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Public International Law/Human Rights Law

Author: Annalisa Ciampi "Required knowledge: History of International Law" "Learning objectives: to understand the evolution of international human rights law as a separate branch of international law and a separate domain of global government."

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A. Introduction
This chapter traces back the evolution of human rights from its inception to its recent crisis and current developments, leading to structural changes within international law, away from state-centrism towards a stronger focus on the individual. It shows how the the divide between human rights and other branches of international law (such as trade, investment, development etc.) is the result of numerous failures, which date back to the aftermath of the Second World War, proceeded during and beyond the Cold War, and continued up into the 21st century.

I. The Failure of the Unitary Design of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Split into ‘Generations’ of Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is generally agreed to be a milestone document in the foundation of international human rights law. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. As a single document, it encapsulated the progressive realisation of democracy and development through the universal and effective recognition and observance of rights. And it made no distinction between mostly ‘negative’ (freedoms from), classical civil and political rights, and (essentially ‘positive’: freedom of) social, economic, and cultural rights, or collective rights. It was, however, proclaimed as a not binding document: several authoritarian States abstained, while even liberal democracies were not ready to commit themselves to binding legal obligations. Then came the Cold War and human rights became yoked to the ideological conflict between the United States and the former Soviet Union.

Deep political disagreement and profoundly different conceptions of rights between the Western and non-Western world – which included the former socialist States but also the newly independent, developing States – led to the sub-division of human rights into three categories: the so called ‘first generation’ rights, known as civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights as ‘second generation’ rights; and ‘group rights’ as ‘third generation’ rights.

It took 18 years for the signature of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in 1966, and then another decade for their entry into force. The adoption of these first international human rights treaties marked the setting aside of collective rights and the formal split between the first generation of rights in the ICCPR and the second generation of rights in the ICESCR. The vision of rights into ‘generations’ has remained also at the regional level, particularly within the Council of Europe, long considered the most advanced system for human rights protection. Yet, the UDHR is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties, all containing references to it in their preambles, both at the global level (see United Nations Human Rights System) and regionally (African Human Rights System; European Human Rights System;  Inter-American Human Rights System;  Arab and Islamic Human Rights System; and Asian Human Rights System).

II. The ‘Influence’ of Human Rights during the Decolonization Period and the End of the Cold War
It is generally acknowledged that during decolonisation beginning in the 1960s and more prominently in the 1970s and 1980s, human rights began to exercise their influence and become a major force in international relations.

The Soviet Union ratifies the ICCPR in 1973 and 1975 sets the beginning of the Helsinki process. Despite their lack of formal status as international treaties setting out binding commitments, the Helsinki Accords provided a framework for the scrutiny of human rights practice in the former Soviet Union and its satellite States. In 1977, the US Congress passed a law conditioning certain types of aids to compliance with human rights. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted in 1979, based on a General Assembly resolution sponsored by 22 developing countries and some East European States. The Convention against Torture – a milestone in the protection of the most fundamental human rights – was signed in 1984. Following a proposal by Poland and other countries of the Soviet bloc, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was opened to signature in 1989.

III. The Divide Between the Theory and Practice of Human Rights in the Last Decade of the 20th Century
In the post-Cold War, post-decolonisation era, the existence of an international human rights regime was well-established. While not all countries had ratified all human rights treaties, most countries ratified most of them. Nowdays, some treaties have been ratified nearly by all States (most notably, the ICCPR with 173 State parties and the Convention on the Rights of the Child with 196)and each of the six major human rights treaties have more than 150 parties.

1993 marked the year of the establishment of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose task includes preventing human rights violations and securing respect for all human rights, promoting international cooperation and coordinating related activities throughout the United Nations, and leading efforts to integrate a human rights approach within all activities carried out within the United Nations system.

Taking on human rights-related causes became one of the most important functions of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) around the world. NGOs with a focus on human rights issues increased in number and activities, working with or against governments in developing agendas for action, participating in treaty negotiations, investigating and reporting human rights abuses and offering direct assistance to victims of those abuses, lobbying political officials, corporations, international financial institutions, intergovernmental organisations, and the media. NGOs became also increasingly involved in providing services, such as training programmes on the rule of law and humanitarian assistance in disaster areas.

This was also the era when the legal theory of jus cogens emerged and started to permeate diplomatic intercourses, judicial arguments in national and international fora, and the academic debate, to include the prohibition of torture, genocide, and other serious breaches of human rights. More broadly, the 90s were characterized by the the general blossoming of multilateralism, and will be become known as the "golden age" of international law and international institutions.

Notwithstanding these developments at the normative, institutional, operational and theoretical level, however, the decade between the end of the Cold War and the end of the 20th century sets the beginning of a divide between the legal aspirations and the actual implementation of human rights. While the 1970s had seen the human rights movement acquiring prominence in international law, in the 1990s, there is consensus that all countries must respect human rights; yet, some of the worst atrocities of our modern era are committed in many parts of the world, including within the European borders.

Countless international crimes were committed by all sides to the conflict, which erupted in the former Yugoslavia in 1991. In 1994, the Rwandan genocide, during the Rwandan Civil War, which had started in 1990, killed between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans constituting an estimated 70% of the Tutsi population. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991, the establishment of the Russian Federation was marked by the First Chechen War (1994-1996), which set the prelude to the ten-year long Second Chechen War (1999-2009), with estimates of military and civilian casualties varying in the number of tens of thousands.

Another manifestation of the rising divide between human rights theory and practice is in the response to the Chinese Government’s armed repression of the political unrest in Tibet in 1987- 1989 and violent suppression of the pro-democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Western countries imposed severe economic sanctions and arms embargoes on Chinese entities and officials, which led in turn to a spiral of harsher measures of suppression of other protests around China and heavier condemnation by the West. Initially, the US adopted strong measures against the Chinese government, including the suspension of military sales, the cancellation of high-level visits and regular meetings between the two countries, a request to stop all new loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the revocation of China’s most favoured nation status and the connection of the issue of human rights with trade. In 1994, however, the Clinton administration decided not to link these two issues and the ‘American bilateral monitoring’ of Chinese human rights conditions officially ended. It will not be until well into the 21st century that the Western countries will impose significant sanctions in relation to human rights violations in China.

