Intersex adolescents occupy a critical yet neglected position in international human rights law. While global advocacy has increasingly condemned non-essential surgeries on intersex infants, the unique rights of adolescents, whose evolving autonomy requires direct participation in healthcare decisions, remain under-theorised. This article argues that the Convention on the Rights of the Child, read through Articles 5, 12 and 24 together with General Comment No. 20 (2016), requires a presumption of deferral for all non-urgent, irreversible procedures until informed adolescent consent is possible - whether that consent ultimately affirms or declines intervention. It further advances a recognition-theoretical framework, drawing on Honneth, to demonstrate that respectful adolescent participation is not solely a matter of cognitive capacity but of social and institutional affirmation. Surgical interventions performed without adolescent consent constitute institutionalised misrecognition and violate the rights to bodily integrity, identity and an open future. By integrating doctrinal analysis with recognition theory, the article proposes a transformative legal model for adolescent decision-making that centres dignity and relational autonomy as foundational. It concludes with practical recommendations for States to prohibit non-consensual surgeries, embed participatory rights in intersex healthcare and ensure that intersex adolescents are recognised as full rights-holders capable of shaping their own embodied futures.
This paper examines whether the expansion of post-colonial states into Indigenous territories - specifically the Conquest of the Desert in Argentina (1878-1885) - constitutes genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). A central challenge in this analysis is the principle of non-retroactivity, which prohibits punishing conduct that was not legally defined as a crime at the time it was committed. I argue that while retroactive punishment is forbidden, retroactive recognition of genocide is not. Drawing on legal and philosophical arguments, the paper contends that the Conquest of the Desert satisfies the criteria for genocide established by the CPPCG. At the same time, recognising these events as genocide does not violate the principle of legality, because the underlying acts were already punishable under the criminal law in force at the time. Courts may therefore characterise such conduct as genocide while applying the penalties prescribed by the law applicable when the crimes were committed. This approach allows the legal system to acknowledge the specific gravity of genocidal violence while respecting the prohibition of retroactive punishment, contributing to ongoing debates on historical justice and accountability for past human rights violations.
The fusion of artificial intelligence and neurotechnology has rendered the human mind increasingly accessible to external decoding and manipulation, challenging traditional boundaries of mental privacy under international human rights law. This article argues that the current framework, predominantly reliant on the relative and consent-based right to privacy under Article 17 of the ICCPR, is structurally insufficient to address the distinctive risks posed by these emerging technologies. While existing privacy and data protection frameworks remain an important starting point, practices capable of accessing or shaping mental states may implicate not merely informational privacy but also the protected inner sphere of thought under Article 18. Drawing on a comparative analysis of regulatory developments in Chile, the European Union, the United States, and China, as well as recent developments within United Nations human rights mechanisms, the article maps the limitations of existing approaches. It then proposes five core principles as a structured foundation for a future international normative framework. These principles are intended not as definitive solutions but as a basis for the international community to refine and ultimately translate into operational legal standards.
If 'women's rights are human rights,' and human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) criticise state abuses, why do half of Middle East and North African (MENA) women's NGO submissions express sympathy or praise for MENA states at the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR)? This article first explains the importance of NGO documentation, reporting, and rhetoric. It then examines various factors producing political divergence between women's rights and human rights advocacy networks. Finally, the article uses content analysis of MENA women's NGO submissions and simple descriptive statistics to illuminate major rhetorical patterns and their implications during the first three UPR cycles in four major issue areas: equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, violence against women, and sexual orientation and gender identity.
