Human Rights at Home Blog

New Article: Children's Rights and Human Rights Education Through Museums

Jonathan Todres and Anissa Malika, Children's Rights and Human Rights Education Through Museums, Boston University Public Interest Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 239-274 (2022). Abstract below.

Human rights education has been recognized as critical to the advancement of human rights and the promotion of rights-respecting communities. Despite its value, many countries have lagged in their efforts to implement human rights education programs. Where human rights education has gained traction, it has been largely centered around school-based learning. For human rights education to be successful, policymakers and practitioners need to be creative in exploring diverse ways to implement and advance human rights education. This Article argues that it is critical for human rights education and, more specifically, children’s rights education to expand beyond classroom-based learning opportunities to take advantage of other spaces where young people spend time and where education about rights is possible. Given the value of the arts as a vehicle for expressing and advocating for human rights, this Article explores the role that museums might play in advancing human rights education for children. Museums are important fixtures in many cities and towns across the globe. In the United States, nearly 60% of the population visits a museum at least once a year. This gives museums broad reach and the potential to make human rights widely known. Further, shifts currently occurring within museums suggest this is a particularly important time to consider the role of museums vis-à-vis human rights. Many museums are becoming more focused on social justice issues. This evolution occurring in many museums highlights an opportunity for greater and deeper engagement among museum professionals, educators, and human rights researchers and advocates. This Article makes the case for growing and deepening such partnerships. It emphasizes the importance of attention to children’s rights and ensuring that all museums, not just children’s museums, consider their role in engaging young people on the topic of human rights.

New Article: Regulatory Responses to ‘Fake News’ and Freedom of Expression: Normative and Empirical Evaluation

Rebecca K Helm and Hitoshi Nasu, Regulatory Responses to ‘Fake News’ and Freedom of Expression: Normative and Empirical Evaluation, Human Rights Law Review, Volume 21, Issue 2, (June 2021). Abstract below.

National authorities have responded with different regulatory solutions in attempts to minimise the adverse impact of fake news and associated information disorder. This article reviews three different regulatory approaches that have emerged in recent years—information correction, content removal or blocking, and criminal sanctions—and critically evaluates their normative compliance with the applicable rules of international human rights law and their likely effectiveness based on an evidence-based psychological analysis. It identifies, albeit counter intuitively, criminal sanction as an effective regulatory response that can be justified when it is carefully tailored in a way that addresses legitimate interests to be protected.

New Article: Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review as a Forum of Fighting for Borderline Recommendations? Lessons Learned from the Ground

Kazuo Fukuda, Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review as a Forum of Fighting for Borderline Recommendations? Lessons Learned from the Ground, 20 Nw. J. Hum. Rts. 63 (2022). Abstract below.

Highly acclaimed as a key innovation of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was created in 2006 as a cooperative, peer-review mechanism to shift away from the highly politicized Commission on Human Rights. Despite the significance and hope attached to the UPR, it has been conspicuously under-examined in the U.S. legal scholarship. And most relevant literature elsewhere has avoided directly addressing the fundamental question of exactly what the UPR’s added value is to the global human rights regime in terms of its direct contribution to improving human rights situations on the ground. This is mainly due to methodological and analytical challenges to measure the impact of the UPR in isolation from other existing human rights mechanisms. While acknowledging such challenges, this article attempts to provide one such answer to the question from a normative perspective: it argues that the UPR’s added value lies in providing a forum to incrementally and constantly challenge the threshold of states under review for accepting their commitment to addressing controversial human rights issues. Drawing from the experiences of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and other countries as well as the literature on peer pressure and acculturation, this article articulates the current issues of the UPR mechanism in terms of recommendations given to states under review by their peers and suggests the way forward for the UPR mechanism by reframing it as a forum of fighting for borderline recommendations.

Event 6/9: PHRGE Symposium on the Right to a Healthy Environment in US Law: Justice for Communities Today and Tomorrow

Northeastern Law’s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) is hosting an online symposium/CLE entitled the Right to a Healthy Environment in US Law: Justice for Communities Today and Tomorrow, which will be held on Thursday, June 9, 2022, from 1:00 - 4:30 ET on Zoom.

To register, visit: https://law.northeastern.edu/event/phrge-symposium-2022/

New Article: Climate Competence: Youth Climate Activism and Its Impact on International Human Rights Law

Aoife Daly, Climate Competence: Youth Climate Activism and Its Impact on International Human Rights Law, Human Rights Law Review, Volume 22, Issue 2 (June 2022). Abstract below.