IV. Autonomy or Isolation from Other Domains of Global Governance? The ‘Effectiveness’ Crisis of Human Rights at the Dawn of the 21st Century
By the turn of the century, most States had ratified the majority of the most important human rights treaties. Institutionally, the Human Rights Council was established in 2006 to replace the Commission on Human Rights – long criticised for including some of the most prominent human rights violators and an uneven selection of situations subject to its scrutiny. While special procedures continue to monitor, examine, advise, and publicly report on specific rights or country-specific situations under the Universal Periodic Review, set up by the Human Rights Council, all States members of the United Nations are subject to a periodic assessment in relation to all human rights issues – not just those enshrined in treaties to which they are parties. Human rights institutions also flourish and expand at the regional level. Thanks to the automatic right of individual application introduced in 1998, the European Court of Human Rights can hold 47 member States accountable for violations of the rights and freedoms guaranteed under the European Convention of Human Rights to over 800 million persons (see European Human Rights System). The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (see Inter-American Human Rights System), the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (see African Human Rights System ) and the Arab Human Rights Commission (see Arab and Islamic Human Rights System) are all functioning institutions overseeing compliance with their respective human rights charter. Law schools – where future generations of judges, lawyers, and lawmakers are formed – include international human rights courses in their curricula – which in turn prompts private litigation, in the US and elsewhere, based upon human rights violations. Human rights language is used everywhere and is routinely invoked to criticise governments in political and diplomatic discourse, while human rights NGOs continue to grow in number and in the outreach of their reporting, lobbying and advocacy activities.

Yet, the beginning of the 21st century is indelibly marked by two events: the September 11 attacks of 2001 by the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against US targets – which exposed the fragility of the most powerful democracy, triggering the most geographically and temporally undefined war in history, the war against international terrorism – and the global financial shock of 2008 with the ensuing economic crisis.

And human rights practices worsen in many parts of the world. Following a period of worsening relations between Russia and Georgia, a war erupted between Georgia, Russia, and the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August 2008. Another war erupted in 2014, when Russia seizes Crimea from Ukraine violating the territorial integrity of the former Soviet Republic. Africa is afflicted in the South by a major armed conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan that began in February 2003 between rebel groups and the government of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing Darfur's non-Arab population. The government responded to attacks by carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Darfur's non-Arabs. The North is marked by the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests, demonstrations and armed rebellions that commenced in Tunisia in 2010 and spread, in early 2011, across North Africa and the Middle East, as a response to oppressive regimes and low living standards. One of the consequences was the multi-State North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led military intervention in Libya in March 2011 and the ensuing chaos that still dominates the country. As part of the Arab Spring in the Middle East, the Syrian civil war grew out of a popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar al Assad in March 2011 and the brutal response of the security forces, which dragged the country into an ongoing full-scale civil war. At the same time, the pillars of European integration are challenged by the ensuing influx of migrants and refugees, terrorist attacks and its own war against terrorism, and ultimately, Brexit and the rise of anti-establishment populist parties.

The distance between the theory and practice of human rights became more profound, posing dramatically the question of the ‘effectiveness’ of the international human rights regime. Human rights themselves are increasingly the object of criticism (see Critique of Human Rights), with some States even backlashing against the European Court of Human Rights or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (see Domestic Law in International Courts).

1. The ‘Effectiveness’ of International Human Rights Law
Human rights rules and principles differ from those governing international trade, investment, development or the protection of the environment in their normative structure, institutional settings and dispute settlement mechanisms. International human rights law is relatively weak compared, for example, to the regime of international trade or direct investment abroad. No competitive market forces push countries towards compliance, nor are states generally consistent in their application of human rights standards to their foreign policy, and only exceptionally employ political, economic, military or other sanctions to coerce other countries to improve their human rights record. This is because, contrary to trade openness or the protection of foreign investments, a State and its citizens are hardly affected if the human rights of citizens of other countries are violated in the territory of their home State. This is the conundrum and the eternal dilemma of human rights, which impose obligations erga omnes – respect for which should be imposed in the name of the international society as a whole – but which in fact are generally enforced only when specific national interests are at stake. And without powerful States taking a strong interest in the effectiveness of human rights, there is little cost for countries with a poor human rights reputation to ratify human rights treaties as a symbolic gesture of goodwill, while maintaining their actual practices in reality.

Human rights did bring about significant positive changes in State behaviours vis-à-vis individuals in the second half of the 20th century. Accounts, however, differ as to the precise contribution of international law to the improvement of human rights conditions worldwide in the second half of the 20th century. Unlike growth in gross domestic product, import and export data and foreign direct investment stocks and flows, the effectiveness of human rights is hardly measurable because numerical values are not entirely attributable to human rights practices. The development of human rights indicators by international organizations does not fundamentally alter this picture. It is also difficult to deny that human rights improvements on the ground in various areas of the world in the last decade of the 20th century were not the product of the human rights movement, but are rather attributable to economic growth, the collapse of communism and other offsetting factors. And, at the beginning of the 21st century, international human rights law undergoes a profound crisis.

