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This paper argues that although labour, human rights and environmental law provide the minimum standards for international action, the law of sustainable development provides an aspirational goal, but not a measurable standard. As such, pressure groups that want to promote environmental and social protection have pushed for ethical self-regulation by industry. This has led to a new global trend in self-regulation and hybrid forms of regulation. This paper examines the impact of this trend on international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the practice and procedures of a range of international courts and tribunals with regard to the submission of amicus curiae briefs by non-governmental actors. The focus is on the recent practice in the ICJ, WTO dispute settlement system and in the regional human rights bodies, as well as in international criminal tribunals, with a view to identifying whether any common rules or approaches exist. The study sets out the current rules regarding the receipt of amicus curiae briefs and considers the procedural rules apply to the submission of such briefs. The paper focuses on the ways are international court and tribunal able to use the information and arguments submitted by amicus curiae briefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the jurisprudence of the ad hoc war crimes tribunals on torture. Through case law analysis, it investigates the development of a definition of torture at customary international law for international criminal law which differs from that in the UN Torture Convention and that generally applied in human rights law. The author examines this analysis for insights into individual responsibility and individual protection under international criminal law and international human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of NGOs to the development of human rights standards at the United Nations is rooted in the UN Charter. In spite of NGO success in the creation of human rights norms, it appears that NGO input, particularly within the Human Rights Commission, is being scaled back for reasons of finance and efficiency. However, the reduction in NGO contribution also comes at a time when such organisations have been strongly criticised by States within the Human Rights Commission. This paper recognises that some criticism of NGOs may be justifiable. However, any moves to reorganise the workload of the Commission, where such moves are posited upon the need to curtail questionable NGO activity, need to be viewed extremely closely. There is already in place a highly regulatory mechanism which both vets NGOs' performance and regulates their participation. Reliance upon this mechanism to streamline NGO performance should obviate the need to sideline NGO participation as a consequence of workload rationalisation within the Human Rights Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes into consideration the reporting obligation under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After outlining the scope and function of this kind of procedure, the focus will be on the possibility of enlarging the sources of information available to the members of the Human Rights Committee. It will be stressed how the Human Rights Committee does not limit itself to the analysis of the official documents by member States, and how non-Governmental Organisations intervene with ad hoc submissions. A number of questions may arise: – Is there a legal framework granting non-State actors the possibility to actively take part in the procedures? – What are the concrete actions that can be undertaken by non-State actors? – Is the protection of human rights positively affected by such intervention? – Is it desirable to grant such participation and role? The purpose of this article is to illustrate how, in practice, the involvement of such non-State actors as NGOs can have bene ficial effects on the protection of human rights, in a spirit of cooperation with States, which remain, nonetheless, the centre of the system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the role of IGOs in the process of developing new, human rights oriented, norms of corporate social responsibility. It develops an argument based on an identifiable distinction between at least three main ideological positions: the "hard libertarian", the "normative liberal" and the "regulatory functionalist". Each takes a different position on the need for, and the extent of, international standard setting activity in this area. However, at least among the latter two positions, an apparent consensus is emerging that some kind of international minimum standard for good corporate behaviour should be in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World politics is no longer about states interacting alone in a state of anarchy, but entails a complexity of interactions between states and a myriad of actors collectively referred to as non-state actors. Unlike non-state actors like multinational corporations (MNCs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), NGOs and other civil society groups and organizations do not enjoy full legal status and are often seen as anomalies in world politics. Yet, despite their alleged anomalous status, non-state actors like NGOs, not only outnumber states, MNCs and IGOs combined, but also are increasingly becoming almost indispensable players in global agenda setting, and in promulgating and enforcing global norms. Using NGOs as an example of non-state actors, this paper argues that NGOs have become or are increasingly becoming legitimate actors contrary to traditional theories of international law and international relations. First, it is argued the ontology of world politics has changed giving rise to multiple sites of authority (MSOA) and multiple sources of legitimacy (MSOL) rendering state consent less relevant as a source of legitimization. Second, NGOs may be deemed to be acquiring legitimacy or international legal personality implicitly. Specifically, recognition of NGOs in international legal instruments, their participation in the creation and enforcement of international law particularly in the environment, human rights, humanitarian areas, and increasing cooptation by states as agents through which to channel development funds are all evidence of NGOs' growing legitimacy in the system consistent with customary international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Hatton and Others v. the United Kingdom. This can be called the first "environmental" case referred to the Grand Chamber. The judgment of the Grand Chamber is in many respects quite remarkable but the outcome of the case is not very good for environmentalists or for advocates of human rights. Hardly any new facts were presented since the Chamber took its decision, but at crucial points in respect to Article 8 the Grand Chamber appreciates these facts in an entirely different way than the Chamber.

