Law of international organisations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Law of international organisations - Essay Example The idea of human rights receives formal universal recognition that the international community strives to maintain and enforce encoded through the United Nations Charter signed on June 26, 1945 with the main objective of saving generations of humans from war and reaffirms the faith in fundamental rights and freedoms. The main objective of the United Nations is to achieve international cooperation, through promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and the fundamental freedoms that accrue to them without the discrimination in terms of aspects such as sex, race, language or religion. It is important to note that the enforcement of these rights and freedoms can be undertaken through joint or separate actions by the member states. The provisions of the Articles of the United Nations Charter have the force of prudent international law as the charter is a treaty and binds to those nations that have ratified it. Therefore, state parties are required to fulfil the obligations and th e responsibilities enshrined in the Charter including the obligations to defend human privileges and the major liberties, the promotion of the observance of the civil liberties and the cooperation with the United Nations in attaining these inherent obligations. ... Since the Universal Declaration became international law there have been other conventions and treaties that create regional courts that also help in the enforcement of fundamental rights and freedoms. Due to the dramatic increase of human rights activities in the twentieth and twenty first century, there has been need to combine the monitoring of the human rights violations and matters concerning their enforcement. The establishment of the International Criminal Court formed a vital part of an emerging system of international human rights protection in that it is empowered to take legal action and castigate individuals liable for offenses against humankind. The growing international awareness of the need to protect human rights and guarantee freedoms has rejuvenated the need for upholding them. Yet, serious violation and deprivation of human rights and fundamental freedoms still exist that require a remedy in the shortest time possible. To remedy this situation, there have been regi onal courts with the jurisdiction to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms. However, these courts must strive and adhere to the already established norm that the supremacy of the United Nations Charter. In Britain, for example, the Human Rights Act of 1998 is an act of Parliament, whose main aim is to ensure that it gives further force the laws concerning human rights, contained in the European Convention and the United Nations Charter. It gives the courts in the United Kingdom the power to deal with those issues, which might cause the citizens of this country to go to the European Court of Human Rights. The act makes it illegal for all public bodies

Is the ICC dangerous to democracy and doomed to fail Essay

Is the ICC dangerous to democracy and doomed to fail - Essay Example One of the controversial issues, however, in regard to the existence of ICC is that it threatens democracy, the given reason why the United States withdrew its signature in the Rome Statute in December 2000. The United States is highly suspicious of multilateral agreements and that the mandate of the ICC further heightened this uncertainty. With the provisions contained therein, ICC would have jurisdiction over American citizens and try them according to the international law, drafted according to a collaboration of international legal principles. This is seen as dangerous because the American jurisprudence is at significant points highly divergent with the ICC’s. For instance, protections that are considered core requirements for a fair trial in the United States are greatly diluted or absent entirely. According to Carpenter (2002), instead of having a right to trial by an impartial jury, a defendant faces the prospect of trial by a panel of judges appointed by majority vote of member-states and could come from countries where there is no concept of independent jury or from a regime hostile to his or her government. (p. 197) In addition to the above factor, there is also the fact that some statutes that would govern the ICC are overly broad. Consider these examples: there is the genocide definition that covers offenses relating to the commission of serious â€Å"mental harm† to members of any national, racial, ethnic or religious group; then, war crimes would include committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating or degrading treatment. (p. 197) With the seriousness of the crimes in question, it is a legitimate argument to say that the broadness of definitions and provisions may be wittingly or unwittingly interpreted differently than what was intended or taken advantage with. There is just a lot of room for a