2. New technologies and COVID-19
All international law fields are affected by the pervasiveness of the new technologies (as discussed in depth in International Law in Cyberspace. The internet and social networks can both significantly facilitate and impede the exercise of human rights. They offer a powerful means for society and individuals to express their rights, but also a new – online – environment in which such rights can be curtailed by powerful states, public and private institutions, and individuals. As a consequence, international human rights rules need to be interpreted and adapted and new rules need to be enacted in order to ensure cybersecurity and to protect against hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, incitement of violence, and other digital content that can also cause real-world harm. New technologies have also contributed to make both small and large-scale human rights breaches well-detected and documented, with no corresponding decline, however, in human rights breaches. Also, the human rights implications of artificial intelligence and big data, due to their enormous scope and global reach, could not be overestimated. This phenomenon had been going on for several decades, but modern technologies increased incrementally over the second decade of the 21st century and the outbreak of COVID-19, even before it unleashed its catastrophic economic and social consequences, precipitated it.

B. Efforts at Reuniting Human Rights with Other Domains of Global Governance
As highlighted above, the history of international human rights law is primarily a story of separation of human rights from other realm of international law. One of the causes of their ineffectiveness is precisely in its relative isolation from other domains of global governance. Hence, it is desirable to overcome such a separation.

I. Bridging Existing Divides from Within the Human Rights Regime
With a view to filling the considerable gap between the recognition of human rights and their implementation on the ground, the UN has put great emphasis, in the first quarter of 21st century, on the universality, indivisibility, and interdependence of human rights. The principle of universality means that human rights shall enjoy universal protection across all boundaries and civilizations, regardless of political, economic, or cultural systems. Indivisibility implies that all civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights are equally important and that the improvement in the enjoyment of any right cannot be at the expense of the realisation of any other. Human rights are seen as interdependent because the level of enjoyment of any one right is considered as dependent on the level of realisation of the other rights.

While very few would not wish theoretically for a world where all rights are equally protected, respected, and fulfilled for everyone, the debate is intense at the level of implementation and enforcement. There is no evidence that the adoption and promotion of these principles by the United Nations was ever informed by empirical facts. Indeed, it is possible to fully implement or secure certain human rights (for example, rights not to be enslaved or tortured) without fully implementing or securing other human rights (for example, rights to education or food), and vice versa. The realisation of rights requires choices as to ways in which to implement them and to what extent, and by employing which resources. While a few rights are absolute because they cannot be limited or in-fringed under any circumstances, not even during a declared state of emergency, most individual rights may be subject to limitations to balance them against public interests (such as public order, public health or national security) as well as the rights others. The uneven implementation of rights, therefore, is not only possible, but – to some extent, at least – a necessity.

II. Reuniting Human Rights with Trade, Investment, and Development through Free Trade Agreements, Sustainable Development Goals and Other Tools
For 70 years, the development of international legal rules was the main strategy to promote respect for and observance of human rights. International human rights law continues to grow, enriching itself with new treaties, declarations, and resolutions, because States, international organizations and NGOs continue to feel a need for such international instruments covering certain areas of human rights.

Many countries, however, also began to negotiate bilateral and regional trade deals, which primarily aim to establish or further deepen preferential economic relations between the parties, but also include chapters on core human rights, the environment and development. It is too early to assess this new generation of free trade agreements with respect to their stated aim of fostering trade and investment while at same time promoting human rights, particularly labour rights, the protection of the environment, and other third generation rights (such as the right to clean water and other essential goods, usually provided by State public services). Whether they will be successful or not, they represent a clear sign that there exists a need to ‘reunite’ within a single normative framework these multiple areas of the law.

A number of Western states have also introduced a series of new unilateral measures in order to ensure respect for human rights around the world, such as bans on the Import of goods suspected to have been produced with forced labour or as a result of other human rights violations, and corporate due diligence requirements, which aim to to anchor human rights in companies’ operations and governance. These are also tool which aim to link human rights to international trade and the economic realm, more broadly.

In the same perspective, following the Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set, in 2016, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 17 global goals covering social and economic development issues including poverty, hunger, health, education, global warming, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, urbanisation, environment, and social justice. The right to development has thus been linked to economic growth and poverty reduction, rather than political rights and personal freedoms. It is also linked to the right to security. This is another important recognition that the furtherance of development away from international cooperation in economic matters is an unattainable goal and that international trade and investment are human rights’ most natural allies.

Conclusion
As reconstructed above, the history of human rights is one of a parallel, yet separate, evolution in relative isolation from other domains of global governance. Human rights law differs from the law governing the liberalization of trade, investment protection, development assistance and the protection of the environment in its normative structure, institutional settings and dispute settlement mechanisms. Yet, one of the causes of the criticisms and the ‘effectiveness’ crisis of human rights lies precisely in its relative isolation from other branches of international law.

New technologies have not contributed to overcome this separation or advance the effectiveness of international human rights law. While they have significantly facilitated the exercise of human rights and the detection of their violations, they have also created a new online environment (the cyberspace), where human rights can be curtailed.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs), the new generation of free trade agreements (FTAs) and a series of new unilateral measures by Western States do have the potential to contribute to the implementation and enforcement of human rights worldwide, bridging historical normative and institutional divides and reuniting human rights in a single framework with trade, investment and development.

Readings

 * D.L. Shelton, Advanced Introduction to International Human Rights Law (Edward Elgar 2014)
 * A. Ciampi, ‘The Divide between Human Rights, International Trade, Investment and Development Law’ (2018) 61 German Yearbook of International Law 251
 * B.A. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights. International Law in Domestic Politics (Cambridge UP 2012)

Conclusion

 * The history of human rights is one of a parallel, yet separate, evolution in relative isolation from other domains of global governance.
 * Human rights law differs from the law governing the liberalization of trade, investment protection, development assistance and the protection of the environment in its normative structure, institutional settings and dispute settlement mechanisms.
 * One of the causes of the ‘effectiveness’ crisis of international human rights law lies in its relative isolation from other branches of international law.
 * New technologies have significantly facilitated the exercise - and detection of violations - of human rights. Yet, they have created a new – online – environment where human rights can be curtailed and have not advanced the effectiveness of international human rights law.
 * The sustainable development goals (SDGs), the new generation of free trade agreements (FTAs) and a series of new unilateral measures by Western States are amongst current efforts to bridge historical normative and institutional divides, with a view to reuniting human rights in a single framework with trade, investment and development.


