State Accountability under International Law sets forth a definition of State accountability as the antithesis of State impunity, and establishes a threshold against which the existence, or not, of State accountability can be determined. The book draws together the many academic theories relating to accountability that have arisen in various areas of international law including environmental law, human rights and trade law before going on to examine an emerging practice of State accountability. A variety of ad hoc attempts and informal mechanisms are assessed against the threshold of State accountability established with emphasis being given to practical examples ranging from the accountability of Germany and Japan after World War Two to the current attempts to prevent impunity by Sudan and Zimbabwe. The book also addresses the relationship between State accountability and the emerging practice of international humanitarian intervention to consider whether intervention could be used for the purpose of holding States accountable for a breach of jus cogens norms.

Multilateral development banks and other development agencies have adopted environmental and social safeguard policies setting due diligence standards for the provision of project finance. Such policies are evolving in terms of the activities covered and in their normative requirements. Recent iterations incorporate human rights requirements, recognising the imperative of adopting human rights-based approaches to development. Each institution has also established independent accountability mechanisms (IAM), variously functioning to ensure compliance with the applicable safeguards, to advise management regarding the application of the obligations involved, and to facilitate communication with affected communities and individuals with a view to resolving project-related disputes. IAMs are central to the implementation, interpretation, and ongoing elaboration of safeguard policies, and thus to the environmental and social good governance so essential for sustainable development. This edited volume presents a series of in-depth examinations by leading experts from banking institutions, academia and civil society, of key aspects of the rapidly evolving practice of IAMs, and of the implications of such practice for environmental and social governance.

The book is a critical review of accountability conducted under the authority of the United Nations Security Council, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). It is centred on two case studies: the 1999 events in Rwanda, and the 1999 mayhem in East Timor. The books subjects to testing cross-examination tools to hold accountable persons with „the greatest responsibility" for serious international humanitarian law violations.

In the broader context of the accountability of international organisations, this book focuses on the obligation of the United Nations - like many other organisations - to ‘make provisions for appropriate modes of settlement of ... disputes of a private law character’ to which it is a party. The book advocates a systematic approach in conformity with the rule of law in discharging that obligation. That is needed to increase the legitimacy of international organisations, while bolstering their jurisdictional immunity. The work also develops the basic features of a comprehensive dispute settlement mechanism, complemented by a new United Nations convention.

The Kahuzi-Biega National Park (‘PNKB’) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo presents an existential threat to the indigenous Batwa people. For millennia, Batwa occupied the forests surrounding Mount Kahuzi and Mount Biega, utilizing traditional ecological knowledge and sustainable practices to foster one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. The creation of the PNKB in the 1970s forced Batwa from their ancestral lands, rendering them deeply impoverished, landless, dependent and culturally disconnected. When they seek to return home and access their lands and resources, they are subjected to extreme violence by park authorities who treat them as trespassers, poachers and enemies of conservation. This report situates the serious human rights violations suffered by Batwa in the PNKB within the broader global phenomenon of ‘fortress conservation’ and analyses the respective roles and accountability of the park’s core international partners. Ongoing violence against Batwa in the PNKB is a stark reminder of the immense human and environmental costs associated with pursuing conservation policies that prevent indigenous peoples from owning, governing, accessing and benefiting from their territories and resources. These policies are bolstered by donors, global NGOs and international organizations which enable and tacitly uphold a violent and anti-indigenous status quo in the PNKB and other protected areas. Donors, conservation organizations and other international partners of the PNKB have failed to adequately ensure that their support did not contribute to human rights violations committed against Batwa. These international partners had explicit knowledge of unresolved human rights abuses committed by ecoguards, as well as threats of imminent violence against Batwa communities living inside the park. Yet, they continued to equip, fund and train ecoguards and actively promoted the increasing militarization of the PNKB. This militarization has resulted in overly aggressive policing and military-style actions by ecoguards (often jointly with the Congolese Army) who explicitly target, criminalize and brutalize Batwa. At the same time, the park consistently fails to meet environmental expectations and objectives. Thus, the PNKB represents a clear case of how fortress conservation fails both people and the environment. Regrettably, it is not an isolated example of flawed conservation policy. Instead, it is indicative of the institutional shortcomings and systemic failures inherent in the dominant ways in which conservation is pursued by states and promoted by international conservation actors in the Congo Basin and in other parts of the world.

The scale of maternal mortality and morbidity today is staggering. This book focuses on a vital part of a human rights response to maternal mortality, viz. accountability. Accountability encompasses monitoring, review and redress at the local, national and international levels. The book's context includes the UN Human Rights Council maternal mortality and morbidity resolutions, as well as Millennium Development Goal 5. It comes out of a roundtable conference held in Geneva during 2010 that examined maternal mortality, human rights and accountability and provided a forum where maternal health and human rights experts could listen to, and learn from, each other. As well as revised and updated conference papers, this volume includes a rich collection of additional resource material on maternal mortality, human rights and accountability.

This book grapples with the numerous risks organizations face in order to succeed. These include economic risks, disaster risks, supply-chain risks, regulatory risks, and technology risks, all of which affect organizations in different ways and in varying degrees. Referencing Mahatma Gandhi’s seven unethical behaviors in the business world—wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice, and politics without principle—the authors analyze the healthcare sector. As competition in the health sector increases, there has also been a rise in unethical behavior. Corruption in the health sector results in severe consequences as it could affect the health of millions. This volume explores fraud schemes and cases, legislation to avoid cheating, lack of law, transparency, ethical issues, corporate governance and transparency in the health and pharmaceutical sector bringing together the perspectives of practitioners, professionals, as well as academic authors.

Ten years after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, has executive predominance in EU-related matters disappeared? How have executive-legislative relations in the EU evolved over a crisis-ridden decade, from the financial and migration crises, to Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic? The Lisbon Treaty could be expected to lead to the re-balancing of powers in favour of parliaments, for it significantly enhanced the roles of both the European Parliament and national parliaments. A decade later the contributions to this edited volume examine – for the first time in such an extensive breadth and from a multi-level and cross-policy perspective – whether this has actually materialised. They highlight that diverging tendencies may be observed, and that important variations over time have occurred, depending particularly on the occurrence of crises. As stated in the fascinating epilogue by Peter Lindseth (University of Connecticut School of Law), this is an 'admirably coherent collective volume, whose contributions provide an excellent overview of key aspects of executive-legislative relations in the European system since the Treaty of Lisbon'. This edited volume will hence be of interest to both academics and practitioners interested in future reforms designed at the European and national levels to improve the EU's democratic quality.

Who is accountable under international law for the acts committed by armed opposition groups? In today's world the majority of political conflicts involve non-state actors attempting to exert political influence (such as overthrowing a government or bringing about secession). Notwithstanding their impact on the course of events, however, we often know little about these groups, and even less about how to treat their actions legally. In this award-winning scholarship, Liesbeth Zegveld examines the need to legally identify the parties involved when internal conflicts arise, and the reality of their demands for rights. Her study draws upon international humanitarian law, human rights law and international criminal law to consider a fundamental question: who is accountable for the acts committed by non-state actors, or for the failure to prevent or repress these acts? This study will be of interest to academics, postgraduate students and professionals involved with armed conflict and international relations.