By chronicling the continuing contest over the reach, range, and regime of rights, Contracting Human Rights analyzes the way forward in an era of many challenges. This multidisciplinary book contributes to building understanding of the maturation of human rights, from a dissident doctrine to a dynamic parameter of global governance and civil society. Through an examination of both global and local challenges to human rights, including loopholes, backlash, accountability, and new opportunities to move forward, this book analyzes trends across multiple-issue areas.
One of the hallmarks of the present era is the discourse surrounding Human Rights and the need for the law to recognise them. Various national and supranational human rights instruments have been developed and implemented in order to transition society away from atrocity and callousness toward a more just and inclusive future. In some countries this is done by means of an overarching constitution, while in others international conventions or ordinary legislation hold sway. Contract law plays a pivotal role in this context. According to many, this is done through the much-debated ‘civilising mission’ of the contract, a notion which itself constitutes the canon of the Western liberal principle of ‘civilised economy’. The movement away from the belief in the absolute freedom of contract, which reached its zenith in the nineteenth century, to the principles of fairness and justice that underpin contract law today, is often deemed to be a testament to this civilising influence. Delving into the interplay between human rights policies, constitutional law, and contract law from both theoretical and practical perspectives, this first volume of a two-book collection offers a totally new reappraisal of the subject by gathering a collection of essays written by contract law scholars from Europe, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. Instead of providing the reader with a sterile compilation of positivistic norms and policies on the impact of fundamental rights and constitutional law issues on contract law’s development, the authors build on their personal experience to analyse specific topics related to contracting that include a constitutional dimension. The book fills an important void in comparative law scholarship and in so doing represents the starting point for further debate on the subject.
The conduct of armed conflict is increasingly being outsourced to private military and security companies, whose legal position remains unclear. This book identifies and analyses the human rights and humanitarian law framework applicable to these companies, examining how they can be held to account and how victims can obtain remedies.
Most conceptions of human rights rely on metaphysical or theological assumptions that construe them as possible only as something imposed from outside existing communities. Most people, in other words, presume that human rights come from nature, God, or the United Nations. This book argues that reliance on such putative sources actually undermines human rights. Benjamin Gregg envisions an alternative; he sees human rights as locally developed, freely embraced, and indigenously valid. Human rights, he posits, can be created by the average, ordinary people to whom they are addressed, and that they are valid only if embraced by those to whom they would apply. To view human rights in this manner is to increase the chances and opportunities that more people across the globe will come to embrace them.
One of the largest private-sector investment projects in Africa is threatening human rights in Chad and Cameroon. A consortium of oil companies, led by ExxonMobil and including Chevron and Petronas, is extracting oil from the Doba oilfields in southern Chad and transporting it through a newly built 1,070 km pipeline to Cameroon's Atlantic coast. International law places the primary obligation for realising human rights on states. However, there is increasing recognition that responsibility for contributing to the protection of human rights extends to other actors in society, as acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Amnesty International believes that companies have human rights responsibilities within their sphere of influence. These extend globally and are particularly relevant when companies operate in countries where grave violations of human rights are part of the context of their activities, as is the case in Chad and Cameroon. This report highlights the potential dangers to human rights posed by investment agreements underpining the pipeline project, as well as the need for a new approach to investment that ensures respect for human rights. Amnesty International calls on the governments, international financial institutions and companies involved in the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project to revise the investment agreements to include an explicit guarantee that nothing in them can be used to undermine either the human rights obligations of the states or the human rights responsibilities of the companies.
This collection brings together in one volume a selection of the major international texts in the field of human rights, which can be used both as an introduction to this vast subject and as a working tool for students, professionals and others working in the field of human rights. This book responds to the growing interest in human rights among students, lawyers, teachers, diplomats and other professional groups, as well as the general public as a whole.
This book explores the human rights consequences of the new mercenarism, as channeled through so-called private military and security companies (PMSCs), and offers an overview of the evolution and status quo of both non-legal (soft law and self-regulation) and legal initiatives seeking to limit them. It addresses various topics, including the impact of the presence of non-state actors on human security using the cases of Afghanistan and Syria; research on PMSCs’ impact on human rights in specific cases; the insufficiency and ineffectiveness of existing direct and indirect legal prohibitions on the use of mercenaries; various aspects of international human rights law and international humanitarian law related to the conduct of PMSCs; soft-law and self-regulation mechanisms; and the international minimum standard in general international law regarding the privatization, export, import, and contracting of PMSCs.