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Public International Law/Human Rights Law/Categories of Human Rights

Duties of the Individual

Author: Adamantia Rachovitsa "Required knowledge: sources of international law; individuals" "Learning objectives: understanding the role and function of individuals duties in international human rights law"

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Duties of the Individual

A. Introduction

Under domestic law, the fulfillment of various duties by individuals is commonplace. National constitutions and ordinary legislation in almost all states in the world regularly provide, for example for the duty to pay taxes, the duty to vote, the duty to serve in the army or the duty of the parents to care for their child's well-being. Nonetheless, individuals have limited duties under international law, such as specific duties under international humanitarian law or international criminal law. The question addressed in this section is what place, if any, is given to individual duties in international human rights law.

B. Individual Duties in International Human Rights Law

International human rights instruments acknowledge the existence of individual duties. Article 29(1) of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that 'everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of personality is possible'. Similarly, the preambles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also acknowledge that individuals have duties.

With that being said, one cannot escape noticing that human rights law does not emphasise individual duties. This is because in international human rights law, states are the duty-bearers, assuming the obligation to protect certain individual rights and freedoms. The state enjoys the monopoly on exercising power and, therefore, individuals warrant protection from the abuse of power. Consequently, the decision to effectively exclude lists of individual duties from most human rights treaties was conscious, due to concerns that governments could rely on these duties to restrict human rights unlawfully. It is for this reason that one should distinguish between duties towards the state and duties towards others. Since the underlying structure of human rights entails the protection of the individual from the state, individual duties towards the state need to be carefully scrutinised so as to avoid potential abuse.

C. The Legal Appreciation of Individual Duties
In general, human rights law offers concrete avenues for the duties of the individual to be accommodated as possible restrictions on human rights as long as these restrictions have a legal basis, pursue a legitimate aim and are necessary. Individual duties may also have a certain legal bearing when interpreting the scope of human rights. The Tanganyika Law Society case is the only instance where the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights had the opportunity to clarify the function of duties but it did not do so.

More specifically, individual duties towards the state, when in the public interest, may be considered as restrictions imposed on a human right. Human rights treaties may also contain an explicit reference to a duty. For instance, Article 19(3) ICCPR refer to the duties of journalists in he exercise of the freedom of expression. Furthermore, human rights law also takes duties towards other individuals into account. First, the 'rights and freedoms of others' is one of the legitimate aims for which certain human rights can be restricted. Second, human rights treaties may contain a clause prohibiting the abuse of rights. Third, crucially, the protection of the rights and freedoms of others has been indirectly incorporated into the growing jurisprudence on states' positive obligations, that is instances in which states are obliged to exercise due diligence so as to ensure that human rights are protected from interference from private parties. Finally, it should not go unnoticed that certain human rights treaties confer specific duties upon individuals, such as parents' duties towards their children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

D. Human Rights Instruments in which Individual Duties Have a Prominent Role
Specific human rights treaties and documents place a pronounced emphasis on individual duties. This is the case with the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration on Human Rights. However, no equivalent elaboration of duties found its way into the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights or the Revised Arab Charter. The only treaties that provide for detailed individual duties are the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) (Articles 27-29) and the 1990 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (Article 31).

The lists of duties provided in the foregoing instruments have many similarities. Most of these duties are owed to the state. Individual duties are seen as a marker of culture and a manifestation of a communitarian approach to human rights. For instance, African (rural) society is underpinned by the dialectic relationship between the individual and the group. Communitarian considerations stemming from an African, Asian or Arab perspective do not necessarily resonate with the Western, strictly individualistic human rights paradigm. The duty to preserve and strengthen positive African cultural values in one's relations with other members of society, in the spirit of tolerance, dialogue and consultation, under Article 29(7) ACHPR is an apt example. At the same time, however, casting these principles as duties may 'come dangerously close to destroying or denying human rights as they have been understood'. There is also a serious risk that states will involve duties as a pretext for imposing far-reaching restrictions on human rights.

The provisions on duties toward others may offer novel perspectives for conceptualising certain aspects of human rights law. Yet, in many instances, their vaguely phrased wording does not allow us to determine whether they are of a moral or legal nature. There is also a lack of clarity regarding who the beneficiary of a given duty is intended to be (e.g., the state, society, other individuals) or what its precise content entails. The foregoing challenges should not in themselves lead us to dismiss individual duties as a concept all together. There is scope for the implementation of individual duties on a community and societal level, thereby preserving and nurturing communal and cultural practices and values. Such practices, however, need to protect individuals from discrimination.

Further Readings

 * F Ouguergouz, La Charte Africaine des Droits de l'Homme et des Peuples (Graduate Institute Publication 1993) 83-129
 * CG Weeramantry, Islamic Jurisprudence - An International Perspective (Macmillan 1998)

Summary of main points

 * Human rights law acknowledges but does not emphasise individual duties.
 * Duties of the individual may be appreciated in human rights law as possible restrictions on human rights or in the context of interpretation. The indirect consideration of individual duties manifests itself into the growing jurisprudence on states’ positive obligations.
 * Individual duties are seen as a marker of culture and a communitarian approach to human rights thus offering the possibility of novel perspectives. Yet, there is a risk that states will invoke duties as a pretext for imposing far-reaching restrictions on human rights.
 * The confusion surrounding their moral or legal nature, the lack of clarity regarding who the beneficiary of a given duty is intended to be or what their precise content entails are factors not favouring the exploration of the potential of duties in human rights law.

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Public International Law/Human Rights Law/Critique of Human Rights

Authors: Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan and Jens T. Theilen "Required knowledge: International Human Rights Law" "Learning objectives: to understand how to question the progress narrative of human rights as always already pointing towards a better world; different strands of human rights critique."

