A holiday is a day or other period of time set aside for festivals or recreation. Public holidays are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. Religious holidays are set by religious organisations for their members and are often also observed as public holidays in religious majority countries. Some religious holidays such as Christmas have become or are becoming secularised by part or all of those who observe it. In addition to secularisation, many holidays have become commercialised due to the growth of industry.
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is an international human rights non-governmental organization. It is a standing group of 60 eminent jurists—including senior judges, attorneys and academics—who work to develop national and international human rights standards through the law. Commissioners are known for their experience, knowledge and fundamental commitment to human rights. The composition of the Commission aims to reflect the geographical diversity of the world and its many legal systems.
Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni was an emeritus professor of law at DePaul University, where he taught from 1964 to 2012. He served in numerous United Nations positions and served as the consultant to the US Department of State and Justice on many projects. He was a founding member of the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University which was established in 1990. He served as president from 1990 to 1997 and then as president emeritus. Bassiouni is often referred to by the media as “the Godfather of International Criminal Law” and a “war crimes expert.” As such, he served on the Steering Committee for The Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, which was launched to study the need for a comprehensive convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity, and draft a proposed treaty. He spearheaded the drafting of the proposed convention, which as of 2014 is being debated at the International Law Commission.
The laws of state responsibility are the principles governing when and how a state is held responsible for a breach of an international obligation. Rather than set forth any particular obligations, the rules of state responsibility determine, in general, when an obligation has been breached and the legal consequences of that violation. In this way they are "secondary" rules that address basic issues of responsibility and remedies available for breach of "primary" or substantive rules of international law, such as with respect to the use of armed force. Because of this generality, the rules can be studied independently of the primary rules of obligation. They establish (1) the conditions of actions to qualify as internationally wrongful, (2) the circumstances under which actions of officials, private individuals and other entities may be attributed to the state, (3) general defences to liability and (4) the consequences of liability.
In jurisprudence, reparation is replenishment of a previously inflicted loss by the criminal to the victim. Monetary restitution is a common form of reparation.
Impunity is avoidance of punishment, loss, or other negative consequences for an action. In the international law of human rights, impunity is failure to bring perpetrators of human rights violations to justice and, as such, itself constitutes a denial of the victims' right to justice and redress. Impunity is especially common in countries that lack a tradition of the rule of law, suffer from corruption or that have entrenched systems of patronage, or where the judiciary is weak or members of the security forces are protected by special jurisdictions or immunities. Impunity is sometimes considered a form of denialism of historical crimes.
Iulia Antoanella Motoc is a Romanian judge and international law expert, currently a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights and a professor at the University of Bucharest. Before beginning her service at the Court, she served as a Judge at the Constitutional Court of Romania. Motoc was UN Special Rapporteur for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and she chaired a number of international experts bodies and was Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Committee. On 1 October 2013, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe elected Motoc a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights with respect to Romania. She received an absolute majority of votes cast by parliamentarians. Her nine-year term of office began on December 18, 2013. In August 2021, she was elected as a member of the Institut de Droit International
The Yogyakarta Principles is a document about human rights in the areas of sexual orientation and gender identity that was published as the outcome of an international meeting of human rights groups in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in November 2006. The principles were supplemented and expanded in 2017 to include new grounds of gender expression and sex characteristics and a number of new principles.
Reparations are broadly understood as compensation given for an abuse or injury. The colloquial meaning of reparations has changed substantively over the last century. In the early 1900s, reparations were interstate exchanges that were punitive mechanisms determined by treaty and paid by the surrendering side of conflict, such as the World War I reparations paid by Germany and its allies. Reparations are now understood as not only war damages but also compensation and other measures provided to victims of severe human rights violations by the parties responsible. The right of the victim of an injury to receive reparations and the duty of the part responsible to provide them has been secured by the United Nations.
Memorialization generally refers to the process of preserving memories of people or events. It can be a form of address or petition, or a ceremony of remembrance or commemoration.
The 1997 Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights build on the 1987 Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and identify the legal implications of acts and omissions which are violations of economic, social and cultural rights. The guidelines were adopted by a group of over thirty experts who convened from 22–26 January 1997 in Maastricht on the occasion of the Limburg Principles' 10th anniversary. Three years later, the Maastricht Guidelines along with the Limburg Principles were reissued as UN document E/C.12/2000/13 by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR).
The United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law is a free online international law research and training tool. It was created and is maintained by the Codification Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs as a part of its mandate under the United Nations Programme of Assistance in the Teaching, Study, Dissemination and Wider Appreciation of International Law.
Development is a human right that belongs to everyone, individually and collectively. Everyone is “entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized,” states the groundbreaking UN Declaration on the Right to Development, proclaimed in 1986.
The Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death (2016) is a set of international guidelines for the investigation of suspicious deaths, particularly those in which the responsibility of a State is suspected.
A public apology is a component of reparation as stipulated in the United Nations Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights resolution proclaiming the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. It is also defined as a restorative process intended to heal and to generate forgiveness on the part of the offended party, for the improper behavior or action of the offender. The process consists in three components: acknowledgment of wrongdoing, admission of responsibility and the action of the wrongdoer to compensate damages produced.
The guarantees of non-repetition is a component of reparations as stipulated in the United Nations Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights resolution proclaiming the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. Guarantees of non-repetition are post-conflict measures taken to ensure that systemic human rights abuses do not recur.
UN General Assembly Resolution 60/147, the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, is a United Nations Resolution about the rights of victims of international crimes. It was adopted by the General Assembly on 16 December 2005 in its 60th session. According to the preamble, the purpose of the Resolution is to assist victims and their representatives to remedial relief and to guide and encourage States in the implementation of public policies on reparations.
The Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP), officially United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, is an UNGA resolution on Human rights with "universal understanding", adopted by the United Nations in 2018.
Right to truth is the right, in the case of grave violations of human rights, for the victims and their families or societies to have access to the truth of what happened. The right to truth is closely related to, but distinct from, the state obligation to investigate and prosecute serious state violations of human rights. Right to truth is a form of victims' rights; it is especially relevant to transitional justice in dealing with past abuses of human rights. In 2006, Yasmin Naqvi concluded that the right to truth "stands somewhere on the threshold of a legal norm and a narrative device ... somewhere above a good argument and somewhere below a clear legal rule".
The eleventh emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly opened on 28 February 2022 at the United Nations headquarters. It addresses the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Maldivian politician Abdulla Shahid served as President of the body during this time.
