The Double Complications Of Explorary Protocols

Implementation of international human rights law can happen on either a local, a territorial or a global level. States that endorse human rights arrangements confer themselves to regarding those rights and guaranteeing

In order to ratify these laws it must then go through the parliamentary process so that it can become an enforceable law. An advantage of nation states is that from the UN, the two covenants of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 1966, allow for countries that are democratic to be accounted for, but also for countries such as China that are not democratic to be covered as well.

In both history and present day, many human rights violations have occurred in countries residing within the UN. Despite the attempts that international influence created through the UN, many countries such as the Soviet Union conducted serious human rights violations through attempts to quell uprisings or anti-government movements. Even in the present day, countries such as North Korea and China have been committing drastic human rights violations, despite existing within the United Nations. Because of these facts, it can be concluded that international influence does not necessarily create better human

this essay I will attempt to examine and analyse the effectiveness of international courts and

Human rights believers agree that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still a daydream, because of the violations that occur in every part of the world. For centuries, states and state officials were largely safe from prosecution for human rights violations in domestic and foreign courts. Recently this has changed, by us witnessing former or current heads of state being brought before several national and international courts or trials. In this study, Sikkink tracks and explains this truly extraordinary shift in international legal standards and practices. It is an inspiring story she calls a “Justice Cascade”. Sikkink’s book, The Justice Cascade, provides a personal and historical view on human rights prosecutions in international politics. Sikkink shows us what transitional justice is and the effects of the developing accountability norm on state behavior. In the beginning of the book,

He criticizes the government’s unbalanced system that highlights the conservative minority over the majority, preventing the U.S. from ratifying human rights policies that could lead to greater involvement in the international community. His argument supports that of Kupchan and Trubowitz by, arguing that the U.S. should ratify human rights policies, despite structural issues, in order to work towards stronger partnerships and create a kind of universality between

The International Criminal Court (ICC), created in 1998 (Thayer and Ibryamova 2010), is responsible for investigating and prosecuting the most extreme cases, including crimes against humanity, aggressive crimes, war crimes, and genocide. The credibility of this institution, however, has been compromised due to the United States revocation of support and membership. Initially it is important to recognize the arguments against the United States becoming a member state of the ICC and what precipitated the U.S. withdrawing its signature from the document that instituted the Court. Once this has been established, addressing and refuting these objections will develop the arguments in favor of ICC membership. Finally, this analysis will lead to

I find support for Hypotheses 1 and 2, showing that high and low monitoring treaties are more likely to occur following domestic political volatility, but differently depending on states' baseline beliefs about the adversary. For states that see one another as having high incentives to cheat on cooperation, recent domestic political volatility is associated with approximately a two-fold increase in the probability of high monitoring treaties. However, volatility does not have the same effect on treaty outcomes for states that see one another as types with low incentives to cheat. For those types states, domestic volatility is associated with a somewhat higher probability of low monitoring treaties. The interaction term between volatility and policy position is significant in nearly all the models estimated (including robustness checks), and is consistent in direction across all measures. This gives strong support for the conditional nature of the effect of volatility on agreement type. The figures presented in this section elaborate on these findings, and the full statistical results are provided in the Appendix.

State sovereignty is a major barrier when dealing with the issue of world order. State sovereignty is enshrined in the UN Charter. It refers to the authority a nation-state can hold that allows the government to govern themselves without the interference of other countries. Though a legal mechanism in its own right, state sovereignty can limit the effectiveness of international legal measures, which are applied in an effort to achieve world order, due to nation-states having the power of discretion when choosing to sign international legal documents such as treaties and declarations. This means that nation-states operating under state sovereignty can not be forced by any international organisation or other country to sign international legal

     Over the past few years, the International Criminal Court (ICC or “the Court”) has been igniting controversy the world over. As more countries rallied behind it, more objections have been made, particularly from Americans, regarding what many view as fundamental flaws. I have chosen two papers to compare and contrast the different viewpoints taken by the authors when reflecting upon America’s involvement with the ICC. One calls for total rejection of the ICC, the other weighs the risks and benefits and calls for revision but acceptance.

To begin with, As Navi Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights in October 2012 explicitly said “Human rights will not improve much without the direct participation of a robust, free and independent civil society….”

In today’s global system, democracy and political autonomy function as the institutional norm in the contemporary sovereign state. Although there are numerous outliers in the international society, generally, contemporary states endorse political autonomy by way of democracy as a means of securing international credibility and mutual recognition. Additionally, being that the global system generally endorses democracy and the core values associated with it, one often assumes that corresponding values in a society equate to a community. Although similar values assist in creating community, the perpetuity of sovereignty and state self-interest ultimately prohibit transnational interdependence and therefore, forbid the blossoming of any genuine and functioning international community.

My second hypothesis is derived from the IR literature on signaling, defined as the costly and credible conveyance of information and preferences by and between actors in the international arena (Gaubatz, 1996). While states may elect to signal credible commitments to reveal information or preferences, scholars such Simmons have argued that signaling associated with compliance with international law can also be explained in part by reputational concerns (Simmons, 2000). This is because governments irrespective of their position within IOs are more likely to abide by international legal agreements if fellow governments in their region do so as well (Simmons, 2000). Thus, the decision to over-comply is also based on consideration of a state’s reputation relative to other states within the international organization and the larger international system. This means that the choice of a state to over-comply with international requirements may stem from the desire to signal to other states their credible commitment to cooperation through a costly adoption of over-compliant legislation, rather than mere compliance. This is particularly relevant in the case of candidate countries to the EU (as will be discussed in greater detail later) who had the greatest incentive to convey their aims in a

Non-state actors (NSA) are entities that participate in international relations, these entities cannot be identified by common sociological features as they include international organizations, corporations, non-governmental organizations (‘NGOs’), trade associations, and transnational corporations, terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations. They are organizations with sufficient power to influence and cause a change even though they do not belong to any established institution of a state. Non-state actors such as national or international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are adding their voices to international development policy debates by organising, campaigning and lobbying across national boundaries in order to have a greater influence on international development policy making and faced with growing economic and political interdependencies of markets and states, governments have to cope with the increasingly complex postmodern environment, including the activities of NGOs. An example of the influence of non-State actors on diplomacy is the Westphalian Peace Treaty, where they had a role prior to the Treaty of Peace

The United Nations is widely regarded and respected as the most powerful institution that promotes international cooperation and human rights action. In theory, actions implemented by and within the United Nations are based on the mutual global goal of protecting international human rights and preventing human sufferings. These actions are constituted through three main mechanisms: the Treaty-based system, the Human Rights Council, and Security Council and Humanitarian Interventions, with the level of confrontation and seriousness in each mechanism increases respectively. While aimed to serve the mutual goal of protecting human rights over the world and have shown some successes, in a world of sovereignty, actions when implemented are in fact grounded by the national interests of each state, including embracing its national sovereignty, concreting its strategic relationships with other states, and enhancing its reputation in the international community. This paper will analyze the successes and failures of each of the three mechanisms of the United Nations regime, through which it aims to prove that when it comes to actions, states focus more on their national, and in some cases, regional interests than on the mutual goal of strengthening human rights throughout the world, thus diminishing the legitimacy of the whole United Nations system.