation on International Disaster Law" as well as a general selection of articles, and an international and regional review of International Disaster Law in Practice, plus book reviews and bibliography.The Yearbook is also available online. To learn more about the online version, please click here.

Global solidarity and international cooperation are key to addressing compound global crises – such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pandemics – effectively. It remains unclear, however, to what extent, and on what legal basis, solidarity and international cooperation constitute legal obligations of States under different branches of international law. Questions also persist about the extent to which and how States’ obligations of international cooperation are differentiated; what common and differentiated obligations entail in practice for States at different levels of development; and how potential conflicts between different types of obligations (e.g. territorial and extraterritorial human rights obligations) must be addressed. This article seeks to unpack these questions from the perspective of international human rights law, giving due consideration to relevant principles and provisions of international environmental agreements. It builds on international law scholarship that has explained how and why the provisions of the UN Charter should be interpreted as creating genuine membership duties, including an obligation to cooperate to realise human rights. Further, it builds on more recent scholarship that has explored how this obligation applies in connection with climate change and biodiversity, and on a nascent body of scholarship on the covid- 19 crisis, human rights and international law. The aim of the article is to explore the role of the principle of solidarity and the duty to cooperate to realise human rights in devising more effective and holistic responses to compound global crises.

While the dawn of Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions have aided in solving some of societal challenges, globalization and technological innovation potentially have the capability to disrupt, suspend, or change existing legal order, preventing the realization of business and human rights principles. For example, with AI-enabled systems, Africans can now access better healthcare, education, health, and transportation. However, AI has the potential to undermine human rights concerns. This article contextualizes the usage of AI systems and its implications for human rights violations. With particular reference to Africa, it gives an overarching context capable of constructing legal reactions to corporate related human rights violations. Some of the questions posed are: What are the ways human rights can be protected from exploitative tendencies of AI companies? How can African states, and businesses respond to regulatory challenges triggered by loss of work due to automation? What innovations and new methodologies are to be designed to engage with a sustainable and automated future? Finally, we propose reforms for corporate entities developing and deploying AI to respect human rights.

The article reviews trends in international non-binding standards: 1) the equalisation of indigenous peoples and local communities as rights-holders; 2) the strength and weakness of the safeguards approach in the context of redd+; 3) the wide definition of who constitutes stakeholders; and 4) the scope of a due diligence requirement. The article identifies and discusses two approaches: 1) mobilisation, understood as political or legal pressure exerted upon endogenous actors by other endogenous actors, and where international human rights serve as the norm basis for this pressure. 2) control, implying that power asymmetries in relation to external actors are challenged by alliances with human rights organisations and environmental organisations. Both benefit from being embedded in human rights principles: dignity, non-discrimination, rule of law, accountability, transparency, participation and empowerment. Human rights might, however, lead to tensions internally, as these principles can conflict with customary and exclusionary decision-making procedures.

Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to freedom of religion and conscience. The language of Article 9(1) has been interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights as including protections for acts of proselytism, when properly committed and respectful of the rights and freedoms of others. This was the view taken in the foundational Article 9 case of the Court, Kokkinakis v. Greece. In the decades since Kokkinakis, however, the view of the Court on proselytism appears to have shifted, in particular in Article 9 cases involving religious garments. This article seeks to determine whether the Court is consistent in its views on proselytism between these religious garment cases and earlier examples of Article 9 case law.

Legal regulation of religious conversion has become one of the central human rights issues worldwide. Numerous countries, especially in South Asia, have enacted laws that prohibit proselytizating on the grounds of force, allurement, and misrepresentation. Critics have consistently relied on freedom of religion to oppose these laws, but courts in these jurisdictions have upheld them on the very grounds of religious freedom. The present Article explains the historical and ideological bases of this counterintuitive approach to religious freedom by focusing on the case of India. It argues that this approach is based on a historically evolving conception of religion associated with modern Hinduism, according to which all religions have an equal claim to spiritual truth. This precept of religious equality has come to constitute the political and judicial approach to religious freedom and religious conversion laws. The Article uses this interpretive insight to renew the normative critique of such laws.

