This article examines the first attempts of the transnational gay rights movement to frame its demands in the vocabulary of international human rights law (IHRL). Based on archival research and oral history interviews, the article narrates how the International Gay Association (IGA) advocated for recognition within broader IHRL civil society between the late 1970s and early 1990s. The article analyses the almost two-decades-long campaign to convince Amnesty International that gay rights were an IHRL issue. The lobby directed at Amnesty serves to demonstrate a threefold argument: (i) queer transnational activism’s history significantly overlaps with the history of IHRL; (ii) the resort to IHRL by queer activists was both purposeful and accidental. While it ultimately proved decisive in positioning LGBTI+ struggles within mainstream legal debates, it also relied on a contingent set of historical conditions and strategic choices; (iii) queer demands were not ‘naturally’ linked to IHRL, and it took a lengthy process of advocacy for the scope of IHRL to finally open itself to queer claims.

This article proposes a “maximalist”, vulnerability-based perspective as the appropriate lens through which limitations of socio-economic rights and the relevant obligations of States during armed conflicts and under conditions of scarcity should be assessed. It argues that as vulnerability and deprivation increase, so too does the weight of the claim protected by the right. The concrete measures required of a State nevertheless remain calibrated to its resources, institutional capacity, degree of control and other means reasonably available to it, including the possibility of seeking international assistance. In this sense, the proposed approach is maximalist as to the State’s effort and the level of protection toward which State action must be directed, but not absolute as to the results that must be achieved. The article also addresses potential objections and, while acknowledging their significance, explains why they do not have to contradict the proposed approach.

The mental health and psychosocial needs of victims of armed conflict remain inadequately addressed in international law, despite growing recognition of their significance. More than one in five people living in post-conflict settings will develop a mental health condition, yet demand for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) frequently outstrips supply. This article examines the intersection between human rights law and victim assistance regimes in disarmament treaties, exploring how the latter could strengthen international legal and policy responses to post-conflict mental health needs. Though it has conceptual and implementation gaps, Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides a doctrinal foundation for mental health care; building on this foundation, victim assistance models include features such as explicit prioritization of MHPSS, practical implementation frameworks, and clearer international assistance obligations. These features could inform the development and implementation of the right to health, offering particularity that, if extended beyond specific weapons victims, has the potential to benefit wider post-conflict populations.

This article examines three key cases decided by the CERD Committee to show how the semantic conundrum of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) becomes an obstacle in extending protection against racial discrimination to various racialized groups. It is argued that the wording of Article 1 of ICERD creates a tripartite classification of semantics, in which meaning generated through different protected grounds obscures the conception of racial discrimination. This places constraints on the Committee’s ability to decide in favour of racialized non-citizens. The article proceeds to examine the jurisprudence of direct, indirect, and positive discrimination in the context of Article 1. It contends that while the semantic conundrum of ICERD confines racial discrimination to limited grounds, using the forms of discrimination can yield positive results. This is shown by re-examining the three cases, this time using the lens of forms of discrimination. It is argued that this approach can enable the Committee to transcend the semantic conundrum of ICERD and arrive at more nuanced conclusions.

Human rights litigation increasingly confronts claims that environmental degradation violates duties owed to future generations, yet existing doctrinal frameworks struggle to give these intergenerational obligations concrete effect. This article argues that the constructive trust offers a more coherent and workable private-law architecture for intergenerational equity than the public trust doctrine that dominates current scholarship and climate litigation strategies. The article traces the intellectual genealogy of intergenerational obligation in ideas of stewardship, usufruct and equity, and shows how these motifs have been channelled into trust-based vocabularies. Following this, it surveys international and domestic case law in which courts acknowledge temporal dimensions of environmental harm but hesitate to constitutionalise a general public trust, and highlights four structural defects that render public trust theory jurisdictionally fragile and remedially weak. The latter portion of the article develops an account of constructive trust reasoning grounded in unjust enrichment and unconscionable retention of benefits and shows how this framework can be used to attach proprietary consequences to profits generated by rights-violating environmental conduct, without requiring recognition of future generations as current rights-holders. The article concludes that constructive trust logic is transferable across legal systems, because it aligns with civil-law regimes of unjust enrichment, patrimonies by appropriation and constitutional environmental rights provisions. It further contends that an intergenerational constructive-trust approach can supply some of the ‘missing architecture’ of intergenerational justice within contemporary human rights law.

This paper explores how unrecognised separatist entities in Eurasia – de facto regimes such as Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – engage with international law. It examines whether, and to what extent, these regimes comply with international law, analysing court decisions and legislation to move beyond simplistic views of non-recognition or assumed legality. The findings reveal that de facto regimes tend to mirror the international law approaches of the states they are most closely connected to – whether the territorial state (e.g. Ukraine) or an outside state exercising effective control over the entity (e.g. Russia or Armenia). This pattern is explained by the theory of “acculturation to statehood”: through sustained legal and institutional interaction, these regimes internalise and replicate the legal systems of their reference states. The study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the role of de facto regimes in the international legal order.