Those who are under-18 are not often associated with the exercise of political rights. It is argued in this article however that youth-led climate activism is highlighting the extensive potential that children and young people have for political activism. Moreover, youth activists have come to be seen by many as uniquely competent on climate change. Youth activists have moved from the streets to the courts, utilising national and international human rights law mechanisms to further their cause. They are not the first to do so, and the extent of their impact is as yet unclear. Nevertheless, it is argued here that through applications such as Saachi (an application to the Committee on the Rights of the Child) and Duarte Agostinho (an application to the ECtHR) they are shifting the human-centric, highly procedural arena of international human rights law towards an approach which better encompasses person-environment connections.

New Article: The Draft Convention on the Right to Development: A New Dawn to the Recognition of the Right to Development as a Human Right?

Roman Girma Teshome, The Draft Convention on the Right to Development: A New Dawn to the Recognition of the Right to Development as a Human Right?, Human Rights Law Review, Volume 22, Issue 2 (June 2022). Abstract below.

The draft Convention on the Right to Development is being negotiated under the auspices of the Human Rights Council. This article seeks to explore the merits and the added value of the draft in terms of its normative contents particularly compared with its soft law predecessor—the Declaration on the Right to Development. It argues that the draft is a momentous step in the recognition of the right to development as a human right not only because it is binding, if adopted, but also contains concrete, detailed and implementable norms. While it maintained the abstract and aspirational formulation of norms under the Declaration to a certain extent, the draft also addresses some of the prevailing gaps and limitations of the Declaration.

 

Abortion and Human Rights Resources

The Northeastern University School of Law Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) has put together the following resources in light of the recently leaked SCOTUS draft opinion:

• Center for Reproductive Rights, Map of the World's Abortion Laws
• Center for Reproductive Rights, International Human Rights and Abortion: Spotlight on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (November 24, 2021)
• Amicus Curiae Brief written on behalf of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health and other UN mandate holders in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (September 20, 2021)

Event 5/11: Universal Jurisdiction: Controversies and Opportunities

Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - 11:00am to 12:00pm ET, online.

Universal Jurisdiction is the doctrine that some offenses (such as atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity) are so heinous that they can be prosecuted by any country's domestic judicial system, even if the offenses were not committed on that country's territory, by one of its nationals, or against one of its nationals.

Given the dearth of options to prosecute atrocity crimes and the willingness of some domestic judicial systems to try cases with no nexus to their country's territory, Universal Jurisdiction has recently become a more popular and accepted mechanism for seeking justice for international crimes. This ASIL webinar will explore the history and controversies of Universal Jurisdiction and consider opportunities for contemporary case studies (including Russia-Ukraine and Syria).

Speakers:

• Balkees Jarrah, Interim Director, International Justice, Human Rights Watch
• Wolfgang Kaleck, General Secretary, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
• Zachary D. Kaufman, Associate Professor of Law and Political Science and Co-Director, Criminal Justice Institute, University of Houston Law Center

For more information and to register for this free event, visit https://www.asil.org/event/universal-jurisdiction-controversies-and-opportunities.E

May-June 2022 Deadlines: Calls for Inputs by UN Human Rights Mechanisms

The following calls for inputs have been issued by UN Human Rights Mechanisms with deadlines in May-June 2022 and law professors whose practice, research, and/or scholarship touches on these topics may be interested in submission:

Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children – Call for inputs on trafficking of persons in the context of climate change. Deadline May 12, 2022. Read more.

Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities – Call for inputs on armed conflict and disability – the conduct of hostilities, military operations and peacekeeping operations. Deadline May 15, 2022. Read more.

Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment – Call for inputs on human rights, transformative actions and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Deadline May 15, 2022. Read more.

Intergovernmental Working Group on the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action – Call for inputs on the UN General Assembly’s global call for concrete action for the elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and the comprehensive implementation of and follow-up to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Deadline May 16, 2022. Read more.

Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent – Call for inputs on the human rights situation of Children of African descent. Deadline May 16, 2022. Read more.

Special Rapporteur on the rights of migrants – Call for inputs on the impact of climate change and the protection of the human rights of migrants. Deadline May 16, 2022. Read more.

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination – Accepting submissions for U.S. Review in August 2022. Deadline May 17, 2022. Submissions should be sent to the CERD Secretariat: [email protected].

Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights – Call for inputs on the impact of toxics on Indigenous peoples. Deadline May 23, 2022. Read more.

Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations – Call for contributions on taxation, illicit financial flows and human rights. Deadline May 30, 2022. Read more.

Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health – Call for inputs on racism and the right to health. Deadline June 2, 2022. Read more.

This information was compiled from https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input-listing.