A. Why critique human rights?
In the popular imaginary and in large parts of legal scholarship, human rights are thought of as an unquestioned social good: they have persisted as humanity’s ‘last utopia’ and are believed to express our ‘highest moral precepts and political ideals’. Many of those who work within human rights institutions assume that human rights are inherently benign. Critique aims to disrupt that assumption. It thus performs a killjoy function – it aims to disenchant human rights, to present them not as part of a progress narrative in which they are always already pointing towards a better world, but rather as one of many discursive spaces in which different visions of a just society may clash and be fought out.

Critique in this sense takes a very different perspective from criticism of individual human rights decisions on the basis of legal doctrine. The latter accepts the system of human rights law as given and merely aims to make minor adjustments on its own terms. By contrast, critique works to uncover the structure of human rights and their connection to other social phenomena, notably to relations of marginalisation, oppression, and exploitation. Most critics of human rights share a commitment to radical social transformation in the face of a status quo that is perceived as fundamentally unjust. Beyond this, however, there are myriads of complex and diverse traditions of critique, with plenty of internal contradictions. We cannot do justice to all of these here, but merely aim to sketch some broad lines of thought building in particular on feminist, decolonial and Marxist critiques.

I. Human rights are not neutral or apolitical
Human rights are commonly understood as innate and inalienable. With this understanding comes a self-image of human rights as apolitical – they are said to be simply inherent in every human being, rather than being politically constructed. Contesting this self-image is a common starting point for critiques of human rights. Understanding human rights as political opens up space to question the notion of the ‘human’ which is otherwise naturalised as self-evident, and to analyse the ways in which it is entangled with various structures of oppression.

In the context of international human rights law, the idea that human rights are apolitical carries particular weight since the legal form, too, is commonly construed as an antithesis to politics. Critiques of human rights in the legal context thus share ground with critical international legal theory more generally, insisting on the indeterminacy of (human rights) law and thus on the decisional, political aspect involved in any specification of its meaning: the content of human rights is not predetermined by law itself, but rather actively constructed by the actors involved in its formulation and interpretation.

II. Human rights as colonial
Once politics are admitted onto the scene, it also becomes possible to question the claims to universality commonly invoked in the discourse on human rights. Refusing to take universality as an apolitical given allows us to analyse the particular interests which are embedded within it. An especially stark instance of this is how claims to universality cover up the Eurocentric origins of human rights and their historical and ongoing use to legitimise (neo-)colonial domination by industrialised Western states. The Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) perspective, in particular, ‘helps one to be conscious of the oppressive potential of universality’ and to ‘scrutinise which aspects of human rights may be made universal and which aspects need to be re-examined’.

Makau Mutua, to this end, sketches the savages-victims-saviours metaphor. This three-dimensional metaphor aims to capture a dynamic central to human rights discourse, in which the victim – a ‘powerless, helpless innocent’ – has her dignity and worth violated by the barbaric savage, necessitating intervention by the saviour or ‘the good angel who protects, vindicates, civilizes, restrains, and safeguards’ and who finds expression in the human rights corpus and its institutions. The metaphor builds on colonial notions of civilisation and barbarism and in turn further solidifies ‘the international hierarchy of race and color’. It is also profoundly gendered: the ‘Third World woman’ is constructed as the paradigmatic victim subject that human rights law is thought to respond to. Rights-based justifications for military interventions in the Middle East are an unsurprising continuation of these dynamics.

However, the coloniality of human rights is not limited to the context of military interventions – rather, it is built into the manifold everyday contexts in which human rights are invoked, covering a wide range of subject-matters and many international institutions. International financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in particular, make use of human rights and the language of ‘good governance’ to justify interventions in the political, social, and economic structures of Third World states. Human rights thus remain entangled with (neo-)colonial forms of governance, and notably cannot be separated from the neoliberal economic regimes imposed on the Global South by international institutions. At the same time, human rights have been used both by Third World states in attempts to emphasise political and economic self-deterimination vis-à-vis the Global North, and by academics, activists, and social movements seeking to contest authoritative regimes and abuses of power by Third World states themselves. Despite the coloniality of human rights, then, their liberatory promise – albeit so far unfulfilled and perhaps based, in the end, only on ‘illusions of love or at least mutual interest’ – remains a recurring theme. We will return to this ambivalence in the concluding section below.

III. Human rights as a legitimation of the status quo
Several interrelated lines of critique focus on how human rights tend to legitimise the status quo and thus preclude social transformation. For one thing, any demarcation of what human rights are necessitates an assessment of what they are not – and given the high moral value generally accorded to human rights, refusal to see claims that involve social transformation as an issue of human rights will often delegitimise those claims. But the status quo can also be reinforced, and perhaps even more potently so, by virtue of what is considered a human right. Once elements of the current social order are integrated into the institutionalised human rights framework, they become extremely difficult to challenge.

A further way in which human rights law may reinforce the status quo relates to the patterns of analysis it brings with it. In particular, human rights law aims to establish whether a rights violation has taken place with little attention to underlying structures which bring about and perhaps even necessitate such violations. Even when the causes of human rights are investigated, the focus tends to be more on superficial causes, which can be ‘translated into remedial proposals, themselves capable of being translated into bullet-point conclusions at the end of reports’. Often, integration into global markets is presented as a way to empower rights holders, with insufficient attention paid to the power dynamics within markets themselves and to the impact of neoliberal globalisation, which has contributed to the deterioration of living conditions across the globe and especially in the Global South. By virtue of the way judgments, reports and other documents structure human rights law, then, root causes like the socio-economic conditions underlying human rights violations tend to remain unexamined – and thus unchallenged.

