Abstract In September 2022, 10 years had passed since the Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights were adopted by the Human Rights Council. The Guiding Principles, as a soft law human rights instrument, were designed to be a useful tool for states in the formulation and implementation of poverty reduction and eradication policies. In this piece, I examine to what extent this objective has been met. Based on empirical research involving states’ representatives and civil society organizations, and analysis of the documents produced by United Nations bodies that played a key role in developing a human rights-based approach to poverty, I argue that this objective has been met only to a limited extent.

Abstract This article analyses the Indian caste-based occupation of sanitation work undertaken without protective equipment—manual scavenging. The current legal framework on manual scavenging in India suggests that demolishing dry latrines will abolish manual scavenging. This approach overlooks the coercive nature of the caste system and is therefore an inadequate solution for abolishing manual scavenging. Hence, this article asks ‘how can the legal system provide better legal protections to manual scavengers when the caste system that underpins the practice is deeply entrenched in Indian society?’ The article examines one possible answer—taking dignity more seriously. It demonstrates that manual scavenging is a dignitarian problem by mapping the main dignitarian harms that arise from it, such as humiliation, loss of autonomy and tensions with group dignity. Ultimately, it proposes using dignity in line with the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee to provide more comprehensive legal protections for manual scavengers.

The question of gender equality before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)—one of the most powerful human rights bodies in Europe and beyond—is not only underresearched but, to the extent that it has been the subject of research, such research has mostly focused on understanding the status of women and women’s rights, leaving aside questions about men and masculinities.1 Alice Margaria’s book The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights2 is the first comprehensive study to inquire into gender equality before the ECtHR from the perspective of men, being a welcome and much needed addition to the literature on gender legal studies. The book starts from the idea that gender equality requires not only changing women’s traditional roles, but also men’s roles, in particular that of breadwinners, which oftentimes limit men’s ability to be involved in childcare and other domestic tasks. Keeping...

Abstract Growing concern for the democratic legitimacy of human rights treaty organs calls for the construction of an autonomous conception of ‘democracy’ as a constitutional principle of human rights treaties, and the reconstruction of the roles of treaty organs per that conception. This study responds to this call by proposing an original ‘two-tiered bounded deliberative democracy’ theory that harmonizes human rights with democracy globally. This theory gives priority to national deliberations while setting certain frameworks and limits on them based on the principles and values that have been firmly established through international deliberations, including human rights treaty standards. The theory not only appropriately explains the roles of treaty organs within the conception of democracy but also offers a comprehensive normative framework to guide their roles and interactions with other actors. Even for those who champion different versions of democracy, it offers a solid basis for constructive discussions and fruitful engagement.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (‘CRPD’) is the first international human rights treaty to recognize rights specifically for disabled people. It has been heralded as revolutionary in creating a ‘paradigm shift’ in how disability is understood within law. The CRPD moves away from a medical model of disability (which focuses on the individual’s limitations) to a social model of disability (which focuses on social barriers and how they can be alleviated to better promote the rights of disabled people.) Nilsson rightly points out that much of the originality of the CRPD’s approach rests with its focus on equal treatment and non-discrimination (pp 12–14). One of the areas in which disabled people are still discriminated against is in the context of compulsory mental health treatment. The presence of a psychosocial disability is still used in the majority of domestic mental health laws to justify compulsion. This includes where an individual is refusing treatment a professional believes they require and the person either lacks decision making ability, or there is a risk of self harm, harm to others, serious deterioration in health or a combination of these factors (pp 45–49). Therefore, one of the questions dominating CRPD implementation is if and when compulsory treatment is justified under the CRPD.

Abstract Predictive risk models (‘PRMs’) are increasingly utilized in policing and child protection contexts to monitor, flag and assess children ‘at risk’ of victimization and/or offending. Policing and child protection PRMs focus on similar vulnerable and marginalized cohorts, strengthening the power of the State’s gaze over these groups. An analysis of the overlap between these PRMs reveals problematic State constructions of vulnerability and risk, exposing porous lines between welfare and policing agendas. This Article contends that these PRMs may result in the criminalization of vulnerable and marginalized children, thus undermining objectives of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The UNCRC is applied to assess implications for privacy, discrimination and child justice principles, in context with positive obligations to protect children and promote their best interests. The Article also addresses the UNCRC through a critical lens, identifying shortcomings that may undermine its potential to confront relevant harms.

Abstract This paper analyses the shortcomings of European suicide prevention policy in places of detention, a topic that has been neglected in the European legal literature. Four interrelated characteristics of the suicide prevention policies developed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are responsible for the failures of these policies. First, the risk-based approach relies on individual risk calculations by national detention authorities to the detriment of environmental factors and a holistic approach. Second, there is an unacknowledged tension in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR between the right to life of detainees and the right to life of potential victims of terrorism and other serious crimes. Third, the jurisprudence on state liability, with its individual risk-based approach, has been translated into highly restrictive death avoidance national practices, which infringe human dignity and reinforce detainees’ willingness to commit suicide. Finally, the right to life does not effectively limit the inherent punitiveness of suicide prevention policies.

Abstract While anti-abortion activists have been successful in pushing to restrict access to abortion across the USA, reproductive rights activists have been mobilizing across Latin America to push for the easement of strict anti-abortion policies. These opposing directions of travel have renewed interest in which human rights arguments would best support the expansion of access to abortion in Latin America. To date, progress in this area has mostly relied on understanding that the prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment requires states to allow abortions in the direst of circumstances. However, the vast majority of women in the region who seek abortions do not qualify for the small exemptions contained in the law. Activists looking to expand abortion provisions beyond the cruelty paradigm therefore need to find arguments that can stand firm in a generally conservative Latin American region. In this search, the Inter-American System could, somewhat surprisingly, provide keys to constructing a new discourse surrounding reproductive rights based on a nuanced understanding of structural discrimination and a willingness to visibilise the suffering of women.

Abstract The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) guarantees that persons with disabilities (‘PWD’) are to be equal before and under the law. There are almost identical equality guarantees in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Hong Kong's mini constitution – the Basic Law. Australia boasts similar legislative equality guarantees for PWD. The CRPD Committee has interpreted the right broadly, whereas constitutional courts have taken a proportionality approach, balancing the right to substantive equality against competing concerns. The tension between these methods of rights protection means the CRPD is being positioned as an alternative model of rights protection, but it is not an alternative mechanism for enforcement. This article calls on the Committee to modify its guidance to make suggestions to state parties as to how incremental advances in rights protection can be immediately implemented, even if in the short-term, these advances fall short of full inclusion.

Abstract Article 31(1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides all children, everywhere, with the right to play. The CRC is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty, yet children’s right to play is considered ‘the forgotten right’. The widespread State inaction to fulfil this right could be partly due to continued uncertainty about how to define play. This Article argues for the application a large body of recent research with the group most qualified to determine whether activities are play or not: young children. This research demonstrates that choice and autonomy are two universal and essential indicia for an activity to be experienced as play. The Article contends that the fulfilment of young children’s right to play would significantly increase if early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions within States utilised these two indicia within daily programmed activities and in ECEC policies.