Abstract

Cali B, Bianku L and Motoc I, Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights (Oxford University Press 2021)
This edited collection investigates where the European Convention on Human Rights as a living instrument stands on migration and the rights of migrants. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of cases brought by migrants in different stages of migration, covering the right to flee, who is entitled to enter and remain in Europe, and what treatment is owed to them when they come within the jurisdiction of a Council of Europe member state. As such, the book evaluates the case law of the European Convention on Human Rights concerning different categories of migrants including asylum seekers, irregular migrants, those who have migrated through domestic lawful routes, and those who are currently second or third generation migrants in Europe. The broad perspective adopted by the book allows for a systematic analysis of how and to what extent the Convention protects non-refoulement, migrant children, family rights of migrants, status rights of migrants, economic and social rights of migrants, as well as cultural and religious rights of migrants.
***
Capdepón U and Layús RF, The Impact of Human Rights Prosecutions: Insights from European, Latin American, and African Post-Conflict Societies (Leuven University Press 2020)
Human rights prosecutions are the most prominent mechanisms that victims demand to obtain accountability. Dealing with a legacy of gross human rights violations presents opportunities to enhance the right to justice and promote a more equal application of criminal law, a fundamental condition for a more substantive democracy in societies. This book seeks to analyse the impact, advances, and difficulties of prosecuting perpetrators of mass atrocities at national and international levels. What role does criminal justice play in redressing victims' wrongs, guaranteeing the non-repetition of mass atrocities, and attempting to overcome the damage caused by systematic human rights violations? This volume addresses critical issues in the field of human rights prosecution by drawing on the experiences of a variety of post-conflict and authoritarian countries covering three world regions. Contributing authors cover prosecutions in post-Nazi Germany, post-Communist Romania, and transnational legal complaints by victims of the Franco dictatorship, as well as domestic and third-country prosecutions for human rights violations in the pioneering South American countries of Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, prosecutions in Darfur and Kenya, and the work of the International Criminal Court. The Impact of Human Rights Prosecutions offers insights into the difficulties human rights trials face in different contexts and regions, and also illustrates the development of these legal procedures over time.
***
Cohen A and Zlotogorski D, Proportionality in International Humanitarian Law: Consequences, Precautions, and Procedures (Oxford University Press 2021)
The principle of proportionality is one of the corner-stones of international humanitarian law. Almost all states involved in armed conflicts recognize that launching an attack which may cause incidental harm to civilians that exceeds the direct military advantage anticipated from the attack is prohibited. This prohibition is included in military manuals, taught in professional courses, and accepted as almost axiomatic. And yet, the exact meaning of the principle is vague. Almost every issue, from the most elementary question of how to compare civilian harm and military advantage, to the obligation to employ accurate but expensive weapons, is disputed. Controversy is especially rife regarding asymmetrical conflicts, in which many modern democracies are involved. How exactly should proportionality be implemented when the enemy is not an army, but a non-state-actor embedded within a civilian population? What does it mean to use precautions in attack, when almost every attack is directed at objects that are used for both military and civilian purposes?
***
Coutts S, Citizenship, Crime and Community in the European Union (Hart Publishing 2019)
Discussions on Union citizenship tend to focus on two areas: firstly, that of the rights of free movement and non-discrimination of migrant citizens, especially in relation to welfare benefits; secondly on the political dimension of Union citizenship and its role in the European Union's governance and constitution. This book offers an innovative approach to the study of Union citizenship. It does look at the rights of Union citizenship and the place of citizenship in the European constitution and the European integration process but does this through an analysis of its interaction with another, highly relevant, area of law, that of criminal law. In doing so it contributes to and enriches our understanding of Union citizenship by drawing out heretofore neglected aspects and implications.
***
Gozzi G and Valente F, Humanitarian Intervention, Colonialism, Islam, and Democracy: An Analysis through the Human-Nonhuman Distinction (Routledge 2021)
This book offers a critical analysis of the European colonial heritage in the Arab countries and highlights the way its legacy is still with us today, informing the current state of relations between Europe and the formerly colonized states. The work analyses the fraught relationship between the Western powers and the Arab countries that have been subject to their colonial rule. It does so by looking at this relationship from two vantage points. On the one hand is that of humanitarian intervention-a paradigm under which colonial rule coexisted alongside “humanitarian” policies pursued on the dual assumption that the colonized were “barbarous” peoples who wanted to be civilized and that the West could lay a claim of superiority over an inferior humanity. On the other hand is the Arab view, from which the humanitarian paradigm does not hold up, and which accordingly offers its own insights into the processes through which the Arab countries have sought to wrest themselves from colonial rule. In unpacking this analysis the book traces a history of international and colonial law, to this end also using the tools offered by the history of political thought.