IV. Who speaks in the name of human rights?
The proliferation of formal documents like judgments and reports within institutionalised human rights brings us to a related point: Who speaks in the name of human rights? Postcolonial feminist Gayatri Spivak famously asked whether the subaltern can speak – and answered in the negative, indicating that the impossibility of speaking constitutes the position of the subaltern subject. This provocation raises questions not only about speaking or not-speaking but also about being heard or not-heard. More generally, it draws our attention to the relationships of (knowledge) production, which prefigure discursive fields such as human rights.

In this vein, a common critique of human rights – at least in their institutionalised form – is that they have become a language of legal experts. Human rights are thus conceived of as a managerial issue, an aspect of governance: ‘normative standards to guide administrative actions and less and less the basis for justice’. This not only obscures their political character, it also establishes certain professional standards for how to think and talk about human rights and sidelines those actors who fail to live up to these expectations. While processes of public consultation on human rights issues are common, they tend to focus on ‘civil society’ in the shape of large, well-funded non-governmental organisations, usually based in (or funded by actors based in) the Global North. Differently put: while human rights institutions have much to say about how to improve the plight of those one might deem subaltern, they rarely seek to listen to them.

C. What comes after critique?
The question of what comes after critique is a difficult one. Having delivered often searing critiques of human rights, many writers end on a hopeful note – they end up ‘attempting to reimagine (and in doing so, reinforce) the human rights project itself’. But perhaps such a turn to reimagination and hope is misplaced, a form of cruel optimism? After all, reimagining human rights in a more emancipatory vein cannot displace their legal, institutional and material realities and the various ways in which they help to constitute relations of marginalisation, oppression, and exploitation. But it is also true that human rights are invoked outside of institutions by a broad variety of political and social movements, asserted in resistance to market logics and forming part of a struggle to survive in the face of global capitalism.

It is from within this space of ambivalence that we suggest approaching human rights, which implies a high measure of caution as to their emancipatory potential when institutionalised within international law. For human rights to become truly international, we would need engagement with the Global South, beyond those elites who tend to play a role in the legal context. As it is written elsewhere: "In this context it is noteworthy that many countries from the Global South compete in intensity for foreign investments and, in result, there is “[i]intensifying inequality of bargaining power.” To this end, globalisation furthers inequalities and renders human rights law at peril, as it, globalisation, uses human rights to further, perpetuate and sustain its own existence.  Being manipulated for neoliberal goals, economic and political independence of the Global South is undermined by the first world and the international organisations. Within this, the elite of the Global South becomes complicit in eviscerating the substance of human rights law. Human rights engagement is just a shallow show-casing exercise for the attraction of foreign investment, trade and economic development."

Further Readings

 * Marks S, ‘Human Rights and Root Causes’ (2011) 74 MLR 57
 * Mutua M, ‘Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights’ (2001) 42 Harv Int’l LJ 201
 * Baxi U, The Future of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 3rd ed. 2008)
 * Kapur R, Gender, Alterity and Human Rights. Freedom in a Fishbowl (Edward Elgar 2018)
 * D’Souza R, What’s Wrong With Rights? Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations (Pluto Press 2018)
 * Schippers B (ed), Critical Perspectives on Human Rights (Rowman & Littlefield 2018)

Summary

 * Critique aims to disrupt the grand narrative of human rights as inherently good or just. Rather than seeing human rights as innate and inalienable, it approaches them as a political notion that may be entangled with relations of marginalisation, oppression and exploitation.
 * In particular, critique takes issue with the notion of human rights’ universality. Instead, it aims to uncover the Eurocentric origins of human rights and their historical and ongoing use to legitimise (neo-)colonial domination by industrialised Western states.
 * Most critics of human rights share a commitment to radical social transformation in the face of an unjust status quo. Critique often aims to highlight the role human rights play in precluding such transformation, but it remains controversial whether and how they might also play a helpful role.


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Public International Law/Human Rights Law/Human Rights Protection

Author: Jane Doe "Required knowledge: Link" "Learning objectives: Understanding XY."

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 * Source II

Conclusion

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 * Summary II


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Public International Law/International Criminal Law

Author: Annalisa Ciampi "Required knowledge: Subjects and Actors in International Law" "Learning objectives: to understand the notion, foundation, purpose and importance of international criminal law"

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A. Introduction
International criminal law (ICL) refers to principles and rules of international law for the prevention and repression of international crimes. It is a relatively new branch of international law, which owes its very foundation to the emergence of the principle of individual criminal responsibility in international law.

Under classical international law, with States as the main international actors, individuals could not be held accountable, in the same way as they could not claim international rights. The origin of the principle of individual criminal responsibility lies in the idea that in addition to States, individuals may be held responsible for serious violations of international law. This implies that certain international obligations (the prohibition of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, torture, aggression and others) are not only addressed to States, but also to individuals.

Built heavily on the Law of Armed of Conflict, at its inception, for the identification of the violations which give rise to individual criminal responsibility, ILC continues to draw significantly upon international humanitarian law as well as Human Rights Law – the latter also in relation to the fundamental rights of suspects, accused persons, victims and witnesses and the basic safeguards of a fair trial. International criminal law is thus complementary to these other branches of international law.

ICL emerged rapidly in the aftermath of WWII and underwent tremendous developments during the post-1990 years to become a body of international law which plays an important role in upholding fundamental values shared by the international community.

From a normative point of view, ICL includes both substantive and procedural rules concerning the prosecution of international crimes, which are examined in the subsequent chapters. Substantive rules indicate the prohibited criminal activities, including the subjective elements required for, and the circumstances excluding criminal responsibility (see international crimes). They also either authorise States, or impose upon them the obligation, to prosecute and punish persons accused of such criminal acts (see Domestic Prosecution of International Crimes). Procedural criminal law governs international proceedings before international courts and tribunals, from the investigative and prosecutorial phases to the various stages of international trials (see International Criminal Courts and Tribunals). This is also a field where the distinction between customary international law and treaties matters because the discipline may vary depending on the applicable sources.

