Inter-American system of human rights protection Essay Example for Free

Inter-American system of human rights protection Essay Human Rights are certain inherent, inalienable, immutable, inviolate freedoms and rights of man which no one can take away. These include the right to life, liberty, equality and dignity. The United States of America recognizing these rights established the Inter American system of Human Rights by adopting the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the American Convention on Human Rights. Pursuant to the adoption of these instruments the Inter American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter American Court of Human Rights were established to promote and protect Human Rights of individuals. PART A 1. It is pertinent to note that the Inter American Commission on Human Rights primarily seeks to promote consciousness about Human Rights amongst the people of the country. Its functions mainly include receiving complaints, analyzing and investigating them. It has powers of observation and collection of data regarding Human Rights violations in the member States. It can also visit on site and conduct seminars and meetings to promote awareness regarding Human Rights. When a complaint is referred to the Commission, it can after conducting its investigation and analysis publish a report and send it to the State. This report is recommendatory in nature and not mandatory. Hence the Commission can only recommend that the State take due notice of the human rights violations and take appropriate reparatory measures. In the alternative, the Commission can seek opinion from the Inter American Court of Human Rights. So also, in the present case, the Commission has no powers to enforce the law laid down by the State of Colorado but can only request the State to take precautionary measures so as to ensure that human rights are not infringed upon. 2. With respect to the second question, it is seen that as per Article 2 of the Statute of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, the Court has adjudicatory jurisdiction vis a vis a human rights violation brought before it by the Commission or any Member State of the Organization of American States. The said Article refers to Articles 61-63 of the American convention on Human Rights which clearly state that the Court can order the State to allow the human being to enjoy his human right and also order for either monetary or non monetary compensation for the injury so caused. Such an order passed by the American Court would be binding on the State. The provision further clarifies that in case an act or omission on the part of the State would cause irreparable loss to the person, the Commission can take such provisional measures to ensure that the irreparable loss is not caused. It would thus transpire that in the present case, the Inter American Court of Human Rights can enforce the law requiring the Colorado State police to arrest an individual disobeying the restraining order. 3. In the present case various provisions of the various human rights enactments are violated. The Commission can primarily seek to apply Articles 1, 5, 6, 9, 18 24 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. Article 1 of the American Declaration states that all persons have equal right to life, liberty, and personal security. Article 5 6 deal with a person’s right to protection of self as well as family. Article 9 talks about a person’s right to inviolability of home while 18 24 talks of fair trial and the right to approach the court for remedy. A brief reading of the petition tells us how each of these rights have been violated by omission to act on the part of the State. These clauses are applicable even if the United States have not ratified this Declaration. Further Article 11 of the American Convention on Human Rights which deals with a persons right to protect his honor and home and also gives him the right to seek judicial remedy in case of infringement is another provision that the Commission can consider and apply to this particular case. According to the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, a duty is laid on the State to punish those persons or their accomplices who commit the crime of forced disappearance of others. This clause has been violated by the husband of the petitioner who allegedly kidnapped their daughters and the police department can be held liable as they stood mute spectators to the whole thing. Article 7 of the Convention of Belem do Para (the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women) condemns all forms of violence against women and seeks to punish such persons who have committed such crimes by enacting proper laws and proper investigation. The Convention also requires that the State should enact and adopt such laws which will help refrain a person from committing such acts of harassment and also ensure that persons who are victims of such violence are given timely and proper hearing. This is a right guaranteed to all women and more so to women who are victims of domestic violence. The police in this particular case having full knowledge of the fact that the petitioner was a victim of domestic violence chose to ignore her pleas and thereby ignore this provision. 4. Prior to considering the kind of jurisdiction that the Inter American Court of Human Rights would have in this present case, it is necessary to list the basic kinds of jurisdiction available to the Court in general. Jurisdiction of the Inter American Court is broadly classified into– Provisional, Advisory and Adjudicatory or contentious Jurisdiction. In provisional jurisdiction, the Court has the power to act in situations that are grave and urgent and require immediate intervention without which grave harm shall be caused to the victim (Buergenthal, 1982, p.241). In Advisory Jurisdiction the Court can give its opinion on the various provisions of the Convention as well as other treaties and also opinionate on the compatibility of the domestic law with any treaty (Buergenthal, 1982, p. 242). In order to avail the adjudicatory or contentious jurisdiction is concerned, it is necessary that the member States subject themselves to the jurisdiction of the Inter American Court (Pasqualucci, 2003, p. 88). It is also necessary for the Convention or treaty in question to grant the jurisdiction to the Court. An illustration to explain this point would be that the Inter American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women very clearly states that the Commission has only advisory jurisdiction and no contentious jurisdiction in respect of complaints filed under its provisions (Pasqualucci, 2003, p. 91). The jurisdiction clause also states that the Inter American Court cannot naturally assume the role of an appellate authority. It cannot make right any wrong decision of the national courts. However, if