Provides information about the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on issues related to environmental protection in Great Britain. Number of night flights allowed; Details on the experience of people living near the vicinity of various airports; Factors affecting the quality of life.

Discusses the case of human rights abuses and torture in Iraq. Interrogation and torture as a private business; Establishment of a doctrinal basis directed toward acquiring and managing contractors as an additional resource in support of the full range of military operations; Reason for outsourcing; Real cost of war.

Private security is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In some sense, its rapid expansion leading into the beginning of the twenty-first century exemplifies the prevailing neoliberal ideology, particularly its twin features of privatization and deregulation. Governments seek to decrease public expenditure and regulatory control by selling off public services, including prisons and police forces, supposedly to be run more efficiently under competitive market conditions. But the turn of the century has also seen increased resistance to these developments as popular movements have opposed the privatization of what are perceived to be essentially public services, demanding that government maintain its role as a service provider in the public interest. Within this debate, then, private security and the privatized use of force represent a challenge to the State "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force". However, it is the State's public accountability that legitimizes its powers of coercion, an accountability that is lacking, at least from a human rights perspective, when private parties use force for their own purposes. Thus, it becomes necessary to examine whether a State can legitimately relinquish to private security guards its monopoly over the use of force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Factors such as 'globalisation', the perceived growth in the power and influence of transnational corporations (TNCs), media coverage of company involvement in human rights violations and perceived weaknesses in international regulatory frameworks have raised public concerns about corporate responsibility for the protection of human rights. Human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International have invested significant effort in campaigning against companies, lobbying for binding regulation and defining their expectations of companies. This article provides an overview of the business and human rights debate, and assesses the manner in which NGO campaigning activity is starting to create soft law obligations, with the emergence of some consensus around the norms or standards against which companies should be judged, a growing acceptance on the part of companies that they do have responsibility for the protection and promotion of human rights and the growing involvement of government in voluntary initiatives relating to human rights. The debate on business on human rights also has broader implications as it sees one set of non-state actors (i.e. NGOs) working to define norms and legal obligations for another set of non-state actors (i.e. companies), with limited involvement of government. This contest of influences, which is duplicated in many other corporate social responsibility debates, is likely to be an ever more common approach to the development of soft, and probably hard, international law obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International law and jurisprudence share a certain bond: both subjects have been characterised by efforts to emerge from the hazy shadows of law. ``Proper'' lawyers do not tire of repeating the old refrain that international law is really ``not law'' at all. Nor do they forbear from asserting to jurisprudence that the recalcitrant questions into which the latter inquire oblige them to use pseudo-rational concepts such as ``morality'' and ``justice,'' leading them down a meandering garden path strewn with metaphysical superstitions. Conventional lawyers generally concern themselves with questions that can be settled by reference to ordinary legal techniques which identify the type of legal argument or evidence that is relevant. They dismiss the importance of resolving questions that are not amenable to the legal method and label them as ``jurisprudential''. It is hoped that international lawyers prove more receptive to taking seriously the jurisprudential questions in their field. What are ``human rights''? Are they the distinctive product of Western liberalism or can they lay claim to being universal in some sense? Far from being idle distractions, these questions have significant implications for the structure of international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to confirm the relevance of the kind of philosophy of international law espoused by Fernando Tesón and encapsulated in his shorthand expression `normative individualism'. At the same time it points to some structural difficulties in accommodating the imperatives of normative individualism in a changing context of personality and identity within the contemporary international order. It argues that it is important to appreciate the diversity of participation in contemporary international life, since a cogent and effective moral critique needs to recognise the range of relevant actors. However, the article does not assume that the goals of normative individualism have been largely achieved. To note that there appears to have been advances in both the practice and the law relating to the protection of human rights does not imply that the role of ethical critique is becoming redundant. There remains an important role for moral critique even in a changed, less state-dominated international landscape. Recent events at the international level have demonstrated – not only on the part of IGOs and INGOs, but also by a number of Western governments – an increasingly vigorous and sometimes belligerent moralism, evident for instance in a new popular vocabulary of `ethical foreign policy', `ethical investment', and the like. While an energetic protection of human rights is to be welcomed on moral grounds, there is still also an important role for ethical argument in assuring the rigour of such policies. In other words, in the future it may be the actions (even though `ethically' inspired) of non-State actors as much as governments which could be scrutinised through the filter of normative individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the argument that the development of NGO activity in the international arena in the past decade demonstrates the emergence of international civil society. Such activity has accelerated in several areas, notably environment and human rights, and the integration of NGOs into the implementation of international law, particularly of multilateral treaties, indicates a socialisation of international law, and more importantly, the beginnings of pluralism in international law, where states are not the only actors which can influence the progressive development of international law. NGOs are an appropriate focus for this discussion as most aspects of civil society are represented by such bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]