5.4.7.5  International Human Rights Protecting the Individual   

(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)

International human rights can reach through national borders to protect individuals:

·      The European Court of Human Rights acts as a court of appeal which, as a condition of EU membership, can override rulings by national courts if necessary (5.3.5.4).  It can also prevent the passing of new legislation that would overturn people’s human rights.

·      The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is the UN body which performs a similar service on a global basis.[1]

·      The Human Rights Committee of the UN can be asked to adjudicate.  For example, a group of Cree Indians known as the ‘Lubicon Lake Band’ referred the Canadian Government to it, under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, for expropriation of some of their tribal lands; their complaint was upheld.[2]

·      The Rome Statute uses human rights as the criteria by which it can be determined whether a national politician is oppressing a group of people, to enable the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute rights violations (5.3.6.2).

The ICC and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine (5.3.7) are both still evolving, and they require political consensus to become more mature, as discussed at the end of this book (9.5.3).

© PatternsofPower.org, 2014