With the global proliferation of armed conflicts, children are among the most vulnerable, facing serious violations of their human rights, most notably the right to education. Although both international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) provide protection, schools continue to be attacked, educational infrastructure is destroyed, and millions of children lose access to learning. Against this backdrop, the present article examines the protection of children’s right to education under IHRL and IHL, and argues for a shift in how these existing norms are interpreted to better reflect the centrality of education to human dignity. Drawing on the established link between the right to education and human dignity under IHRL, the article proposes a novel interpretive lens that reframes the denial of education during armed conflict as a direct assault on the human dignity of the child, rather than merely a legal violation. Through this lens, education shifts from an ancillary social right to a core humanitarian concern grounded in the child’s dignity. The article argues that this human dignity-based understanding of education found in IHRL should inform the interpretation of IHL, as integrating this perspective would strengthen the normative coherence of IHL and offer stronger protection for children’s right to education in armed conflict. Recognizing schools as vital spaces for learning, stability and development, this approach emphasizes that access to education underpins children’s holistic growth, the realization of their rights and the safeguarding of their human dignity.

Le droit à l’alimentation, vecteur de la sécurité alimentaire, a longtemps fait l’objet de débats contradictoires, d’une part, sur son appartenance à la catégorie des droits humains et, d’autre part, sur sa justiciabilité. Toutefois, au regard de son importance dans la vie de l’être humain, la prise de conscience semble avoir évolué sur son sujet. Des textes juridiques tant à l’échelle nationale qu’ internationale l’incorporent de plus en plus. Joint à cela, des théories à l’image de la théorie des trois niveaux d’obligations de Henry Shue en matière de mise en œuvre des droits humains et de la théorie générale des droits en filigrane, peuvent être mises à contribution afin de prouver son existence et sa justiciabilité. Dès lors, on pourrait affirmer qu’en sa qualité de personne morale de droit public qui se présente comme une entité souveraine, l’État a une responsabilité pour lutter contre l’insécurité alimentaire et favoriser la jouissance du droit à l’alimentation par sa population. Toutefois, cette réalité ne peut permettre de marginaliser l’existence de difficultés au niveau d’une telle mise en œuvre. C’est le cas du manque de reconnaissance universelle de ce droit, de l’insuffisance des textes juridiques à valeur contraignante qui l’encadrent ou encore de la marginalisation de certaines branches du droit international qui sont pourtant contributives à sa réalisation et à celle de la sécurité alimentaire. C’est à l’image du droit international de l’agroalimentaire et du droit international des sols. À cela, s’ajoutent d’autres défis. Ceux-ci sont liés aux disparités existantes entre les États au regard de leurs situations économiques différentes, mais aussi aux fléaux de plus en plus prononcés comme les changements climatiques et les conflits armés. De la sorte, l’insécurité alimentaire reste une problématique internationale qui nécessite une action collective de l’ensemble de la communauté internationale (États, organisations internationales, organisations non gouvernementales) pour son éradication.

Tragically, the abuse of children within organizational contexts continues to persist across time and geographies. Various institutions established for children’s care and protection have repeatedly been exposed as epicentres of abuse. The concept and practice of ‘child safeguarding’ has emerged as an approach to address the systemic failures within organizational settings that enable – or fail to prevent – child abuse. Child safeguarding has received minimal academic attention and there is a notable lack of focus on the legal dimensions of child safeguarding, especially from an international human rights law perspective. This article contends that child safeguarding should shift from being viewed primarily as a practice issue to being understood and approached as a matter of children’s rights law. The article connects the concept and practice of child safeguarding with international children’s rights law norms and standards, examines the role of the state vis-à-vis non-state actors, and brings together the various guidance of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child articulating the responsibilities of states in protecting children from violence perpetrated by non-state actors, including a case example of the Committee’s inquiry into Chile’s residential care centres. The article suggests a baseline of child safeguarding responsibilities for NGOs working with children and calls for greater attention to child safeguarding within international children’s rights discourse.

The outsourcing of traditionally military functions in Africa to private military companies (PMCs) such as the Wagner Group and the Africa Corps has been accompanied by violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. According to the International Law Commission’s Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, state responsibility for these violations can be imputed to the states that employ PMCs to function as their agents, to exercise government authority or to act in the vacuum left by official authorities. States that do not intervene to prevent these abuses fail their obligations of due diligence through persistent non-action and should not be excused from demanding accountability by immunity agreements between the host and hiring states. We explore the possibility of the communitarian invocation of state responsibility by third-party states, on behalf of victims, in order to end impunity, drive accountability and secure effective redress for victims.

This article presents a critical postcolonial analysis of international human rights law’s engagement with human trafficking through the lens of seven UN treaty bodies. Drawing on content analysis of 1,197 documents (33 General Comments/Recommendations, 1,049 Concluding Observations, and 115 Individual Communications), the article reveals how international human rights law is implicated in the status subordination of subaltern people. The article identifies 54 documents containing evidence of colonial legacies, with 76% of relevant Concluding Observations addressing Global South states. It argues that treaty bodies reinscribe colonial patterns through problematic conflation of trafficking with slavery, promotion of repressive migration policies, inconsistent treatment of prostitution and sex tourism, perpetuation of ‘raid and rescue’ approaches, and essentialization of trafficking victims as ‘innocent’. It also exposes limited engagement with intersectionality in individual communications, potentially overlooking complex, multifaceted experiences of trafficking victims. The article concludes by proposing concrete strategies to decolonise anti-trafficking law and practice, including interrogating assumed neutrality in legal instruments, embracing a politics of recognition, integrating the concept of ‘burdened agency’, and meaningfully countenancing intersectionality in legal analyses. This analysis contributes to understanding how international human rights law can better serve its emancipatory potential while avoiding the perpetuation of status subordination.