Despite the normative integration between freedom of religion or belief (FORB) and women’s equality, these synergies are difficult to discern and there is a common misperception that women’s rights to equality and FORB are clashing rights. This is compounded by the extensive religiously phrased reservations by states upon ratification of international treaties that amplify this misperception that FORB serves to restrict women’s rights to equality. The advocacy groups supporting these rights, and also their normative sources in international human rights law instruments, are largely distinct. However, general non-discrimination provisions do address both, and General Comment no. 28 captures both rights holistically. The correctives to these misperceptions lie in reflecting upon the universality, indivisibility, interdependence, and interrelatedness of all human rights norms. They also lie in the realization that FORB is a right like any other. FORB is neither a right of “religion” as such nor an instrument for support of religiously phrased reservations and limitations on women’s rights to equality. This is particularly the case with harmful practices, as elaborated in the joint general recommendation/General Comment no. 31 of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and no. 18 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child however, the core principles also extend to other infringements of women’s rights to equality. It is essential to (re)vitalize the synergies between FORB and women’s equality in order to advance each of these rights, to be able to address overlapping rights concerns, and to adequately acknowledge intersectional claims. Furthermore, the relevant advocacy groups and human rights mechanisms need to give further attention to this as a priority matter.

The changing religious landscape in Ireland is the context for this analysis of the implications of the insertion of the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution (which in 1983 inserted Article 40.3.3 into the Constitution to give the unborn an equal right to life with that of the mother) and its subsequent repeal in the 2018 referendum. It considers how women’s right to abortion (within the limits specified by the Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018) can be vindicated in the context of claims to freedom of religion or belief and in light of the continuing institutional power of the Catholic church in the provision of healthcare. The broader political implications of the changing religious landscape are also considered, as is the question of whether and how the relationship between religion and politics in Ireland can be re-conceptualised.

This paper will consider the extent to which two competing norms—freedom of religion, on the one hand, and Islam as the religion of the state, on the other—are in tension with each other as seen through the lens of three Muslim-majority countries in the Maghreb. I examine this potential tension in four steps: first, the transformation of meaning of the Arabic word “hurriyya” (freedom) during and after the 19th century; second, the articulation of Islam as the religion of the state in the constitutions of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia; third, the articulation of freedom of religion (whether freedom of worship or conscience) in the constitutional texts of these three countries, and finally, the question whether the laws and practices that implement these two constitutional norms are compatible or whether they in fact give priority to Islam as the state religion over the norm of freedom of religion. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, Islam plays an important role in the legal system, especially in family codes: the Moroccan Family Code (2004), the Algerian Family Code (2016), and the Tunisian Personal Status Code (1957). These are the remaining citadels most implicated with references to Islamic law, the interpretation of which has placed women in an unequal position.

The article explores the tensions between FORB claims and the advancement of women’s rights in Muslim majority state contexts. Forms of Muslim majority state reservations to CEDAW are analysed in critical and comparative fashion. Iran’s historical engagement with CEDAW is studied for insight into how a purported theoretical conflict between CEDAW and FORB may be better understood in terms of the domestic and international politics of gender and power.

The paper offers an analysis of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights at the intersection of women’s rights and religious freedom. It maps different configurations of gender and religious interests across the corpus of case law, and analyses the Court’s intersectionality practice.

