International Human Rights Law

According to freemylife.com, International human rights law is a system of laws, domestic, regional, and international designed to promote human rights. Human rights law is made up of various international human rights instruments which are binding to its parties.

An important concept within human rights law is that of universal jurisdiction. This concept, is not widely accepted, is that any nation is authorized to prosecute and punish violations of human rights wherever and whenever that may have occurred. Some customary norms in human rights law are also recognized and these are considered binding on all nations, even if they have not ratified any relevant treaties. International human rights law is carried out on a domestic level and nation states that ratify international human rights law treaties, commit themselves to enact domestic human rights legislations. In addition to international human rights law, human rights law has been created on a regional level. These three main regional statutes regarding international human rights law are African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the American Convention on Human rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights. International human rights law is related to, but not the same as international humanitarian law, and refugee law. Areas such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide have their own treaty laws.

The premier ruling on international human rights law is the Universal Declaration of Human rights. While this charter is not a form of legally binding international human rights law, it is the status quo on this topic. Some legal experts postulate that the UDHR is the basis for customary international law, and has become the premier reference in international human rights law. The international human rights law movement began after WWII and was strengthened when the United nations General Assembly adopted the UDHR. International human rights treaties and other instruments adopted have granted legal form on innate human rights and developed the body of international human rights law.

Under international human rights law, there are clear obligations that states are bout to respect and by becoming a part of international treaties, nations are signing on to do their part to protect international human rights law. There is a struggle in many places of the world where these laws are not being upheld. Currently, places such as the Darfur region in Sudan and Sierra Leone are extremely volatile with a great deal of political unrest. There humans are being denied their very basic rights therefore it is quite imperative that international human rights law exists and that there is an international forum in which to try criminals to violate these laws.