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9651 results in Comparative Law

Page 472 of 483

  • 3 - The domestic protection of human rights

  • from PART I - Introduction
  • Nihal Jayawickrama
  • Book:
    The Judicial Application of Human Rights Law
    Published online:
    08 August 2009
    Print publication:
    12 December 2002, pp 95-129

  • Summary

    In 1958, Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, chairperson of the committee that produced the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) asked where universal human rights begin. She answered:

    In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

    Mrs Roosevelt was underscoring the fact that human rights need to be protected, in the first instance, at home. Since human rights principally involve the relationship between the individual and the state, and sometimes also between individuals, the task of protecting and promoting human rights is primarily a national one. It is at the national level that the first line of defence must exist or be established. The international instruments which prescribe contemporary standards and the international monitoring bodies which scrutinize national performance are essentially complementary in nature. They are not a substitute for domestic initiatives.

    The application of international law

    The status of international law within a municipal legal system is generally determined by municipal law.

  • Preface

  • Nihal Jayawickrama
  • Book:
    The Judicial Application of Human Rights Law
    Published online:
    08 August 2009
    Print publication:
    12 December 2002, pp ix-xii

  • Summary

    From 1978, I was associated with Professor Paul Sieghart, then chairman of JUSTICE, the United Kingdom section of the International Commission of Jurists, and Professor James Fawcett, then president of the European Commission of Human Rights, in a research project on the international law of human rights. My research on the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg institutions and of national courts was incorporated in Paul Sieghart's pioneering work, The International Law of Human Rights which was published in 1983. The cut-off date for the law examined in that book was 31 December 1981.

    In the next two decades, the international human rights regime strengthened considerably. Over 150 countries, spread over every continent, incorporated contemporary human rights standards into their legal systems. Over 100 countries ratified the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, thereby enabling their inhabitants to access the Human Rights Committee. Meanwhile, nearly all the countries of South and Central America, Africa and Europe subscribed to regional human rights instruments with their own monitoring or enforcement mechanisms. The resulting jurisprudence, rich in content and varied in flavour, from diverse cultural traditions, has added a new dimension to the concepts first articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This book seeks to incorporate that jurisprudence and, in that sense, complement the late Paul Sieghart's invaluable work.

    I have not set out to produce a scholarly work on human rights or on international law.

Page 472 of 483