The Gambia v Myanmar: ICJ upholds the rights of Rohingyas
On January 23, the International Court of Justice announced the imposition of provisional measures against Myanmar. Myanmar is required to immediately cease all atrocities and human rights violations against Rohingyas,...
CEDAW: The Every Woman Treaty that Already Exists
There is an initiative for a new treaty focused on violence against women that calls itself the “Every Woman Treaty”. It is proposed as a stand-alone United Nations (UN) treaty...
Crimea Conscripts: Russia continues to flout the Geneva Conventions
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in its most recent Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine has confirmed that some 18,000 Ukrainian citizens living...
A Global Mandate to End Violence and Harassment in the World of Work: ILO Convention No. 190
“For me, as for most women workers I know, this Convention and this Recommendation are personal… This Convention, and its recognition of violence and harassment as a range of behaviours...
The CERD Committee on Discrimination Against Non-Citizens
In a previous blog post I explained the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination’s (CERD) first three inter-State communications submitted under Article 11 CERD, specifically that...
UN Political Bodies and Voluntary Abortion: Back to 1994
Calls for the protection of reproductive and sexual health are included in an increasing number of resolutions of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council concerned with women’s rights,...
The Non-effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council’s role in the Syrian Conflict
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the principal organ of the United Nations (UN) charged with maintaining and restoring of international peace and security. Its actions or failures to...
The ILO adopts Convention concerning violence and harassment at work
Sexual harassment, an expression of violence against women (VAW), received remarkable media attention with the #MeToo Movement. It was a reminder of the law’s poor track record in curbing workplace...
Mobilising International Human Rights Law to Promote Tax Justice
Hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue are lost to governments – and particularly those of developing countries – annually as a result of deficiencies in the global taxation system,...
The 2019 Guiding Principles on the Right to Education: The Drafters’ Perspective
The Oxford Human Rights Hub in partnership with the Masters in International Human Rights Law at the Department of Continuning Education, University of Oxford will be hosting a panel discussion...
Cuts to the UN Human Rights Bodies? We Know What This Leads To
The global populist backlash against multilateralism and rights is reaching the UN treaty bodies. These reactionary politics are manifesting in States’ refusal to pay their dues to the UN (the...
Still the second sex: Some feminist reflections on the new General Comment of the UN Human Rights Committee on the right to life
In October 2018 the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee (HRC) adopted general comment (GC) 36 on the right to life, replacing GC 6 and GC 14. Latter documents date...