Nursing's ethical identity is grounded in compassion, advocacy, and the protection of human dignity, principles aligned with the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law (IHL). In the face of crimes against humanity occurring in Gaza, nursing's collective voice has been muted by political pressures, fear of reprisal, and institutional neutrality, thereby failing to meet its professional mandate. This paper examines the moral and professional implications of such silence, using Gaza as a case study to explore how suppressed speech and outrage erodes the collective nursing conscience. We trace the historical relationship between nursing and humanitarian law, framing nursing's professional conscience through compassion, bearing witness, and moral courage. Analysis of statements from nursing bodies in Canada and the United States reveals patterns of silence that highlight the ethical cost of equivocation. We argue that silence disrupts the compassionate process and risks desensitisation to suffering, thereby undermining public trust in nursing's moral authority. The path forward requires re-centering humanitarian principles within nursing education, policy, and practice, cultivating moral courage as a necessity, and dismantling cultures of fear that immobilise human rights advocacy grounded in international humanitarian law. Advocacy in such contexts is not peripheral to nursing but the highest expression of its professional ideals.
Every act of a forced disappearance is simultaneously a forced, involuntary separation. International Law recognises that in contexts of mass disappearances, marked by denial and impunity, family members-predominantly women-are compelled to enter a dangerous public sphere to demand truth and justice. While feminist scholars have long explored this reality, International Law and IR scholars have been slower to do so. Addressing this gap, I argue that women relatives of the disappeared who enter the public sphere in search of justice need to be recognised not only as victim-survivors but as justice seekers who can in turn become subject to state violence and terror. Taking the case of postwar Sri Lanka, I illuminate this violence as a continuum that stretches from the disappeared to the women left behind, which is both gendered and ethnicised and which can take several different forms - everyday, bureaucratic, and political. In so doing, I go beyond the framework of 'ambiguous loss', that has dominated studies of families of the disappeared to illuminate new forms of violence against relatives and expand our understanding of the gendered violence experienced across the war-peace divide. Moreover, I broaden our understanding of accountability beyond the disappearance to its gendered afterlives.
The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), endorsed in 2011, are widely regarded as the definitive normative framework governing the responsibilities of businesses with respect to human rights. In 2018, the UN began adapting the UNGPs to address the human rights implications of the design, deployment and use of artificial intelligence (AI) by States and businesses. This article analyses the suitability of this soft law framework to address digital inequalities in and between the Global North and South. It does so through the lens of four concerns: data owners and their digital vulnerability; the exploited Southern worker; climate injustice; and the rights and interests of the Global South's innovators. Viewed through these four contexts, the UNGPs - largely orientated around the concept of conducting due diligence and establishing voluntary obligations - prove unfit for the purpose of responding to the human rights at risk of being violated in an AI-centric world. There are too few consequences for businesses and remedies are often absent. Nor do the UNGPs address gaps in technology readiness and how to enable technology transfer from North to South. Considering the limited utility of the UNGPs for AI governance, the article concludes with alternatives.
This article investigates the trafficking of women into the sex trade under the guise of employment opportunities in the showbiz industry in Pakistan. I argue that in the context of Pakistan, the rhetoric of 'showbiz jobs' is often used as a cover for women's trafficking. I interviewed twenty rescued victims residing in Lahore to gain a deeper understanding of the trafficking process, the complex criminal networks, and the experiences of the survivors. Thematic content analysis of the data drawn from the in-depth interviews was conducted through the lens of critical feminist theory to examine how patriarchal power structures and economic vulnerability contribute to women ' s exploitation within trafficking networks. There is limited evidence-based research documenting instances of such human exploitation, thereby demonstrating a significant need for survivor-centred emperical research. The project contributes to feminist scholarship by examining survivors ' voices and focusing on the legal and policy responses to human trafficking. It also highlights the role of international treaties and state-led anti-trafficking initiatives. The findings reveal that trafficking networks exploit women's aspirations for employment, economic security, and social mobility, thereby hindering accountability and impeding legal intervention. The study concludes that stronger institutional oversight could significantly strengthen the country ' s response to human trafficking.