***
Inboden RS, China and the International Human Rights Regime, 1982-2017 (Cambridge University Press 2021)
Rana Siu Inboden examines China's role in the international human rights regime between 1982 and 2017 and, through this lens, explores China's rising position in the world. Focusing on three major case studies — the drafting and adoption of the Convention against Torture and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council, and the International Labour Organization's Conference Committee on the Application of Standards — Inboden shows China's subtle yet persistent efforts to constrain the international human rights regime. Based on a range of documentary and archival research, as well as extensive interview data, Inboden provides fresh insights into the motivations and influences driving China's conduct and explores China's rising position as a global power.
***
Liddicoat J, Human Rights and the Internet. (Intersentia 2021)
The past decade has witnessed unprecedented use of the Internet for both advancing and suppressing human rights, giving rise to complex new issues that can both inspire and overwhelm. With ever-growing concerns about the (non-)regulation of our digital environment, it is surprising that both the theoretical and practical application of human rights to the Internet and our online lives remain unclear. This book is a short and accessible introduction to the concepts of human rights, the Internet and the emergence of an era of human rights online as a new legal challenge. It will be of interest to a broad range of readers: policy makers and informed citizens, lawyers working with human rights defenders, and legal and human rights academics examining the emergence of this legal field.
***
Mariniello T, Judge Pinto de Albuquerque and the Progressive Development of International Human Rights Law (Brill Nijhoff 2021)
This is the first book, written in English, that includes the most significant opinions of Judge Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque (European Court of Human Rights). Judge Pinto de Albuquerque was the Vice-president of Section IV and President of the Committee on the Rules of the Court. As Full Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Lisbon, he has published, inter alia, fifteen books in different languages and more than fifty journal articles. Since his appointment as a Judge in Strasbourg, Professor Pinto de Albuquerque has authored more than 150 opinions that have significantly contributed to the development of international human rights law. The Judge's decisions are regularly cited by academic scholars and practitioners in human rights law, public international law, criminal law, migration law, and refugee law.
***
Meernik JD, DeMeritt JHR and Uribe López M, As War Ends: What Colombia Can Tell Us about the Sustainability of Peace and Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press 2019)
For decades a bitter civil war between the Colombia government and armed insurgent groups tore apart Colombian society. After protracted negotiations in Havana, a peace agreement was accepted by the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group in 2016. This volume will provide academics and practitioners throughout the world with critical analyses regarding what we know generally about the post-war peace building process and how this can be applied to the specifics of the Colombian case to assist in the design and implementation of post-war peace building programs and policies. This unique group of Colombian and international scholars comment on critical aspects of the peace process in Colombia, transitional justice mechanisms, the role of state and non-state actors at the national and local levels, and examine what the Colombian case reveals about traditional theories and approaches to peace and transitional justice.
***
Razin A, Globalization, Migration, and Welfare State: Understanding the Macroeconomic Trifecta (Palgrave Macmillan 2021)
This book is about three key dimensions in economics — globalization, migration and the welfare state — that are of enduring interest. These issues are particularly important to consider at the present moment given the strains posed by the pandemic: there is at least a temporary setback to trade-globalization and migration, and the cost of fighting the pandemic will strain the ability of governments to provide welfare state services in a style and scope to which many of their citizens have become accustomed. The book explains the changing function of the welfare state in the presence of intensified globalization, or de-globalization, forces. The welfare states policy-maker attitudes toward openness and migration depend on open-economy fundamentals, and the income class it represents. The author demonstrates the interactions between migration, globalization and macroeconomic policy in practice, using real-world unique episodes, with Israel deemed as well-functioning trifecta, and the US and Europe as imperfectly functioning trifecta.
***
Robertson G, Bad People And How to Be Rid of Them: A Plan B for Human Rights (Biteback Publishing 2021)
Twenty years ago Geoffrey Robertson inspired the global justice movement with his ground-breaking book, Crimes Against Humanity. Since then, the movement has stalled, as nationalism takes hold and populist governments retreat from international courts and refuse to comply with their rulings. But there is an alternative. The Plan B for human rights looks back to national laws to name, blame and shame abusers. It strips them of their right to enter democratic nations, and of ill-gotten funds they seek to deposit in global banks; and it bars them and their families from schools and hospitals in these countries. This book explains the background and potential of these laws, which have been called Magnitsky Laws, after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in a Russian jail after exposing state corruption. Early versions of them have been introduced in the US, Canada and Britain, and they are now being considered in Australia. Geoffrey Robertson argues in this book that the Magnitsky movement offers a potent solution to crimes being committed against humanity, whether in America, Russia, China or Belarus. These abuses are a concern for all human beings, and good people are no longer prepared to tolerate them, in their own country or elsewhere in the world. The Magnitsky laws can show the way forward for the global justice movement in the twenty-first century.
