Frederick Cowell

• Birkbeck, University of London

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process of the UN Human Rights Council has issued thousands of recommendations to States undergoing the review process. An increasing number of them concern legal subjects and this article explores recommendations in relation to reservations to human right treaties. Although the UPR process was designed to be dis...

The development of mechanisms to target specific countries for human rights abuses was part of the campaign against apartheid at the UN in the 1960s. This campaign led to reform of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which turned it from a purely “promotional” or precatory body into one with an active mandate to protect individuals from human rights...

The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union has overshadowed the increasingly fraught relationship the country has with the European Court of Human Rights. In recent years this has been heavily influenced by British exceptionalism among key policy makers. British exceptionalism, this paper argues, is opposition to the European Court of Human...

Regional human rights bodies, such as the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, have constituent instruments which contain clauses allowing states to leave the institution. Given that regional human rights tribunals have the power to issue rulings against states, these clauses have been relatively underused. T...

Part of the Universal Periodic Review Process (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council involves the states, who are conducting the review, issuing recommendations to the state that is under review. These recommendations can be on a range of issues surrounding the protection of human rights, from simple praise of a state to a recommendation that a state...

Regional human rights bodies, such as the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Right, have constituent instruments, which contain clauses allowing states to leave the institution. Given that regional human rights tribunals have the power to issue rulings against states, these clauses have been relatively underused. T...

Since 2008 the International Criminal Court has been subject to criticism for being somehow imperialist and some criticism of the Court has pursued a distinctly anti-imperialist narrative. Whilst such criticism is often motivated by political considerations, this article examines whether such narrative can be to a certain extent due to some provisi...

Since its inception in 1998 the Human Rights Act (HRA) has come in for a wide variety of criticism on legal, constitutional, political and cultural grounds. More recently, this criticism escalated significantly as politicians have seriously considered proposals for its abolition. This book examines the main arguments against the HRA and the issues...

Book synopsis: Since its inception in 1998 the Human Rights Act (HRA) has come in for a wide variety of criticism on legal, constitutional, political and cultural grounds. More recently, this criticism escalated significantly as politicians have seriously considered proposals for its abolition. This book examines the main arguments against the HRA...

Book synopsis: Since its inception in 1998 the Human Rights Act (HRA) has come in for a wide variety of criticism on legal, constitutional, political and cultural grounds. More recently, this criticism escalated significantly as politicians have seriously considered proposals for its abolition. This book examines the main arguments against the HRA...

The ICC will gain the capacity to prosecute the cr ime of aggression in 2017. The A mendments to the Rome Statute are the product of a political compromise and have a complex legal structure with a high definitional threshold for an act of aggression alongside a bespoke jurisdictional arrangement. This legal structure is likely to mean that very fe...

Book synopsis: Do norms of justice, human rights and democracy enable disenfranchised communities? Or do they simply reinforce relations of domination between those who are constituted as dispensers of justice, rights and aid, and those who are coded as receivers? Critical race theorists, feminists and queer and postcolonial theorists confront thes...

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a regional economic community in southern Africa consisting of fifteen Member States1 with a stated aim of creating a ‘Free Trade Area’ among its Members. SADC’s Tribunal (‘the Tribunal') in Windhoek had the capacity, until the summer of 2010, to hear individual applications from the SADC Member...

Book synopsis: Human rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are at last reaching the heart of global debates. Yet 78 states worldwide continue to criminalise same-sex sexual behaviour, and due to the legal legacies of the British Empire, 42 of these – more than half – are in the Commonwealth of Nations. In recent years many st...

On its fiftieth birthday the African Union (AU) can reflect that as an institution it has evolved considerably from a closed organisation, that offered protection for increasingly despotic governments, to a value-based organisation that notionally prioritises human rights above state sovereignty. That at least is the dominant narrative of the AU's...

There are currently a number of legal mechanisms within African regional organisations aimed at deterring military coups and unconstitutional changes of government. Constitutional uncertainties within post-colonial legal systems and the growth of regional security initiatives led to the creation of these mechanisms, and as recent practice shows the...

The state of defamation laws within the Commonwealth poses a significant threat to the right to freedom of speech, expression and information. Within the United Kingdom there is a growing movement for the reform of the procedural aspects of libel law following several high profile cases that have brought the public's attention to a number of proble...