there is a gross violation of the human rights enshrined in any treaty and if this gross violation were to cause irreparable harm to the individual, then the Inter American Court may interfere and record that the proper procedures as laid down in the treaties were not followed. In the present case, the United States by virtue of having ratified the American Convention, has given people the individual right to approach the Commission for violation of human rights. However, this jurisdiction in advisory in nature and not adjudicatory as it has not yet subjected itself to the jurisdiction of the Inter American Court. Thus any person through the Commission can seek the advisory jurisdiction of the Inter American Court even if the Member State has not subjected itself to the jurisdiction of the Court (Buergenthal, 1982, p. 244) 5. Procedurally, the Commission on receiving a petition shall initially register it and see if it has complied with all the rules of procedure and if the petition does not comply then the Commission will send it back to the petitioner so as to ensure compliance. Once the petition conforms to the rules then the Commission shall then send relevant parts of the petition to the State for its response, for which the State is given two months time. However, in serious and urgent cases, the State is asked to respond immediately. This is done to ensure the veracity of the petition and to ensure that the petition still subsists. The commission may also require the State to present its observations on the admissibility and merits of the case at hand. Once the observations of the parties are submitted or the time period given to each party has lapsed, the Commission will verify the merits of the case based on the facts before it and decide whether to admit it or reject it. In the present case too the Commission should first satisfy itself as to the compliance of all the rules of procedure and then seek observations from the State and other parties concerned. 6. The Commission will then confirm as to whether the petitioner has exhausted all the available domestic remedies. However, in cases where the domestic legislation does not provide for due process of law or where the petitioner is refrained from pursuing domestic remedies then the above provision does not hold true. The Commission has to ensure that the petition before it has been filed within six months of receipt of the decision of the domestic remedy. In this case the petitioner has exhausted all the possible domestic remedies and has not been successful in the same. The Supreme Court of the United States has also rejected the petition of the petitioner and has passed its final judgment in the matter. The Commission should then decide on the admissibility of the petition by setting up a working group. In the present case, it is seen that the Commission has held the petition admissible. When the Commission finds a petition admissible it creates an admissibility report that is made public and the case is then registered and the parties are notified of the same. After the case has been registered, the Commission invites additional observations in writing from all parties concerned. A time limit for submitting these observations is set by the Commission. In some cases, the Commission can also convene a hearing to enable the parties to present their points of view. In this case too, the Commission has opened the case and the parties are informed about the same. Additional observations have been requested from the parties and the Commission has in fact convened a hearing. In this case, the United States government has responded by stating that it has taken proper and adequate measures to combat domestic violence and that the remedies in the domestic judicial system are adequate to tackle the problem. In the hearing the Petitioner will be able to present her case before the Commission in person. After hearing the case of both sides and also after going through the written observations submitted by both parties, the Commission will deliberate on the merits of the case and formulate a report. 7. The first document that the Commission publishes in response to a case is the admissibility report wherein it admits the case and registers it. This report has already been published by the Commission and has been sent to the parties concerned. The Commission has then convened a hearing on the issue and will deliberate on the case after the hearing. The next important document that the Commission publishes is the Preliminary report on the merits of the case. This report contains the preliminary observations and the recommendations of the Commission. 8. If the Commission feels that there is no violation, then the report is published and sent immediately to all parties concerned. In case the Commission feels that some provisions have indeed been violated then a preliminary report is made and sent to the State along with the recommendations proposed by the Commission. 9. In case the State complies with the recommendations given in the preliminary report, the Commission will notify the petitioner as to the same. However, in cases where the State does not comply with the same, the Commission can approach the Inter American Court for adjudication. However, in the present case as the United States has not subjected itself to the jurisdiction of the Court, the said remedy is not available to the Commission in case of non compliance. In the present case, the Commission should deliberate on the observations sent by the parties, investigate on site to determine the veracity of the facts, interview the various concerned individuals and then send its preliminary report to the State along with its recommendations. If the State fails to comply with the same within three months of it being sent, the Commission then has to issue a final report that contains its opinion, final conclusions and final recommendations. The Commission should then send it across to all parties concerned and make a note of it in its Annual report. The Commission should take active steps in terms of follow up to evaluate the actual compliance of the recommendations by the parties. 10. In this present case, if the Commission publishes its preliminary report wherein it holds that there has been violation of human rights and recommends certain precautionary measures to the State then it would mean that the petition has succeeded partially. By partially, it is meant that the violation has been recognized by the Commission. However, for the petition to succeed completely, the State has to comply with the recommendations given by the Commission. If the State refuses to accept the recommendations of the Commission, then the petition would have failed as the petitioner has not achieved any major reliefs but has only obtained a theoretical order that envisages the ideal situation vis a vis human rights.

