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In 2015 the term for the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), set forth in the 2000 United Nations Millennium Declaration, has expired. In certain aspects some of these goals have been achieved. In September 2015 the international community has adopted the new Agenda for Sustainable Development for the period of 2016-2030 - «Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development», which determines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, reaffirms the obligations in relation to global partnership for sustainable development and sets out the basic principles of accountability for the implementation of these goals. In frames of this research the authors make an attempt to critically analyze the SDGs and their targets with the aim of identifying the problematic aspects of their implementation in the area of human rights protection, environmental protection, disaster risk reduction and regulation of migration, as well as propose relevant solutions. Carried out the idea that at the current stage it is important in worldwide efforts to implement the SDGs to pay more attention to the mechanisms of control over the achievement of the objectives. In this sense, a significant contribution can make a compliance review at the level of inter-regional, regional and subregional organizations that provide diversified, reliable and proven tools to measure progress in achieving the SDGs. In the article it is concluded that it is necessary to develop and sign the relevant agreements between the regional and subregional entities, to create a working group to coordinate in order to identify the most problematic areas and determine the forms of cooperation, to develop a «roadmap» for further cooperation of the universal, inter-regional, regional and subregional mechanisms in SDGs field achievements.

The article analyses international legal basis of protection of human rights of older persons as a vulnerable group, determines the main problems in the area of ensuring their rights at the national level through the activities of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The article concludes that there is a necessity of the adoption of comprehensive antidiscrimination laws by States aimed at fighting discrimination in all spheres of life on all grounds including age.

This article deals with one of the problems of children’s rights protection - the right of the child to communicate with both parents. The main tool for resolving disputes in this area is the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in Respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children. The article investigates the application of these acts in the Russian Federation; It also highlights the problems implementing these conventions and the prospects for their use. Authors elaborate on the recent changes in the legislation of the Russian Federation in this sphere including the Federal Law of May 5, 2014 № 126-FZ «On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in connection with the accession of the Russian Federation to the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Kidnapping children».

The human rights treaty bodies - international organs controlling the implementation of core international human rights treaties by States and forming an interlinked system today - are being confronted by a number of compelling challenges that seriously undermine their effective functioning. The current treaty body strengthening process aims to enhance the work of the treaty body system in a way that these challenges are addressed in most efficiently. In these terms the legal assessment of the system’s problems is essential for finding mechanisms of their solution that would ultimately improve human rights protection at the national level.

The eradication of poverty is one of the most vital issues facing the international community. Numerous international documents, including the Millennium Development Declaration and Goals, recognize the relationship between poverty and human rights. The whole UN human rights mechanism, including the Human Rights Council and its special procedure - the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty, is activated in order to eradicate poverty. The Human Rights Council invited the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty to prepare the draft guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights, the adoption of which might become an effective step in the process of eradication of extreme poverty on the international level.

This report is devoted to the history of organizing the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition and the first experience of Russian students' participation in this event.

INTRODUCTION. The paper considers the problem of the realisation of the core international human rights treaties at the national level from a perspective of the importance of conducting doctrinal research in this area. The authors provide the analysis of the content of the study project “The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level”, launched in 2018 in continuation of the study carried out almost 20 years ago initiated by Ch. Heyns and F. Viljoen, professors of the Center for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria (South Africa), with the support of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to study the impact of the six existing at that time core international human rights treaties on the human rights situation in 20 States, including the Russian Federation.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research was based on a variety of study materials, including international treaties, outcome documents of the international conferences, recommendations of the human rights treaty bodies, doctrinal studies, national legislation and the court practice of the Russian Federation. The authors applied historical legal and comparative legal methods when comparing the contents of the 1999 research and the 2018 study project, tracking the developments in the universal human rights system since 1999 till today, comparing the current tendencies in the realisation of the human rights treaties in Russia with the conclusions of the previous research on Russia. The method of legal forecasting was used to determine the perspectives of the present and possible future research on the impact of human rights treaties in States.RESEARCH RESULTS. Demonstrating the developments in the universal human rights system and the dynamics in the realisation of the human rights treaties in Russia taken place since 1999, the authors examined the tasks of the new research they need to conduct as the successors of professors Yu. Kolosov and Yu. Reshetov and identified the specifics of the approach of the new study comparing to the previous one.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. The authors demonstrate the potential of the study to determine the measures to enhance the effectiveness of the human rights treaty body system within the ongoing process on its strengthening, including the 2020 UN comprehensive review of the progress achieved in this field. The paper points out the importance of expanding the research to more than 20 countries, already covered by the research, with a view of forming a comprehensive picture of the way in which the international human rights treaty system influences the situation of rights holders at local level, just where it really matters.