B. The Principle of Individual Criminal Responsibility in International Law
The notion of international crimes refers to those criminal activities, harmful to values that transcend the interests of individual state communities, in relation to which a need for repression arises in the international community. Therefore, an international crime can be defined as a criminal activity of an individual in relation to which the international community organises some form of international repression.

The first and most important consequence that international law attaches to the commission of an international crime is the criminal responsibility of the individual who commits it. This is the core of the principle of individual criminal responsibility for international crimes, referred to above. The principle of individual criminal responsibility also operates – where necessary – as an exception to the general rule according to which the activity carried out in the name and on behalf of the State is attributable to the latter and not to the individual concerned (principle of individual criminal responsibility for international crimes committed by State-organs ). The rationale for this exception – already affirmed in practice after the First World War with reference to war crimes, then reiterated in numerous subsequent instruments and now certainly part of customary international law – could not be explained more effectively than with the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal: "Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced."When an international crime is committed by an individual acting on behalf of the State or the coduct of which is attributable to a State, the principle of individual criminal responsibility constitutes an exception to the general immunities of State organs under international law, including persons in leadership positions (both military and civilian). This applies equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity before international criminal courts and tribunals (see e.g. Art. 27 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court). For serving heads of States, however, customary international law keeps open the possibility of impunity in limited circumstances among States. Moreover, in international law, superior orders may not be considered as a defence excluding responsibility for international crimes, but only in mitigation of punishment.

As in national legal systems, also in international law, crimes consist of two elements: a conduct, that is an act or omission contrary to a substantive rule prohibiting or imposing a specific behaviour (actus reus), and a mental element, that is a state of mind directed to or linked to the commission of the criminal act (mens rea). Hence, in international criminal law, the general principle applies that no one may be held accountable for an act he/she has not perpetrated or in the commission of which he/she has not in some way participated. International crimes are often committed by a plurality of persons with the same (co-perpetration) or different modalities of participation (joint criminal enterprise). And, a person may only be held criminally responsible if he/she is somehow culpable for the commission of the crime. It follows that both collective and objective responsibility are ruled out. The principles of legality of crimes and penalties also apply. The principle of legality, in criminal law, means that only the law can define a crime and prescribe a penalty (nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege).

I. Coexistence of International Criminal Law and State Responsibility
International crimes are crimes committed by individuals, but they may entail, in addition to the individual criminal responsibility of the person(s) concerned, international state responsibility. Individual criminal responsibility arises alongside international State responsibility when the crime is committed by a State-organ and/or is attributable to a State under any of the rules on the attribution to States of internationally wrongful acts.

In this respect, a basic distinction can be drawn between crimes committed by private individuals, crimes generally or necessarily committed by State organs, and crimes that are likely to be committed by individuals either in their private or official capacity. While piracy is a crime typically committed by an individual in his/her private capacity, international terrorism is an example of crime that can be committed by private individuals or groups of individuals and state organs alike. However, most international crimes provided under both international customary and treaty law are generally attributable to States. These are the so-called core crimes – as opposed to so-called treaty-crimes: international crimes such as international drug trafficking and terrorism, the prevention and repression of which is only provided for under conventional rules.

The most ancient category of crimes which are always or generally committed by state organs, are war crimes. Genocide and crimes against humanity also originate, as a rule, from State conduct, either in the sense that their authors are State organs or because they are the result of policies or choices indirectly favoured or supported by a State. The commission of one of these international crimes implies the commission of an internationally wrongful act by the State of which the individual is an organ or to which the conduct in question is attributable, according to the general rules of state responsibility. International criminal responsibility and State responsibility are two forms of responsibility – both internationally relevant – conceptually distinct, with international state responsibility remaining governed by general international rules (or the special regimes that may be applicable in the matter).

The Draft Articles of International State Responsibility adopted by the ILC in 2001, distinguish between two different categories of international wrongful acts: ordinary wrongful acts and serious breaches of peremptory norms of international law. The latter, which in the previous Draft Articles of 1980 were referred to as “international crimes of states”, include the prohibition of core crimes. They constitute a category of particularly serious wrongful acts to which international law attaches consequences different from and in addition to those arising from ordinary breaches of international law.

Individual and State responsibility may sometimes be difficult to disentangle, as in the case of aggression, where the criminal responsibility of the individual normally depends on the existence of an act of aggression by the State to which the individual belongs. ILC has as its object the individual criminal responsibility and not the international responsibility of the State to whose governmental apparatus the accused belongs. But at the very moment the individual-organ is accused, and eventually found guilty, of a crime of aggression, the State to which the individual belongs is also – implicitly – "accused", and possibly "condemned", as an aggressor State. The need remains, however, to keep the two forms of responsibility distinct. It is desirable that the functions of ILC be limited to individual criminal responsibility – although this may have political implications that are also very significant.

II. Enforcement mechanisms
ICL possesses two main enforcement mechanisms: the so-called direct enforcement system and the indirect enforcement system of ICL. The establishment of an international criminal court or tribunal relates to the direct enforcement system of ICL. The prosecution and punishment of international crimes takes place before international courts or tribunals, directly at the international level. Indirect enforcement mechanisms refer to domestic prosecution and punishment before national courts. In this case, criminal repression is organized by national jurisdictions: States have the power and sometimes the duty to prosecute and, where appropriate, punish perpetrators of international crimes. In relation to core crimes, international law provides for the possibility – if not the obligation – of repression by any State, regardless of the place where the crimes were committed or the nationality of the suspect. This is the principle of universal jurisdiction. Also, international law prevents the application of national statutes of limitations to core crimes. An other system is enforcement by the so-called internationalized or hybrid (mixed) tribunals, which combine features of international and national tribunals. Hybrid (Mixed) Tribunals are dealt with in section B of the Chapter International Criminal Courts and Tribunals.