Recent climate justice advisory opinions in international courts increasingly reflect not only the human right to a healthy environment, but also the Rights of Nature. The May 2025 advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognises the essence of the Rights of Nature, while the July 2025 advisory proceedings and opinion of the International Court of Justice address states' obligations to protect the climate system and the wider environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the legal consequences of significant environmental harm. These developments suggest that recognising the Rights of Nature is becoming increasingly important in responding to the climate crisis. However, this article argues that within legal systems, the Rights of Nature should be reconsidered alongside the rights to a healthy environment and repositioned within climate protection frameworks, whilst preserving the distinct legal character of each. Such an approach treats the climate system as part of the broader biosphere and provides a stronger basis for recognising nature's intrinsic value. It also offers a more effective framework for protecting climate systems and nature from pollution caused by extractive industries while advancing human rights objectives, including the right to a healthy environment.
A decade after the 26th African Union (AU) Summit that renewed continental commitments to gender equality, the practice of women's rights across Africa continues to reveal a persistent gap between formal commitments and actual compliance. This article examines the implementation of AU gender frameworks, particularly the Maputo Protocol, the AU Gender Strategy, and Agenda 2063, to assess how institutional reforms, state obligations, and civil-society interventions have shaped outcomes for women between 2016 and 2025. Drawing on AU policy documents, national legislative developments, and civil-society reports from selected member states, the study identifies three recurring patterns: the bureaucratisation of gender policy, the fragility of domestic accountability mechanisms, and the uneven translation of continental norms into national practice. We argue that while the AU has successfully institutionalised a rights-based discourse on women's rights, compliance remains contingent on national political will, institutional capacity, and the strength of grassroots feminist engagement. The article contributes to scholarship on regional human rights governance by conceptualising this gap as 'symbolic compliance', demonstrating how progressive continental frameworks can generate normative commitment without consistent enforcement in practice across African states.
Despite advances in international human rights standards, neo-extractivism continues to threaten the vulnerable existence of Indigenous Peoples. This text seeks to reflect on how domestic mechanisms, despite their limitations, can be used to strengthen indigenous territorial rights through 'transitional territorial safeguards' amid institutional insecurity in land tenure. Using the perspective of socio-legal mobilisation, the study examines three cases: the use of administrative measures in Bolivia, the internationalisation of constitutional safeguards in Ecuador, and strategic judicial oversight against environmental damage in Chile. The study identifies a spectrum of resistance strategies that challenge extractivist hegemony from within the state. By applying a 'power dimensions' framework, the analysis demonstrates that socio-legal mobilisation enables domestic mechanisms to move beyond their role as mere technical procedures and to empower communities to promote the effective implementation of human rights.
In June 2025, the former Secretary of State for the Home Department ('Home Secretary'), Yvette Cooper, announced that the British government wished to proscribe Palestine Action. The decision to finally proscribe Palestine Action had come when two of its activists had broken into RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, spraying red paint into the turbines of two Voyager aircraft and causing 7m pound worth of damage. The UK government has asserted that the proscription of Palestine Action must not deter people from protesting in support of pro-Palestinian groups and/or in opposition to the actions of the Israeli government; the right to peaceful protest is unaffected by the ban. However, since June 2025, about 2000 people have been arrested, protesting the proscription. The decision to ban Palestine Action means that there are now 98 organisations that are proscribed in the UK. What is unique about the proscription of Palestine Action is that, unlike the other 97 banned groups, the modus operandi of Palestine Action is not a commitment to violence against people: they are a direct-action protest group. Should serious damage against property be included in the legal definition of terrorism in the UK, justifying the proscription of Palestine Action?
In international criminal law, it is common practice for courts to establish legal principles through their judicial decisions (judicial lawmaking). This procedure arises from the evolving character of international law and has been effectively employed by ad hoc criminal tribunals (particularly the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda). These tribunals have substantially advanced international criminal law by filling legal gaps and interpreting traditional legal principles. This paper investigates whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) may fulfil a comparable role, notwithstanding the stringent constraints established by the Rome Statute. Despite the ICC's direct integration of fundamental principles such as nullum crimen sine lege, which constrains its judicial lawmaking power relative to its predecessors, this paper contends that the ICC possesses the capacity to evolve the law through judicial precedent. The ICC's exploitation of this potential is essential for deterring international crimes, averting impunity for perpetrators, and facilitating extensive inquiries into crimes against humanity.
