Brian Dan is a guest contributor from the University of Strathclyde and a L.L.M. candidate in human rights law
Is Brexit just a snag in European Union integration without accompanying regression in human rights legislation? Of course not. Brexit signals a backsliding in human rights protections and imperils the closest thing to a constitutional framework for human rights in the United Kingdom.
The U.K. has over 40 years of EU law transposed into its own laws. Together, the EU laws, which are supreme to the domestic laws of the EU states; the Common Law system of England and Wales, which is law created by judges in courts; and the legislative directives of the Council of Europe, an international organization comprised of 47 European states, constitute an overarching, legally-binding system for the promotion, respect and protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms.
The human rights protections provided to British citizens by the U.K.’s membership in the EU and Council of Europe are distinct but also...
By Izzy Tomico Ellis, a journalist and activist who has been heavily involved in the refugee crisis since 2015. Additional reporting by Niamh Keady-Tabbal.
Syrine* is sitting on the edge of a bed inside a tidy room for two, in City Plaza — a squatted hotel in Greece where solidarians from all over the world have flocked to bring respite to its refugee residents. Her little son started walking yesterday. In between our conversation, she holds out her hands to catch him as he falls down. Soothing him, she recalls, "I looked on Facebook to find out what to do when he was crying. I was alone with a baby…I didn’t know anything."
When we asked her if we could write down her story, she smiled, "I’ve thought about telling it a lot."
The strength with which she carried herself had compelled me to ask, and at the same time made me worry she’d laugh. For her, a 21-year-old mother, bravery comes so naturally.
When we first met...
by Ulia Popova, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University ISHR
November 7 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, an event that set in motion one of the controversial political experiments of the 20th century, the development of a socialist state. The legacy of the Soviet experiment is contradictory, given the greatness of the idea that inspired it and the tragedies it engendered. The Soviet treatment of the rights of ethnic minorities is particularly instructive in this regard, not least due to its relevance to the contemporary debate over inclusion and diversity.
Terry Martin, a Harvard historian, called the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) the “world’s first Affirmative Action Empire.” With the exception of India, no other multi-cultural state before or after the USSR, Martin writes, took action of equivalent scope in support of the cultural and political rights of ethnic minorities. The architects of the Soviet Union envisioned it as a state based on the principle of...
By Jason Hung, a guest blogger from the University of Warwick
Currently, there are an estimated 118,995 refugees living in the U.K., composing less than one percent of the country's total population. Three to ten percent of these refugees are thought to have a physical or mental disability. Due to the small number of disabled refugees living in the U.K., the rights of these refugees have often been disregarded, according to Keri Roberts and Jennifer Harris, research fellows from the University of York who generated data on the numbers and social characteristics of disabled refugees and asylum seekers living in Britain. Their research, which was completed in collaboration with the Refugee Council, found that U.K. communities are unable to provide sufficient aid for these vulnerable groups.
“Disabled people in refugee and asylum-seeking communities frequently experienced great hardship,” the authors note. “Considerable confusion about the responsibilities of different agencies and National Asylum Seekers Service (NASS), a lack of coordinated information and service provision, and...
By Zina Precht-Rodriguez, Columbia College '19
The story of Spain’s traumatic history is compelling because it is continuously unfolding. One of my most memorable experiences in Barcelona this summer was my visit to an air raid shelter that was designed during the Spanish Civil War to protect thousands of civilians during the fascist bombings of Barcelona. The existence of the shelter was only discovered a couple of years ago by a cable company. The company intended to build an underground landline to connect more people throughout Spain, but the irony of the situation is that something much deeper connects the people of Spain: a traumatic memory that tells the story of a vicious divide within Spain, as well as within Europe, of those who risked their lives for progressive change and those who compromised their own morality.
In 2017, these casual rediscoveries of a traumatic Spanish past are triggering an outpouring of civilian, intellectual and political inquiry. The European Observatory for Memories (EUROM) addresses...