I. Before World War II
One of the first and most notable manifestations of the principle of individual criminal responsibility is the Treaty of Versailles, which set the terms ending WWI. The victorious Allies – Britain, France, and Italy and the United States – ultimately agreed to investigate and prosecute the defeated German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II. Article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles stated that Kaiser Wilhelm would be tried by an international court for the “supreme crime against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.”

The provision was unprecedented in at least three important respects. First, the very notion of holding a leader responsible for crimes committed in conflict was unprecedented. It was also the first time in history that States imagined the possibility of an international tribunal for the prosecution of an individual, and former Head of State, for international crimes. Kaiser Wilhelm II. was never brought to trial, for the Netherlands refused to hand him over. Thereby, Article 227 of The Treaty of Versailles laid the foundation for the future of international criminal justice, although the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm II. never happened

II. From Nuremberg to The Hague
The international prosecution of crimes against peace began with the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of the major war criminals following WWII.

1. The Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949 by a tribunal established under the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) by the Allies France, Great Britain, the former Soviet Union and the United States. The Tribunal was endowed with the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interest of the European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any act falling in the three categories of crimes defined in the London Charter: crimes against peace (including planning, preparing, starting or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international agreements), war crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war, including improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war) and crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds) (Article 6). Among other things, it was determined that: “Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan. civilian officials as well as military officers could be accused of war crimes” (Article 6); “The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment” (Article 7); and “The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.” (Article 8).

The best-known of the Nuremberg trials was the Trial of Major War Criminals, held from November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946. While Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) committed suicide and was never brought to trial, twenty-four individuals, including Nazi Party officials and high-ranking military officers, were indicted along with six Nazi organizations determined to be criminal (such as the “Gestapo”). The IMT found all but three of the defendants guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and the rest were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment.

The Nuremberg trials were controversial even among those who wanted punishment for the Nazis' main criminals. The main criticism, and the most common defense strategy, was that the crimes defined in the London Charter were examples of ex post facto law; that is, Article 6 criminalized actions committed before the relevant provisions were drafted. Another criticism, and defense, was that the trial was a form of victor’s justice – the Allies were applying a harsh standard to crimes committed by Germans and leniency to crimes committed by their own soldiers. On the other hand, the Nurember Tribunal itself responded that the defendants knew that what that they were doing was wrong and therefore the principle of legality, as a principle of justice, was respected.

2. Tokyo Trials
Nonetheless, the IMT’s trials and findings set a step forward for the development of international criminal law. They were paralleled by the trials of the leaders of the Empire of Japan in Tokyo by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE). The Charter of the IMTFE was issued as an order together with a Special Proclamation by General Douglas MacArthur on 19 January 1946, on behalf of the Allied powers. In addition, the IMT supplied a useful precedent for future prosecution of international crimes by national courts, most notably the 1961 trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann by the Supreme Court of Israel.

3. Developments after Nuremberg and Tokyo
The experience of the IMT and the IMTFE inspired the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 8 and 10 December 1948 respectively, as well as the four Geneva Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War adopted on 12 August 1949 by the Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of International Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War. The International Law Commission (ILC) codified the Principles of international law recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, in 1950. The General Assembly of the United Nations entrusted the ILC also with the task of drafting a Statute for the establishment of an international criminal tribunal, together with a code of crimes, the so-called Code of Crimes Against Peace and Security of Mankind. The two projects were interrelated, and the failure of the latter brought about a stalemate also in the works for draft statute. The Cold War prevented any progress.

4. International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
It was only in 1989 that the General Assembly asked the ILC once again to draft a statute for the institution of an international criminal court. The end of the Cold War also made it possible to establish two ad hoc international criminal tribunals as subsidiary organs of the UN Security Council: the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). During its mandate, which lasted from 1993 to 2017, the ICTY prosecuted those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991, in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolution 827 (1993) and the Statute annexed thereto. The ICTR, established by Security Council resolution 955 (1994), prosecuted those considered most responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and neighbouring States in 1994.

The ILC eventually approved a draft statute in 1994, which provided the basis for the further works which were entrusted to the Preparatory Committee (Prep Com), an ad hoc group of people established by the General Assembly for working on the statute for an international criminal court, taking as the basis of their work the draft statute of the ILC. The Prep Com produced in turn another draft. This text was the basis of the further negotiations, which took place in Rome in 1998 and finally resulted in the adoption by 120 States of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), on 17 July 1998. The Rome Statute entered into force on 1 July 2002 among the first 60 States that ratified it, making operational the first permanent international criminal court, with its seat at The Hague.

The ICTY and the ICTR terminated their mandate on 31 December 2017 and 2015, respectively, following the establishment by the Security Council of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to ensure that the closure of the two pioneering ad hoc tribunals does not open the way for impunity.

The ICC (on which see International Criminal Courts and Tribunals, section B) is a functioning institution.

Further Readings

 * A. Cassese, P. Gaeta, Cassese's International Criminal Law, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press 2013)
 * R. Cryer, D. Robinson, S. Vasiliev, An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure, 4th ed. (Cambridge University Press 2019)

Further Resources

 * Judgment at Nuremberg, film directed by S. Kramer (1961)
 * Nuremberg, film directed by Y. Simoneau (2000)

Conclusion
Albeit a relatively new branch of international law, international criminal law has become of prominent importance with the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998 and in subsequent years. It is complementary to other branches of international law, such as human rights and international humanitarian law.


text:
Public International Law/International Economic Law

Author: Jane Doe "Required knowledge: Link" "Learning objectives: Understanding XY."

This is where the text begins. This template follows our style guide. Please take into account our guidelines for didactics. If you're wondering how to create text in Wikibooks, feel free to check out our guide on how to write in Wikibooks.

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Further Readings

 * Source I
 * Source II

Conclusion

 * Summary I
 * Summary II