Prohibition of Discrimination

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What is the Future of the SOGI Mandate and What Does it Mean for the UN Human Rights Council?

November 15, 2016

Last June, human rights defenders the world over celebrated the historic step taken by the Human Rights Council (HRC) to create a UN Special Procedures mandate on sexual orientation and gender identity. It had taken years of advocacy by the LGBTI and wider human rights community, and careful manoeuvering within the UN system to attain this belated but historic victory. For many years, LGBTI issues were addressed through reports and resolutions on extra-judicial and arbitrary killings and on violence against women, as well as through joint statements by UN member States.  However, since the ground-breaking Toonen vs Australia decision of the Human Rights Committee in 1994, the UN system has gradually improved with respect to the recognition and the level of attention it has paid to the particular threats faced by the LGTBI community. In relation to the HRC specifically, there has been a gradual build-up to the appointment, from a subject specific resolution in 2011 (17/19), which commissioned a special report  (HRC/19/41) by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights…

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UN Human Rights Committee Finds that Ireland’s Abortion Ban Violates the ICCPR

June 13, 2016

Last week the UN Human Rights Committee delivered an important decision in Mellet v. Ireland, finding that, as applied to the claimant, the Irish ban on abortion violated several articles of the ICCPR. This was because the ban extended even to pregnancies, like the claimant's, where the foetus was diagnosed with a fatal abnormality, so that it…

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The Danish Law on Seizing Asylum Seekers’ Assets

January 27, 2016

The Danish Parliament recently passed a controversial amendment to the Aliens Act (Bill no. 87) giving police the power to search and confiscate the property of asylum seekers to contribute to expenses associated with their stay in Denmark (BBC). First proposed on 10 December 2015, the bill quickly made international headlines (BBC, Washington Post).

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Embedding Human Rights in Internet Governance

November 3, 2015

In Resolution 56/183 (2001), the UN General Assembly welcomed the creation of an inter-governmental World Summit on the Information Society (‘WSIS’) to address the digital revolution and the increasing digital divide between the global North and South. During the Summit’s two phases (Geneva, 2003 and Tunis, 2005) a common desire and commitment to build a…

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Living Instruments, Judicial Impotence, and the Trajectories of Gay Rights in Europe and in the United States

July 23, 2015

Evolutionary or dynamic interpretation is one of those perennial 'big' topics, which we e.g. recently dealt with in our book discussion on Eirik Bjorge's recent work on the topic. Judicial pronouncements on LGBT rights are an excellent example of this phenomenon (for some of my earlier thoughts on this, see here). In particular, on 26 June…

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