The collective protection of human rights
R2P- sovereignty AND intervention
• International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) Report in 2001
• Sovereignty means responsibility• If states fail, the responsibility passes to the
community of states • UN World Summit Outome Document (2005)– «Responsibility to Protect Populations from
Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity»
R2P
• When? national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their population
• Who? The international community, through the United Nations
• How? collective action, timely and decisive, through the Security Council,… on a case-by-case basis.
Genocide• The Genocide Convention (1948) of the UN define genocide as:• any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:• (a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Crimes against Humanity
• murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds
Ethnic cleansing
• ‘purifying’ an area ethnically by using force or intimidation to remove targeted persons or a given group from the area.
War Crimes
• Breaches of the Geneva Conventions including but not limited to
• Directing attacks against civilians• Directing attacks against humanitarian
workers or UN peacekeepers• Settlement of occupied territory• Using civilians as shields
Refugees’ Human Rights
Whose rights?• UDHR Article 14: “Everyone has the right to seek and
to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”• According to 1951 UN Convention relating to the
status of refugees:• A Refugee is someone: • owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of – race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,
• is outside the country of his nationality, • and cannot or will not return there because there is a fear of persecution
What rights?
Refugee rights include:• protection from being forcibly returned to a
country where they would be at risk of persecution (non-refoulement).
• protection from discrimination• protection from penalties for illegal entry• the right to work, housing and education• the right to freedom of movement• the right to identity and travel documents
• What are the limitations to the freedom of expression according to the ICCPR? Do you agree with these limitations?
OR• How is genocide defined? Is it a ‘useful’
definition? (Define useful as well)