Human Rights Implementation

An ‘implementation gap’ between law and practice has long been noticed by scholars and practitioners of children’s rights. This chapter goes beyond critiquing such a gap by unpacking and deconstructing the very notion of ‘implementation.’ It empirically studies how India’s national child helpline, and thereby children’s protection rights, are implemented in the state of Madhya Pradesh in North India. Instead of assuming that ‘rights implementation’ simply equals a technical application of law by the state, the chapter conceptualizes implementation as a ‘lived practice’ consisting of the interactive social meeting between children’s rights law, its official and unofficial implementers, its beneficiaries (children), and their immediate relations (most often families). If we take seriously this ‘lived practice’ of implementation, we can begin to understand both why some laws seem ‘unimplementable’ (due to, for instance, discrepancies between legal and social ages), and also which actors (such as nongovernmental organizations) are key for implementation even if they are only cursorily, if at all, mentioned in children’s rights law. By showcasing how such a conceptualization came to be through ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter also demonstrates how other critical children’s rights researchers methodologically can use ethnography for critical theoretical development.

This paper explores the right to health under African Regional Human Rights Law, focusing on the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and key African jurisprudence. It explores the definition of the right and its application in Africa. The paper discusses crucial provisions related to access to healthcare, state obligations and progressive realisation.

Mednarodni pakt o ekonomskih, socialnih in kulturnih pravicah (MPESKP) 6 sta bila sprejeta leta 1966, v veljavo pa sta stopila šele leta 1976. Vprašanje razvoja nadzornih mehanizmov, s pomočjo katerih bi spremljali uresničevanje mednarodno dogovorjenih norm v praksi, je imelo v snovanju navedenih dokumentov, poleg različnega pomena, ki so ga kategoriji političnih in državljanskih pravic na eni ter kategoriji ekonomskih, socialnih in kulturnih pravic na drugi strani dajale države članice, posebno problematično mesto (Vincent 1986). "/Različno/ razumevanje vsebine človekovih pravic, ko so posamezne države zagovarjale en sklop človekovih pravic, za druge pa so bile pomembnejše druge pravice, se je odrazilo tudi v različnem razumevanju nosilcev pravic oziroma subjektov mednarodnega varstva človekovih pravic. Medtem ko je bil to na zahodu posameznik, je vzhod uresničitev človekovih pravic razumel v kontekstu /skupnosti/" (Roter 2016, 717). Med državami članicami OZN dogovorjena in sprejeta besedila mednarodnih pogodb s področja človekovih pravic 7 glede delovanja odborov tako odražajo "minimalističen pristop k spremljanju" uresničevanja človekovih pravic (Alston 2000, 522). 8 Vendar je takšen sistem nadzora oziroma spremljanja uresničevanja človekovih pravic vgrajen v vse temeljne mednarodnopravne instrumente o človekovih pravicah. Njegov razvoj, tako v institucionalnem kot normativno-interpretativnem smislu, pa je dosegel obseg, ki si ga države pogodbenice ob njegovem uvajanju niso zamišljale (Donoho 2006, 3). Od novembra 2011 9 nadzor oziroma spremljanje uresničevanja človekovih pravic izvaja devet pogodbenih teles za človekove pravice, 10 od katerih je vsako razvilo svoje delovne metode, prakso in smernice za

Th is is a slightly modifi ed and expanded version of the 5 th SIM Peter Baehr lecture, delivered in Utrecht at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (SIM) on the 25 th of September 2015. Th e research on legitimacy underlying the lecture is funded by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Offi ce, more specifi cally the IAP 'Th e Global Challenge of Human Rights Integration: Towards a Users' Perspective' (www.hrintegration.be).

Th is is a slightly modifi ed and expanded version of the 5 th SIM Peter Baehr lecture, delivered in Utrecht at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (SIM) on the 25 th of September 2015. Th e research on legitimacy underlying the lecture is funded by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Offi ce, more specifi cally the IAP 'Th e Global Challenge of Human Rights Integration: Towards a Users' Perspective' (www.hrintegration.be).

