Human Rights In Emergencies

This book examines current debates about how international human rights law regulates national authorities and international institutions during emergencies.

This book examines current debates about how international human rights law regulates national authorities and international institutions during emergencies.

In the last decade, grave violations of human rights have occurred during states of emergency such as armed conflict, subversion, and terrorism. Many sovereign states are notorious for using a state of emergency as an excuse for breaching human rights, and one of the most important problems in the international protection of human rights is that of identifying the standards governing these rights. This volume examines human rights in the context of treaty law and general international law. It analyzes the rules, principles, and obligations which international law has developed to cope with these situations.

Shows how Latin America was the crucible of the global human rights revolution of the 1970s.

Recent events in South America, central Europe, Africa, and Russia have again brought to the world's attention the complex interrelationship between states of emergency and the preservation of fundamental human rights. In Human Rights in Crisis, Joan Fitzpatrick offers the first systematic and comprehensive effort to examine the multifaceted system for monitoring human rights abuses under "states of exception." Unlike previous studies, this book does not focus on substantive norms governing crises, but rather on how those norms might best be implemented. Building upon her six-year study for the International Law Association, the author confronts the difficulties in defining a coherent concept of emergency, particularly the various forms of de facto emergencies that have been relatively neglected by international monitors. She also profiles and carefully critiques the numerous international bodies that have monitored human rights abuses during states of exception. These bodies include not only the treaty organs of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the Organization of American States but also the political organs of the United Nations (especially the Commission on Human Rights), the International Labor Organization, and the emerging structures of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

This book is the first legal study of state failure in international law. Dr. Giorgetti specifically analyses health, environmental and human rights emergencies and suggests concrete instruments for international actors facing emergencies in failing states. Her Principles for Action are an important contribution to the development of international law.

This study demonstrates the extensive protection that international law provides to human rights even in the most serious of emergencies when they are particularly vulnerable. Based on a meticulous analysis of preparatory works and practice under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the American and European Conventions on Human Rights, and with a special chapter on the International Labour Organisation's approach to international labour standards and emergencies, this book shows that respect for the rule of law and the concept of a democratic society are controlling parameters in any valid limitation on the enjoyment of human rights. It further shows that respect for human rights and the operation of institutions such as the Legislature and Judiciary are crucial to enabling societies to address and eventually remedy the root causes of emergency situations. The study recommends possible directions for the development of case law and suggests some practical means to help ensure that international legal requirements are in fact respected in emergencies.

Debates about emergency powers traditionally focus on whether law can or should constrain officials in emergencies. Emergencies in Public Law moves beyond this narrow lens, focusing instead on how law structures the response to emergencies and what kind of legal and political dynamics this relation gives rise to. Drawing on empirical studies from a variety of emergencies, institutional actors, and jurisdictional scales (terrorist threats, natural disasters, economic crises, and more), this book provides a framework for understanding emergencies as long-term processes rather than ad hoc events, and as opportunities for legal and institutional productivity rather than occasions for the suspension of law and the centralization of response powers. The analysis offered here will be of interest to academics and students of legal, political, and constitutional theory, as well as to public lawyers and social scientists.