Academic literature on the topic 'Human Rights Impact assessment'

This thesis contributes to the understanding of the most effective ways to promote sustainable and inclusive development. It uses public private partnerships in infrastructure projects as a case study for demonstrating that a holistic approach of development that incorporates human rights considerations is needed to achieve sustainable and inclusive development outcomes. The dissertation explores different notions of development and how they have influenced the regulatory frameworks for and the structuring of Infrastructure projects and their effectiveness in achieving their intended development outcomes. It demonstrates that public-private partnerships add several layers of complexity to infrastructure finance, planning and implementation, and that they can result in a significant gap between the project’s intended and actual developmental outcomes. The thesis proposes that governments and other project sponsors use human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) to address the challenges created by public-private partnerships in infrastructure projects and shows that this will help increase the possibility that infrastructure PPPs lead to sustainable development outcomes. The thesis also analyses a number of established human rights impact assessment methodologies and proposes a new approach that is specifically designed for the particular context of public-private partnerships in infrastructure projects.<br>Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2020.<br>National Research Foundation (NRF)<br>Centre for Human Rights<br>LLD<br>Unrestricted

This study deals with how NGOs make human rights impact assessment in relation to their Rights-Based Approaches (RBAs) and discuss what a common framework for impact assessment could look like. The study deals with Oxfam, CARE and Amnesty International, and analyse how their different backgrounds and approaches influence their work with measuring impact. It is showed that they are not able to link development to human rights and not successful in reporting impact in human rights terms. The NGOs with a background in the development field focus on empowering rights-holders while the NGO with a background in the human rights field focus on duty-bearers. The paper concludes that to be accountable to people in the south NGOs need to co-operate on impact assessment and link it clearly to human rights law. It is important that this is done in a process that empowers partners and rights-holders, rather than reinforces old power structures.

The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCOFTA) came into force in August 2011 amidst concerns that the provisions protecting Canadian investment in Colombia could exacerbate the precarious human rights situation. The Agreement concerning Annual Reports on Human Rights and Free Trade between Canada and Colombia was negotiated to address such concerns by enshrining the first ever human rights impact assessment (HRIA) of a free trade and investment agreement (TIA) in an internationally binding instrument. This thesis builds on a growing body of international legal scholarship that has considered the duty of home states of private investors to regulate their activity in the host state so as to prevent them from causing or contributing to human rights and environmental harm. It examines state obligations found in human rights, environmental and general principles of international law to propose that while an obligation might exist for the home state to exercise unilateral regulation of its investors, in the presence of a TIA that could cause or enable private human rights or environmental harm, investor regulation through the TIA can be seen as duty for both the home and host states. In view of the absence of such regulation in the CCOFTA, this thesis will consider if the annual HRIA mechanism is an alternative for preventing human rights and environmental harm caused or enabled by the TIA. It is submitted that while HRIAs of TIAs are a novel concept for which little international practice exists, this mechanism has the capacity to provide concrete evidence of human rights or environmental harm caused or enabled by the TIA, but only if based on a methodological model that uses existing state international human rights law obligations as indicators to measure a change in the human rights situation, draws unequivocal causal links between the investment protection provisions and human rights indicators, and allows for broad public participation, especially from the most marginalized and underrepresented groups in the host state to validate its methodology and findings. While under international law all investment-exporting states might have a duty to conduct HRIA on the effects of a proposed TIA as part of the due diligence to prevent transnational harm, the enshrinement of such assessments in an internationally binding instrument triggers a duty for the home state to, on one hand use the HRIA mechanism to prevent transnational human rights or environmental harm and, on the other hand, structure its annual assessments according to the described model in order to give effect to the duty to prevent. Broad and inclusive participation of the local affected communities from the host state in the HRIA becomes an integral component of the home state duty to prevent that can be expected to reveal any negative effects on the human rights situation from the TIA provisions, as well as the type of action required from both states parties to address them.

This study develops three models of human rights determinants with the inclusion an untested variable, women in parliaments. The research is conducted on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 130 countries between 1978 and 1996. For the purpose of analysis the Prais-Winsten Regression method with Panel Corrected Standard Errors was used. The women in power variable is hypothesized to be significantly, positively correlated with a state's propensity toward respect for human rights and is operationalized as percentage of women in parliaments. Three models incorporating as control variables previously identified correlates of human rights abuse were utilized to asses the impact of percentages of women in parliaments on two individual subsets of human rights: personal integrity rights and socio-economic rights. Two models were designed to measure the subset of rights categorized as personal integrity rights using two separate measures: State Department Scores and Amnesty International Scores. Model number three utilized the Physical Quality of Life Index to measure levels of socio-economic rights. Statistical significance was demonstrated by the women in parliament variable in all three models.

In the past two decades, the prison population has increased considerably in many industrialized countries. In the United States, for example, the prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980. As a response to the considerable incarceration costs, the number of private prisons and the number of prisoners working for private corporations have increased significantly. Proponents of private sector involvement in prison industries argue that inmate labour can reduce the incarceration costs and contribute to rehabilitation of prisoners.<br>The question of private sector involvement in prison facilities raises significant concerns as regards to international labour standards. Opponents of private sector involvement argue that private hiring of prison labour can involve exploitation. They also argue that the authority for punishment is a core governmental function that cannot be delegated to the private sector. Furthermore, in most cases, labour and social security laws are not applied to inmates. Therefore, prison labour can constitute unfair competition with free labour or even go as far as to replace free labour.

The United Nations Human Rights Council was created in 2006 to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights. The Commission‘s failure had been attributed to its increasing politicisation and decreasing ability to discharge its mandate. Many radical reforms were not taken up at the Council‘s creation. The Council‘s constituent instrument did provide theoretical methods for avoiding the Commission‘s failings, all of which required implementation by states, regional groups and political blocs. Despite efforts at the Council‘s creation, and during early sessions, to avoid selectivity, partiality and bias, the new body has seen little change in the problems that had beset its predecessor. Many of the issues at the new body can be found in other international organisations. Unlike other bodies, however, those failings undermine the Council‘s ability to discharge its mandate. In order to examine the Council, I have used international law alongside general theories of international relations as applied to international organisations. Council sessions, procedures and mechanisms have been examined, and politicisation of the new body has been compared with the Commission‘s failings.

At international (United Nations) and regional (Council of Europe) level, post-war initiatives have seen the gradual emergence of a multitude of human rights instruments with direct and indirect applicability to prison conditions and prisoner treatment. In particular, the Council of Europe, via its Convention on and Court of Human Rights, has succeeded at ushering in the prisoner as a legitimate rights holder as any other human agent. Nearly a decade into the new millennium and past 50 years since the inception of the European Convention, the present study attempts to explore the dynamics of human rights in prisons against the latter' s unwavering popularity. Having only prisoners on board, it sets off to document their awareness, understanding and conceptualisations of the idea and application of human rights to the carceral context. The objective is to unravel the potentiality (-ies) of human rights in prisons, if any, and its implications for imprisonment as a state punishment. To this end, we are taken to two Western European countries-England & Wales and the Netherlands. There, 9 prisons and a probation office are visited where 63 adult men and women assess the state and viability of human rights in jail through interviews and questionnaires. Their differences in terms of the context of their imprisonment aspire to discern elements, which are conducive to making prison work-if possible.