The human rights treaty bodies are international organs controlling the implementation of core international human rights treaties by States. The human rights treaty bodies, which now number ten, have developed into a system. Various initiatives to enhance this system so that it can meet its objectives most effectively are considered in this article. Special attention is given to the process initiated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2009 and the report on its results prepared in June 2012 as well as the open-ended intergovernmental process launched in frames of the UN General Assembly in February 2012 and extended until the first half of February 2014. The article provides a detailed analysis of the major aspects of the report on the intergovernmental process and the draft resolution presented by the co-facilitators of the process.

Abstract  New chiral Schiff bases were derived from (+)- and (−)-α-pinenes for the first time. Coordinated to vanadium ions, they can be used as ligands in catalytic oxidation of sulfides into chiral sulfoxides. Conditions for the asymmetric oxidation of thioanisole to methyl phenyl sulfoxide in optical purity up to 32% were found. Variation of substituents in the ligand has a significant effect not only on enantioselectivity of the reaction, but also on absolute configuration of the sulfoxide formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present moment many ideas on improvement of the activities of mechanisms of universal human rights system are put forward. The creation of the world court of human rights is regarded as one of the most ambitious among these ideas. It is supposed that the establishment of this judicial body would solve difficulties facing this system, including its main component - human rights treaty body system. However, it seems that this suggestion should be taken carefully, since it is crucial to avoid decrease in the effectiveness of the work of the universal human rights system in the result of the changes that would be brought to its activities by the creation of world court of human rights. In this respect in frames of this article the author analyses the proposal of creation of world court of human rights in order to determine its advantages and disadvantages in terms of its capability to enhance effectiveness of functioning of universal human rights system, including human rights treaty bodies. The author identifies key stages in the history of formation of this idea, paying special attention to its development in the context of the process of strengthening the human rights treaty body system as well as determines and critically analyses the main arguments justifying the necessity and effectiveness of creation of world court of human rights. On the basis of the analysis, the author, using arguments of conceptual and practical character, justifies the futility of this initiative at present stage of development of universal human rights system. Considering that the non-amendment of the legal foundations of the functioning of the human rights treaty bodies constitutes the basic requirement of the ongoing treaty body strengthening process, a more effective, than the creation of world court of human rights, mechanism of improving the human rights treaty body system is proposed. This mechanism provides the adoption of measures targeted at strengthening the procedures of the human rights treaty bodies, improving the quality of their recommendations in terms of argumentation and legal clarity. Such an approach is more flexible and has chances to get more support on the side of the treaty bodies themselves, who consider the issues of their competence being most sensitive, as well as on the side of the States Parties.

The 2017 Annual Conference of the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI) held at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Leuven (Belgium) from 27 to 28 April 2017 is the one of the leading events among the professional associations uniting international law scholars in human rights field. The conference focused on issues of monitoring compliance with international human rights obli-gations of States in the activities of universal and regional human rights bodies, particularly UN human rights mechanisms, human rights treaty bodies and regional and sub-regional human rights mechanisms within European, Inter-American and African human rights systems. Within these issues a particular at-tention was paid to the interaction between universal and regional human rights systems, specifically the role of regional mechanisms in the promotion and protection of human rights and enhancing univer-sal human rights standards enshrined in international human rights treaties. The paper provides a brief review of the selected reports presented at the conference, which raised a particular scientific interest of the author. The author describes the reports devoted to: 1) factors de-termining adoption and enforcement of international human rights obligations by States; 2) States’ im-plementation of international human rights norms through the lens of interplay between the internation-al, regional and national levels; 3) the interaction between the universal and European human rights sys-tems (European Court of Human Rights with human rights treaty bodies and special procedures of the UN Human Rights Council).