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Introduction Creative control over one’s artistic endeavor is an important right that an artist strives to retain. In addition to creative control, artists seek to prevent the unlawful distribution of the creative product, insist on being acknowledged as the creator of the work, and aim to achieve adequate compensation for the creation. Through union organization, [...]
Filed under: Conference, Law of Treaties, United Nations | Leave a Comment »
On the 17 of June 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. It is the first time the UN has adopted a resolution on LGBT issues. The Human Rights Council asked the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, United Nations | 1 Comment »
Africa Legal Aid (ALFA) will be holding a one day conference in The Hague on 26 April 2010, titled “Al-Bashir Arrest Warrant: The World vs Africa or the African Union vs the People of Africa.” The aim is to explore the South/ North dimensions of the emerging regime of international criminal justice and discuss the views [...]
Filed under: Africa, African Union, Conference, ICC, International Criminal Law, international justice | Leave a Comment »
Since the Senegalese jurist Keba M’baye first advanced it in 1972, the idea of a ”right to development” has been the focus of an extensive but largely theoretical debate. Jurists from the South enumerated the possible subjects and objects of this right while jurists from the North questioned whether it existed at all. However, the [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, Law of Treaties, United Nations, World Trade Organization | Leave a Comment »
Professor Douglas Cassel’s commentary “Do we Have a Human Right to a Healthy Environment?” critique the existance of the right to a healthy environment in the international law discourse. The author argues that the matter has complex underlying legal challenges that have to be unmasked for it to be clearly comprehended. He brings an interesting dimension regarding the relationship [...]
Filed under: Environmental Law, Human Rights, International Environmental Law, Regional Human Rights | Leave a Comment »
Driven by the perceived failures of the old democracies (in particular the USA and Canada) to obviate the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity and other gross violations of human rights in different parts of the world during the twentieth and twenty first centuries, leading academics at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, international justice, Responsibility to protect | 1 Comment »
Friday, 17 July 2009 is International Justice Day, which this year marks the 11th anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute. As the rest of the world celebrates the advancement of international justice and the efforts of ending impunity for gross violations for human rights, it is unfortunate that Africa’s premier organisation has taken [...]
Filed under: Africa, ICC, International Criminal Law, International Day, international justice | 1 Comment »
The contexts, challenges and prospects for human rights in Africa have changed quite considerably in recent years. Human rights discourses find favour in both political and popular circles, among the ideologues of the state and the interlocutors of civil society, a tribute to the enduring and unfulfilled yearnings for more humane societies deeply rooted in [...]
Filed under: Africa, Human Rights, Regional Human Rights, Regional Human Rights Protection | Leave a Comment »
The African Union has given birth to a new entity, the African Union Commission on International Law (AUCIL). This new advisory organ to the AU is established in terms of Article 2 of the Statute of the African Union Commission on International Law that was adopted by the Assembly of the Union during the 12th [...]
Filed under: African Union, International and national law, Public International Law | 3 Comments »
The existence and development of humankind on this planet has never been an egalitarian process. This partly explains the birth and development of law and legal institutions to regulate the conduct and behaviour of mankind in its intercourse with one another. Admittedly the existence of law and legal institutions does not attest to the quality [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, ICC, International Courts, International Criminal Law, international justice | 2 Comments »
On the 4th of March 2009, after seven months of deliberation, the International Criminal Court charged President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the violence that has engulfed the Darfur region in recent years. But he escaped the charge on genocide at least for now, as the ICC [...]
Filed under: ICC, International Courts, International Criminal Law, international justice | 2 Comments »
Speculation is rife on the eve of the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) expected to be released on the 4th of March 2009, about the issuance of an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President, Omar Al Bashir. Last year, chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo asked the court’s judges to indict Bashir for orchestrating [...]
Filed under: ICC, International Courts, International Criminal Law, international justice | 1 Comment »
Africa is a continent where conflict is rife. Peace and security is arguably absent in many African states and human rights are not protected. The responsibility for ensuring peace and stability lies with the African Union (AU), at least at the regional level. It is a good to reflect on the provisions within the AU [...]
Filed under: African Union, Public International Law, Regional Human Rights Protection | Leave a Comment »
December 10, 2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since 1948 much has changed in the world: colonialism, by definition a systemic abuse of human rights, has largely been thrown into the dustbin of history although its grotesque legacies remain, while war, another unmitigated assault on human rights, and its aftermath [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, International Day, United Nations | Leave a Comment »
While addressing an international press conference in Nairobi over the weekend, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga called on the African Union (AU) to oust Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and end the oppression the Zimbabwean people are being subjected to. Odinga specifically called on the current AU chair Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete to take the lead [...]
Filed under: African Union, Human Rights | 1 Comment »
For the second time since its creation, the African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC) will be holding a retreat between the 4th and 5th of December 2008 in Livingstone, Zambia. The first retreat, which aimed at revising the rules of procedure of the PSC, was held last year in Senegal. The theme of the [...]
Filed under: African Union, Human Rights, Non Governmental Organizations | Leave a Comment »
The Office of the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has received a lot of critcism from diffrent sections of the world with regards Mr Moreno Ocampo’s application for a warrant of arrest against one the most ruthless dictators Africa has ever seen, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan who is being accused of perpetrating war [...]
Filed under: ICC, International Courts, International Criminal Law | 3 Comments »
The Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV) established to investigate the violence witnessed after the 27 December 2007 elections in Kenya officially presented its much-anticipated report to President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga on 15 October 2008. The CIPEV, or Waki Commission, was vested with a mandate to ‘investigate the facts and [...]
Filed under: Human Rights, ICC, International Criminal Law | 1 Comment »
The International Criminal Court (ICC), dubbed by one leading commentator, William Schabas, as ‘arguably the most significant international organization to be created since the United Nations’, has ushered in a new era in the protection of human rights. The Rome Statute of the ICC puts in place individual criminal liability for those responsible for the [...]
Filed under: ICC, International Courts, International Criminal Law, Public International Law | 1 Comment »
This is a summary of a report produced by: Centre for Conflict Resolution, University of Cape Town (UCT) after a two day seminar held from 28-29 June 2007 at Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town. The paper discusses the effectiveness of Africa’s human rights institutions. It specifically refers to an advisory group meeting held in South [...]
Filed under: Conference, Human Rights | 1 Comment »
The end of the colonial rule in the 1960s gave the people of Africa renewed hope for a better life. The formation of the inter-state Organization of African Unity (OAU), with the objective of improving the lot of the people of Africa, added momentum to this renewed hope. At last African leaders were coming together [...]
Filed under: African Union, Human Rights | 3 Comments »
