CIAO DATE: 12/2012
Volume: 4, Issue: 3
Spring 2011
(Re)Invigorating the World Health Organization's Governance of Health Rights: Repositing an Evolving Legal Mandate, Challenges and Prospects
William Onzivu
State centred discourse on international law and human rights often diminishes the obligations of global health institutions in international law to advance health related human rights and as sites for the progressive development and implementation of health rights. The constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) provides an expansive role for human rights protection and promotion in realizing public health, but WHO has faced hurdles in effectively carrying out this role. Current scholarship continues to underscore the normative challenges facing WHO concerning its limited use of international law including human rights to promote health. This article goes a step further and explores the evolving international legal and institutional basis for WHO’s future direction in strengthening the governance of human rights. It revisits WHO’s evolving and expanding human rights mandate, challenges and prospects within WHO law, the broader United Nations law, policy and practice as well as general international law. Despite the limitations, WHO has evolving institutional mechanisms rooted in international law that comprise a pivotal site for human rights normative and operational work at the global, regional and domestic levels. The article examines these mechanisms and suggests concrete ways and options in which WHO can advance health rights.
From Sympathy to Reparation for Female Victims of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts
Chile Eboe-Osuji
There is a newfound momentum in international law for reparation for the victims of gross violations of human rights. This momentum has been largely hortative in resonance than actual. The slow progress in translating that desire into tangible, effective reparation programmes is partly attributable to the absence of coherent theoretical bases – especially palatable ones – for reparation in particular cases. It is submitted, however, that in canvassing the theories of reparation, the driving consideration must always remain the interests of victims and not the intellectual satisfaction of knowledgeable and well-meaning experts. The most erudite rationalization of the idea of reparation will be of no consequence if it does not, in practice, assist in improving the lives of the victims. While, it is important always to keep in view the fault-based theories of reparation, it is also advisable to consider the utility of employing the no-fault-based rationale for achieving the aim of reparation when the party at fault is either unavailable or unable to make reparation at all or in full. Hence, guidance might be had to the gratis model of reparation employed in many domestic jurisdictions to make some compensation to victims of violent crimes.
Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonial Legacies and Post-colonial Challenges
Muhammed Haron
Shamil Jeppie, Ebrahim Moosa and Richard Roberts (Eds.), Muslim Personal Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonial Legacies and Post-Colonial Challenges. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010. ISBN: 978 90 8964 172 4, 388 pp.