This book provides an innovative analysis of the complex issue of judicial convergence and fragmentation in international human rights law, moving the conversation forward from the assessment of the two phenomena and investigating their triggering factors. With a wide geographical focus that include the most up-to-date case-law from the three main regional systems (the African, European and Inter-American) and the UN Human Rights Committee, the book confirms the predominant judicial convergence across international human rights law. On this basis, the book engages with an interdisciplinary investigation into the legal and non-legal factors that could explain both convergence and fragmentation, ranging from the use of judicial dialogue and the notions of necessity and proportionality to the composition of the courts and the role of NGOs. The aim is to provide the tools to understand the dynamics between human rights adjudicatory bodies and possibly foresee future instances of judicial fragmentation.

An assessment of judicial convergence and fragmentation in international human rights law and their legal and non-legal triggering factors.

We live in an era of proliferating international legal domains and institutions, not least in the human rights field. For some, normative pluralism within human rights is inevitable, and even desirable. Others view it as a threat to the integrity and coherence of international human rights protection. How far do human rights standards and their interpretation by different regional and international human rights systems diverge? To what extent do human rights bodies ‘borrow’ from or influence each other in respect of their case law, practices and procedures? Is global human rights protection fragmenting or heading towards greater coherence? This edited collection addresses these questions through the insights of leading scholars and jurists with first-hand experience of human rights adjudication and litigation.

Half a century ago, on 16 December 1966, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). While the adoption of the two UN human rights covenants was celebrated all over the world, their 50th anniversary has received very little attention from the international community. The present book marks this anniversary by taking stock of the first half-century of the existence of what are probably the world's two most important human rights treaties. It does so by reflecting on what the covenants have achieved (or failed to achieve) in the years that have passed, by determining and comparing their current influence in the various regions of the world, and by assessing their potential roles in the future. The book contains papers that were presented during a symposium held in Zurich in 2016, which brought together experts and stakeholders from a range of disciplines and world regions. Some fundamental issues that are addressed by the contributors are as old as the two covenants themselves. They concern, for example, the division of human rights into first- and second-generation rights, and the question of whether there should be one central monitoring body - possibly a world court - or more than just one. However, the contributors go beyond such questions that have been explored before; they develop new answers to old questions and point to new challenges.

Examining the complex relationship between international human rights and humanitarian law, this volume explores the potential for fusing the two regimes into a new legal paradigm.

Incoherence is a term that is all too often associated with the public international law regime. To a great extent, its incoherence is arguably a natural consequence of the fragmented nature of both the development and overall scope of the discipline. Despite significant achievements since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a coherent human rights regime that is properly integrated with other branches of public international law is still lacking. This book explores this incoherent approach to human rights, including specific challenges that arise as a result of the creation and regulation of legal relationships between parties (state and non-state) that sit outside of the human rights framework, with a view to considering how it may be remedied. Divided into three parts, the collection provides a critical exploration of various challenges and barriers related to the absence of human rights in some instances, contemporary emergence of rights, and a lack of rights fulfilment in others. These three situations are considered within the wider context of, and difficulties facing, a human rights-based approach to international law. Each of the three parts aligns with one of the three prime responsibilities and duties of states in respect of international human rights: to promote, to protect and to fulfil. The contributions represent different perspectives in international law and human rights and how the global agenda of promoting human rights, the rules-based international order and multilateralism requires further strengthening – the lens of incoherence providing a means to understand particular inconsistencies. Chapters focus upon subjects including international investment law, international financial contracts, the arms trade, indigenous peoples’ rights, rights of peasants, the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the right to food and transitional justice. Presenting a critical exploration of key contemporary challenges and the implementation of human rights law in different contexts, the collection will be of interest to a wide-ranging audience of international law and international relations scholars and practitioners, and students of law, politics and globalisation across the world.

The application of the right to life during armed conflict is an issue that polarizes opinion and generates considerable debate. Many believe that human rights law has no place in armed conflict, yet the European Court of Human Rights, and domestic courts, have ruled that it can apply. The exact contours of how the right to life applies during armed conflict remain largely unresolved. In this text, Ian Park seeks to clearly articulate the right to life obligations of states during both international and non-international armed conflict in respect of those individuals affected by the actions of states' armed forces and members of the armed forces themselves. In determining the right to life obligations of states, Park identifies the sources of law from which right to life obligations arise, how case law has developed and modified these obligations, and analyses how the law creates obligations in practice. Implicit in this analysis is a consideration of recent armed conflicts, and the actions of states, that lead to a series of concrete proposals designed to best ensure compliance with a state's right to life obligations.

This book explores the effects of institutional fragmentation in international human rights law, by comparing the rights jurisprudence of three human rights courts and bodies, namely the European Court for Human Rights, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee. Contributions cover the areas of freedom of expression (journalism and the media), right to privacy, freedom of assembly and freedom of association (political parties), and measure the extent of fragmentation of human rights protection. Moreover, the volume argues that, while the conflict of laws approach, favoured by the International Law Commission, might work in avoiding outright conflict in obligation, in practice it is not an approach that presents a viable research agenda when it comes to understanding the causes and consequences of institutional fragmentation. This is especially evident in areas like international human rights, where the possibility of a silent drift between the jurisprudence of the three courts is a real possibility. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.

The fourth volume of the World Bank Legal Review contains essays that examine how innovations in law, and efforts to empower the poor, can help achieve development objectives.

International Arbitration Law Library# 62 The much-debated fragmentation of international law, most clearly manifest in the stand-alone nature of the investor-state dispute settlement regime, has produced the unfortunate side effect of an intense focus on material damages at the expense of moral damages. This timely groundbreaking book seeks to remedy the unfairness and injustice that flows from this difference in treatment by offering a thorough review of the underlying rules and principles of international law relating to moral damages claims, with a view to considering the appropriateness and possibility of convergence of the various sub-disciplines or branches of international law (e.g., international investment law and international human rights law) to preserve and protect the coherence, uniformity and stability of the international legal order. The analysis covers such central issues as the following: who should be entitled to seek moral damages; the legal test to determining moral damages claims, in respect of both substantive and evidential issues; applicability and scope of the theory of corrective justice in moral damages claims; the victim status of natural persons, corporations, and investors’ employees in investor-state disputes; quantification of moral damages; what the precise nature of the compensation ought to be; and role of the theory of law and economics in the context of moral damages claims. Decisions of international human rights courts are examined to assess, by way of comparison, the appropriateness of the stance taken by international investment tribunals. This is the first in-depth treatment of the important question of whether and under which circumstances international investment tribunals should have jurisdiction to award moral damages, as well as the remedies available and the quantification exercise guiding compensation. The analysis will prove invaluable to practitioners and academics eager to enhance their knowledge and understanding of the rules and principles applicable to moral damages claims under international investment law.