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This book explores how non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with their sphere of influence within the State and beyond, enrich the international community by working on critical areas affecting people's lives and expectations, to facilitate a more humanising international law. It provides ideas, highlights issues, and identifies actors, actions, and the scope of NGOs in international law. It charts possibilities and limitations of NGOs within the legal framework of a State and its evolution over the years. The book highlights how NGOs, having obtained'consultative status'from the UN Economic and Social Council, have now extended their access and area of influence to international actors like inter-governmental organisations, international courts and tribunals. It provides an overview of NGO's performance and the important role they play in the making of human rights, protection of environment and business ethics. The book is primarily doctrinal containing case studies of important NGOs. The purview is an inquiry, analysis and overview of literature of NGOs in international law from a wide range of sources. The book will help shape the debate over power and functions of NGOs in the background of new loci of NGOs'work. It is useful for students, research scholars, the NGO community, corporations'CSR departments, and concerned governmental agencies. Additionally, being interdisciplinary in nature, it caters to the demands of politics, sociology, management, public policy and social work apart from law.

Can multilateral treaties succeed in transforming conduct when they are rejected by the most powerful states in the international system? In the past two decades, coalitions of middle-power states and transnational civil society groups have negotiated binding legal agreements in the face of concerted opposition from China, Russia, andmost especiallythe United States. These instances of a so-called'new diplomacy'reflect a deliberate attempt to use the language of international law to bypass great power objections in establishing new global standards. Yet critics have frequently derided such treaties as utopian and counter productive because they fail to include those states allegedly most capable of effectively managing complex international cooperation. Thus far no study has offered a systematic, comparative study of the promise, and limits, of multilateralism without the great powers. Norms Without the Great Powers addresses this gap through the presentation of a novel theoretical account and detailed empirical evidence regarding the implementation of two archetypal cases, the antipersonnel Mine Ban Treaty and International Criminal Court. Both treaties have substantially reshaped expectations and behaviour in their respective domains, but with important variation in the extent and breadth of their impact. These findings provide the impetus for assessing the prospects for similar strategies on other topics of contemporary global concern. This book offers a timely addition to the dynamic and growing literature on the practice and consequences of international governance and should appeal to academics, civil society experts, and foreign policy practitioners working in fields such as security, human rights, and the environment.

In a world dominated by considerations of material and security threats, Japan provides a fascinating case for why, and under what conditions, a state would choose to adopt international norms and laws that are seemingly in direct conflict with its domestic norms. Approaching compliance from within a constructivist framework, author Petrice R. Flowers analyzes three treaties—addressing refugee policy, women's employment, and the use of land mines—that Japan has adopted. Refugees, Women, and Weapons probes how international relations and domestic politics both play a role in constructing state identity, and how state identity in turn influences compliance. Flowers argues that, although state desire for legitimacy is a key factor in norm adoption, to achieve anything other than a low level of compliance requires strong domestic advocacy. She offers a comprehensive theoretical model that tests the explanatory power of two understudied factors: the strength of nonstate actors and the degree to which international and domestic norms conflict. Flowers evaluates how these factors, typically studied and analyzed individually, interact and affect one another.