Based on a United Nations mission the author conducted to Tunisia in 2017, this article studies the links between economy and human – in particular economic and social- rights in this country. It addresses the following two questions: how do the economic and financial difficulties and related policies implemented affect human rights in Tunisia? To what extent are corruption, illicit financial flows and human rights interlinked in the country? The text presents the most relevant international human rights standards and commitments of Tunisia as well as its national human rights framework concerning human rights and economic policies. It also presents the financial, economic and political challenges that the country faces and the government responses through economic reform programme. It also discusses the efforts made to address corruption and illicit financial flows, including asset recovery at home and abroad, the institutional capacity to fight illicit financial flows and corruption, establishing accountability and curbing impunity, the Truth and Dignity Commission, the organic law on reconciliation in the administrative field and accountability in the banking sector. The article concludes that, while acknowledging that the democratic government is still making efforts to cope with the economic legacy left by the Ben Ali’s regime, the economic reforms (such as austerity and adjustment) being implemented need to adopt a holistic human rights approach in order to ensure those reforms promote these rights more effectively. It also concludes that corruption continues to be a destabilizing force in Tunisia, infecting its economy and undermining the enjoyment of human rights in the country. Towards the end policy recommendations for discussion are presented.

With the emergence of numerous human rights groups as well as legal instruments in the international arena, the rights and protection of people with disabilities are increasingly being guaranteed. However, in Nigeria, people with disabilities still live at the margins due to some cultural practices that continue to discriminate against them and undermine their rights and general wellbeing. The paper is an empirical study combined with some historical investigation of some of the extant literature to make a case that (a) there is connection between culture and the discrimination, neglect and abuse of person with disabilities; and, (b) that cultural practices undermine the rights and general wellbeing of persons living with disabilities in Nigeria.

This article investigates the development of national litigation against the Czech Republic’s governmental policy to detain asylum seekers under the Dublin III Regulation, as a means to address the so-called refugee crisis. The outcome of this litigation has been the preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Al Chodor case, which has been praised for enhancing domestic standards of protection of asylum seekers and returnees’ right to liberty across the EU. The article demonstrates that this preliminary ruling has been a catalyst for domestic legislative and jurisprudential reforms across the EU, improving to a certain extent the protection of the right to liberty of asylum seekers. However, it is argued that in the Czech Republic the case has not initiated a change in the legislation, nor has it reduced the systematic use of asylum detention. The article identifies some important legal, political and social factors from within and beyond courtrooms that have contributed to this ambiguous outcome of the Czech litigation. It concludes by identifying circumstances that need to be taken into account when using the preliminary reference procedure as a tool for strategic litigation.

COVID-19 has affected the full range of human rights, though some rights holders have experienced a disproportionate impact. This has triggered debate about the respective obligations and responsibilities of states and business enterprises under international human rights law. Against this backdrop, this article examines critically whether the “protect, respect and remedy” framework operationalised by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is “fit for the purpose” to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. I argue that while the UNGPs’ framework provides a good starting point, it is inadequate to bring transformative changes to overcome deep-rooted socio-economic problems exposed by this pandemic. Realising human rights fully would not only require harnessing the potential of states’ tripartite obligations, but also move beyond limiting the responsibility of businesses to respect human rights.

The status of commercial companies in international human rights law is controversial. Despite efforts to subject them to legal obligations in this field, they still cannot be held accountable for human rights violations. Companies have a standing before a few international courts, but only one international human rights court – the European Court of Human Rights. Surprisingly though, they can be applicants but never respondents. Even though this has been the reality for several decades now, it still raises a lot of concerns among academics. The Court itself justifies its decisions very sparingly. Meanwhile the scope of protection for companies constantly increases through its jurisprudence. Some rights, originally clearly designed to protect human beings, today apply to corporations as well.