Tom Sawyer :: essays research papers

Mark Twain Mark Twain (1835-1910) ,originally Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American writer who also worked on boats, in a printing-works and as a journalist in Nevada. His books are mostly for young people, but his Pudd'nhead Wilson is a crime which characterises the first murdercase solved by use of fingerprints. His main works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi and especially The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer The scene of the book takes place nearby the Mississippi at the end of the 19. century. Tom Sawyer is a young boy whose both parents are dead. Therefor he lives with his aunt, Polly, and his younger half-brother, Sid. Tom has got a very good friend who he spends a lot of time together with, that's Huckleberry Finn. Huck is the young "pariah" of the village. He does not go to school, and he lives alone in a hogshead. All the other children looked up to him and wished they could be like him, and of that very reason almost none of the mothers liked him. Tom spends time together with Huck almost every day, and many times that is the reason why he comes late to school. One time Tom is late at school, he is punished by sitting on the girls' side of the school-house. Tom gets to sit together with a girl named Becky, and Tom doesn't see that as a punishment at all. He and Becky becomes very close friends and we are later in the book told that they get married. Tom and Huck do often see things that they should not have seen. One of this things happened at the graveyard at midnight one night. They saw three men who were digging up a coffin. One of these men were Injun Joe, and it ends up with he killing one of the men. Tom and Huck vitnised all this, but they were very afraid of Injun Joe and they therefor swore to keep mum about it. Another time the boys decided to go treasurehunting. Tom knew of many places where there could be hidden treasures. One of them were an old haunted house. While they are searching around there, Injun Joe and one other guy shows up. They are about to hide some silver they have stolen, but they end up finding a large amount of gold in the house.

