Edvenson Consulting

Subject:  International Human Rights law.  Inspiration:  How to consider Israel's punishing pounding of life out of everyone who happens to live in Gaza these days - including small women and children, day in and day out, including the destruction of their government buildings, and the terrorizing of the civil population with random threats, injury, death, leaflets and armed surprise in their homes and businesses, without the ability to flee or defend themselves.  

International human rights have grown in their importance to the world community over the last century as nations continue to resist peace-making and conflict resolution.  However, most people probably are not aware of what these rights include.  Nor do they know precisely how to think about them.  If someone robs a grocery, we know there is a law against robbery, and that a law has been broken:  the concept and our understanding of its social context is known to us.  Not so with that nebulous but heavenly 'thing,' "international human rights law."  I was asked to address this subject in my International Legal English course this past Spring, and created some materials I thought I should upload now, as a result.  First, the most familiar of the international human rights documents:  click here to see the U.N's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights."  This is a 'copied-off' version, English first, followed by a Norwegian version.  This can also be found at the U.N.'s website: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Pages/WelcomePage.aspx along with many other human rights instruments.  Another such document is the U.N.'s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, or ICCPR.  You will find a short list I created of the ICCPR Articles indicating the basic rights they reference here: ICCPR Articles summary list. 

And last but not least, how should we think about these rights from a legal standpoint?  How can we try to evaluate if a nation has violated an international human right?  I created a basic outline of the international human rights law with respect to its caselaw notions.  The document covers the bases for cases in this legal area, and should help you identify the areas of "State" (ie: nation) responsibility, as well as some of the procedural points.  The document was designed for my students to become somewhat familiar with these concepts, and concludes with an exercise with questions that can be applied to one's "Case of Choice."  It was not designed to 'practice law by,' but simply to sketch some of the broader concepts in international human rights law so that my students would be familiar with the English vocabulary and how it is applied generally.  I hope you find this interesting and informative.  I would appreciate any comments you may have, in reply:  Governing Principles of International Human Rights law.

The much overdue subject of our next blog post should, rightfully, be the question that is spread as a full-headline across the front page of Norway's Aftenposten newspaper today.  Against a scene of billowing black smoke rising from Gaza, it reads in large block letters, ""Hvorfor er det ingen som gjør noe?" -Alaa Khalid (14), døende."  For the Norwegian-challenged, as well as readers of Aftenposten's English news who are now missing the defunct translation copy, this means: "Why is there no one who is doing anything?"  Fourteen is Alaa's age, and døende means dying, which means he is probably now dead.  Like too many other innocents in this tragic and foolhardy contest.