, the virus was imported into Nigeria through an infected Liberian-American citizen who had travelled from Liberia to Nigeria, arriving at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos. The article examines the duty of the Nigerian government to protect Nigerian citizens from contracting and dying from Ebola by ensuring, in practical terms, that the right to life of every Nigerian, as enshrined in section 33 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, is protected. Furthermore, it is argued that the Nigerian government owes a duty of care to its citizens to a level that ultimately ought to enable each Nigerian to enjoy adequate medical services and infrastructural development in the healthcare sector. This duty of care can be traced to article 22 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights which confers a legally-binding right to development on African AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS LAW JOURNAL * LLB (Lagos) LLM (Cantab) JSM JSD (Stanford) BL;

This article investigates the development and application of the pro personae principle – also known as the pro homine principle – both internationally and in the context of Mexico. It argues that the principle is a potential tool for advancing the realisation of human rights but that in the context of Mexico its application is still fraught with problems. Since the incorporation of the pro personae principle into the Mexican constitution did not modify the supreme clause of the land, nor change the distribution of legal powers among the judiciary, Mexican judges are unable to utilise the principle as broadly and consistently as it has been used in the international arena. This article concludes that the pro personae principle has neither resolved the debate about the hierarchy of human rights treaties in Mexico nor commanded the direct execution of human rights treaties by the judiciary. Rather, the principle represents an urgent calling for Mexican judges to become acquainted with the norms and institutions of international human rights law and to utilise them as much as their legal powers permit.

Citizenship education is one of the main aims of the mandated secondary-school subject of social studies in the Netherlands. Moreover, the learning outcomes of social studies refer to constitutional rights. Internationally, citizenship education and human rights education are considered to be mutually reinforcing. One may, thus, expect that Dutch school textbooks include elements of human rights education. This article presents the analysis of a popular social studies textbook in the Netherlands, applying a number of human rights education criteria. The study shows that basic information on human rights is lacking, despite ample opportunity to integrate such themes. Most worrisome is the conveyance of potential misinformation about human rights due to the chosen formulation of rights-related issues. This can, in part, be traced back to the textbook authors’ (mis)understanding of human rights.

This article examines the effectiveness of South Africa's engagement with the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review Mechanism (UPR). After two cycles of the UPR, questions on the ability of the UPR mechanism to improve the human rights situation on the ground is gaining increasing attention. This article underscores the value of cooperation and dialogue in monitoring human rights implementation. It analyses the extent of South Africa's engagement with the UPR mechanism and considers the potential impact of human rights ritualism in the UPR engagement of South Africa.

Given the fact that many countries did not take any formal steps to implement the policies in the field of human rights education agreed upon worldwide in the 1990s, this article seeks to give an example of such a country, and to explain its reluctance. Taking an actor-oriented approach to human rights implementation, and partly building on personal experience, it seeks to explain why formal reforms did not take place by looking into the wide variety of actors involved in the process and their positions on formal human rights education. As a second part of the explanation, it discusses five different dynamics of rights implementation and their effectiveness from a civil society perspective: waving with treaties, putting the issue on the political agenda, vernacularization, mobilizing a broad support base, and litigation. Considered together, this discussion of the actors involved in realizing human rights education in The Netherlands and the strategies that they employed adds not only to an understanding of the difficulties in realizing this right in a given setting, but also to theories of human rights implementation in general.

After a brief outline of the African Human Rights System, the paper analyses the human right to health enshrined in Article 16 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR). In particular, it deals with the effective implementation of the human right to health in the African national orders. The Guidelines on the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Africa, the practice of the African Commission and, mainly, the practice of the States Parties to the ACHPR help to lead the analysis in greater depth. As for the State practice, particular attention is paid to the implementation of the human right to health during the Ebola Crisis in the Western African States. The conclusion about the effective domestic implementation of the human right to health follows. Introductorily, the paper also focuses on the legal perspective adopted in order to develop the research.