By Bárbara Matias, an M.A. student in human rights
In late May, thousands of Hungarians marched against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s educational reform laws subduing foreign universities and non-governmental organizations. The educational reforms were the latest in a series of clashes between the right-wing Hungarian government and the European Union (EU); the protests yet another manifestation of civil society's mobilization against Orbán’s opposition to EU frameworks. On May 1, the 13th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to the EU, for example, thousands took to the streets in a pro-EU rally, suitably called "We Belong to Europe.’’
This past April, Prime Minister Orbán and Hungary's parliament passed an amendment to Hungary’s national law on higher education, tightening regulations on independent and foreign-funded universities. Specifically, the law targets the Central European University (CEU), a Budapest-based university founded by Hungarian-born American financier George Soros and accredited in the United States and Hungary since 1993. The current government under Orbán sought legal means to shut the university down, viewing...
By Claudia Kania, guest blogger from Reavis high school
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released a statement in 2000 that acknowledged “the place of the Roma communities among those most disadvantaged and most subject to discrimination in the contemporary world.” Such socially and institutionally-accepted xenophobia is perhaps most clearly epitomized by the European school system. Although academic institutions are often portrayed as “the great equalizers,” a system founded on the principles of ignorance and prejudice frequently separates Roma, one of the largest minority groups in Europe, from reaping the benefits of education.
The right to education is universally established as a fundamental guiding principle within international human rights discourse. It is recognized as a human right by Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as Articles 28, 29, and 40 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. To further contextualize the premise of academic equity, UNESCO put...
By Marina Kumskova, an MA student in Human Rights
Several human rights treaties allow for states to derogate from their obligations to protect certain rights. These adjustments can only take place temporarily, however, and in exceptional circumstances - i.e. in times of public emergency threatening the life of a nation. Yet, despite the professedly innocuous intent of such systems, states of emergency have a dark history of being used in controversial ways to usher in tyrannical regimes, under the facade of confronting a threat to the existence of the nation.
Take the example of France. The perceived threat to the life of the nation from terrorist attacks, caused by people only loosely connected by an ideology, is seemingly tremendous. However, France has proven that the introduction of emergency powers, which allow for the derogation of rights, also ushers in a temptation for misuse. France’s state of emergency last December was less than a month old when its emergency powers were used, not in...
By Judit Geller, Adam Weiss, and Bernard Rorke, guest bloggers from the European Roma Rights Centre
On June 9th 2015, the European Court of Human Rights declared an application submitted by the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) on behalf of a victim of forced sterilization inadmissible. The injustices visited upon the applicant from the moment of being sterilized in Hungary are disturbing – the legal reasoning behind the decision is deeply troubling for anyone interested in reproductive rights, anti-Roma discrimination, women’s rights, or the emerging legal field of intersectionality.
The facts (which can be found in an anonymised version of the application on the ERRC website) are as follows: On February 9th 2008, the applicant G.H. was admitted to the hospital, twenty-two weeks pregnant with twins and bleeding heavily. An urgent Caesarean section was ordered. The applicant signed a form consenting to this procedure. It was discovered that the foetuses were dead, and they were removed. During the operation, the applicant’s fallopian tubes...
By Marina Kumskova, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University
___________________________________________________________________________
Between March 2002 and July 2004, eight individuals of Chechen origin were “arrested by groups of armed and masked men in a manner resembling a security operation”. Pointing guns at the family members, the soldiers took men away in military carriers. Similarly, on April 28, 1991, Jeremías Osorio Rivera was officially detained by a military patrol when he went to the village of Nunumia to take part in a sports event. He was accused of making a terrorist threat for carrying an officially registered gun and explosives materials.
None of these men have been seen or heard from since, despite their families’ tireless efforts to find them. In both cases, the males were abducted and detained by armed men without arrest warrant, held in solitary confinement under mortifying circumstances for unidentified periods of time, and deprived of legal assistance or any other contact with the outside world. In both cases, after the abduction of...