A Brief History Of The Internet Origins

By default, any definitive history of the Internet must be short, since the Internet (in one form or another) has only been in existence for less than 30 years. The first iteration of the Internet was launched in 1971 with a public showing in early 1972. This first network, known as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork) was very primitive by today's standards, but a milestone in computer communications. ARPANET was based upon the design concepts of Larry Roberts (MIT) and was fleshed out at the first ACM symposium, held in Gaithersburg, TN in 1966, although RFPs weren't sent out until mid 1968. The Department of Defense in 1969 commissioned ARPANET, and the first node was created at the University of California in Los Angeles, running on a Honeywell DDP-516 mini-computer. The second node was established at Stanford University and launched on October first of the same year. On November 1, 1969, the third node was located at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the fourth was opened at the University of Utah in December. By 1971 15 nodes were linked including BBN, CMU, CWRU, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, MIT, NASA/Ames, RAND, SDC, SRI and UIU(C). In that same year, Larry Roberts created the first email management program. As a side note, Ray Tomlinson is the person who established the â€Å"@† sign as a domain/host designator from his Model 33 Teletype. The first international connection to ARPANET is established when the University College of London is connected in 1973, and RFC-454 â€Å"File Transfer Protocol† was published. 1973 was also the year that Dr. Robert Metcalf's doctoral thesis outlined the specifications for Ethernet. The theory was tested on Xerox PARCs computers. 974 saw the launch of TELNET public packet data service. UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol) was developed at AT&T Bell Labs in 1976, and distributed with UNIX the following year. 1978 saw the split of TCP into TCP and IP. In 1979 the first MUD (Multi-User Domain) was created by Dr. Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw from the University of Essex, and was the foundation for multi-player games (among other things). This event marked the gradual decline of productivity over the Internet. In 1981 a cooperative network between CUNY (City University of New York) and Yale was established. This network was called BITNET (Because It's There NETwork) and was designed to provide electronic mail transfer and list serve services between the two institutions. RFC-801 â€Å"NCP/TCP Transition Plan† was published that same year. It was because of the growing interconnectivity of new networks that the phrase â€Å"Internet† was coined in 1982, and the Department of Defense also declared TCP/IP to be its defacto standard. The first name server was developed in 1983 at the University of Wisconsin, allowing users to access systems without having to know the exact path to the server. 1983 also saw the transition from NCP to TCP/IP, and it was at this same time that ARPANET was split into ARPANET and MILNET. 68 of the current 113 existing nodes were assigned to MILNET. It was also in 1983 that a San Francisco programmer, Tom Jennings wrote the first FidoNet Bulletin Board System, which was capable of allowing both email and message passing over the Internet between networked BBSs by 1988. In 1984, the number of hosts on the Internet broke 1000, and DNS (Domain Name Services) was introduced. Moderated newsgroups also made their first appearance this year, although it would be almost a year and a half before NNTP (Network New Transfer Protocol) would be introduced. In 1985, the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) was launched out of Sausalito California, allowing San Francisco Bay Area users free access to the Internet. The Internet had grown so fast, and to such large proportions by this time that some control was needed to oversee its expansion, so in 1986, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) came into existence under the IAB. 1988 Saw the advent of IRC (Internet Relay Chat), developed by Jarkko Oikarinen, and it can be safely assumed that the first â€Å"Hot Chat† took place very shortly afterwards. By 1989 the number of Internet hosts had capped 100,000, and the first commercial Internet mail service was created by MCI. In 1990, ARPANET was finally closed down and ceased to exist. Two other notable events this year include the release of ARCHIE by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at McGill, and the first remotely controlled machine to be linked to the Internet; a toaster (controlled by SNMP). 1991 was the year what WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), was released by Brewster Kahle, of Thinking Machines Corporation; Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill released Gopher from the University of Minnesota, and most notably, World-Wide Web was released by Tim Berners-Lee of CERN. By 1992 the number of hosts on the Internet had exceeded 1,000,000 and the first MBONE audio multicast was made. In 1993 InternNIC was created by, the National Science Foundation (NSF). InterNIC provided a centralized organization for domain name registration, and continues to regulate that function today. As the great, unwashed hordes began to flood into the Internet, it was only natural that vendors would soon follow. So in 1995, the first Internet based â€Å"shopping mall† was opened on the World Wide Web. It was also in this year that the World Wide Web edged out FTP as the most popular service on the Internet. In 1995, Compuserve, America Online and Prodigy opened up Internet access portals, and hundreds of thousands of commercial users flooded into what had previously been the private domain of veteran computer users. The average IQ dropped dramatically at this point. Since 1995, some of the new and/or emerging technologies have included Server Push, Multicasting, Streaming Media, E-Commerce, ASP and XML. Although the Internet started out of military necessity, it is doubtful that its creators could envision its impact, not only on the American culture or the world in general, but on the future of the human race. The Internet will continue to grow and evolve in the years to come, becoming an indispensable channel of communication and a catalyst for human evolution.

The True Meaning Of Friendship - 1691 Words

Yevgeniy Mesnyankin Friendship, a term vaguely defined, however, the true meaning lies within each individual through experiences. Friendship seems to be sort of a necessity in our existence as Aristotle compels that â€Å"A human being is by nature a social being† (Nicomachean Ethics (1097b12-13)). What Aristotle also noted is that there are three types or as he called them species of friendship which are complete friendships and incomplete friendships such as friendships of pleasure, friendships of utility. Aristotle could not be more right, as we definitely witness this in our everyday lives, with â€Å"friends† coming and going, and then there are some, a very few of them, that stay. Those that do stay are the prime example of a complete friendship, those are the individuals that will be there for you in both, good and bad time. Those that don’t, termed more of an â€Å"acquaintances† than friends, are there whenever you either want or need them. Arist otle was nothing short of brilliance in describing how friendship truly works. Philia, coined friendship in Greek but on a much broader terms, describes all of the social relationships. Philia is essential in order for a human being to live a eudemonic life, the â€Å"happy life†. And as Aristotle contended in his Nicomachean Ethics, â€Å"Friendship is an absolute necessity in life...Nobody would choose chose to live without friends, even if she had all other good things: Even the most excellent and successful person needsShow MoreRelatedFriendship Is The True Meaning Of It894 Words   |  4 PagesFriendship, something that we all have but something that we may not really understand the true meaning of it. During the reading Thoreau goes into detail of how friends are really not what we think them to be. We often don’t actually have friends but rather just acquaintances or companions. 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