With its Judgment of 27 November 2019 in Case T-31/18 Luisa Izuzquiza and Arne Semsrott v European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), the Court of Justice of the European Union opened a new chapter in the elaboration of the two seemingly antagonistic interests enshrined in Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents: the public’s fundamental right to transparency versus the public’s interest as regards “public security”. Focusing on the evolution of “public security” in the EU since 1993, this case note analyses the CJEU’s balancing of these principles, its increased scrutiny of Frontex administrative decisions, and the extent to which Frontex had to justify its denial to grant access to documents through the lens of the management of sensitive operational information. This examination puts the judgment in the context of the ongoing situation in the central Mediterranean and, by providing detailed insights on the underlying operational considerations, shows that the fundamental and wide-reaching right to transparency has to be balanced with the need to protect crew and vessels and the implementation and enforcement of the Frontex mandate. While continuing established case law in its use of the public security exception (a so-called absolute exception that is not subject to an overriding public interest test), in this case the CJEU subsumed, for the first time, individual subjective rights and legal interests under public security. This article argues that this amounts to the individualisation of public security. As pointed out by Frontex in its written and oral defence, the CJEU thus opened the door to extending the scope of public security to also include other groups of people in the government’s continuous and exclusive de jure and de facto control. The conclusion from the Frontex Case is thus that protecting life at sea and ensuring effective border surveillance are two sides of the same medal as they have a common aim: combatting human smugglers, traffickers in human beings and other criminals and safeguarding life, safety and physical integrity of law-enforcement crew and migrants alike.

This essay explores the impact of N.D. and N.T. v. Spain on the ECHR system. The case deals with the immediate return of aliens at Melilla’s border fence. Based on conceptual analysis, the author submits to critical scrutiny the arguments developed by the ECtHR. The Court’s reasoning is framed within the riveting interdisciplinary debate on external border control. The Grand Chamber’s final decision reduces the scope of the protection offered by Article 4 Protocol 4, for it introduces a highly indeterminate exception to the prohibition of summary returns at the border. The author suggests that this solution might favor non-entrée strategies and promote the current trend of externalizing the asylum procedures. Introducing broad exceptions to the prohibition of collective expulsion, especially if coupled with strong presumptions in favor of States, increases the effectiveness of border walls qua accountability waivers.

In the past thirty years, a growing number of international agreements and acts of international institutions has resorted to different kinds of confiscation (“direct confiscation”, “value confiscation”, “enlarged confiscation” or “nonconviction based confiscation”) to contrast and suppress international and transnational crimes. It can be considered that the flexibility – in terms of variety of measures and functions – of confiscation, together with the forced and permanent deprivation of property to which it always leads, significantly affect the favor towards this measure by States and international organisations. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), taking into account the aforementioned proliferation of international acts and agreements concerning the fight to criminal activities, maintains that common “European and even universal legal standards” can be said to exist which encourage the confiscation of property linked to serious criminal offences. Moreover, the Court has gone so far as to maintain that, in accordance with such “universal legal standards”, States Parties to the European Convention of Human Rights must be given “a wide margin of appreciation with regard to what constitutes the appropriate means of applying measures to control the use of property such as the confiscation of all types of proceeds of crime”. However, the implementation of such measures by States authorities must conform with human rights guarantees – inter alia the principle of legality in criminal matters, due process rights and property rights – provided for in customary and conventional international law. This essay seeks to examine the relevant case law of the ECtHR and to focus on the possibility of reconciling, on the one hand, international obligations on the protection of human rights and, on the other hand, international agreements and acts – concerning the fight against criminal activities – that provide for the various types of confiscation measures.

The increase in numbers of children travelling unaccompanied to Europe has provoked a sensitive debate as to how to treat their family members. While EU Member States generally grant family reunification for unaccompanied minors, the UK has opted to permit reunion in only ‘exceptional circumstances’. Widely criticised, the UK government counters that child-sponsored family reunification creates incentives for unaccompanied migration that place children at risk. This article explores both policies from a human rights perspective. It suggests that, as regards children reaching Europe, EU policy is more consistent with human rights norms. However, UK policy raises legitimate questions about obligations towards children beyond Europe’s borders. A rights-based justification for either EU or UK policy can be constructed, but requires recourse to additional principles on the balancing of rights among different groups of children. Clearer articulation and scrutiny of these principles could strengthen the rights rationale for child-sponsored family reunification.