International Human Rights

Instructions to candidates

You can either use this question paper as a template and add your answers at the points indicated or type your answers into a separate Word document.

You must ensure that your answers to all questions are contained in one Word document and uploaded to Turnitin before the submission deadline.

The file name must be in the following format:

YOUR STUDENT REFERENCE NUMBER IHR– Assessment

Module Learning Outcomes

The following Learning Outcomes are tested within this assessment:

1. Understand the various contexts within which international human rights operate
2. Research and critically evaluate the key principles of international human rights law, including regional laws
3. Analyse the effectiveness of international human rights institutions in practice and offer suggestions for reform
4. Assess critically the principles underlying human rights supervision and the tension universality and cultural relativism
5. Understand the different categories of human rights and tensions between rights, as well as interpretive issues in defining and regulating rights
6. Understand key theories, critiques and the philosophical foundations of human rights

Word limit

The total word limit for all questions is 4,500. Any words over this total will not be marked.

Assessment Criteria

This assessment will be marked according to the Grade Descriptors set out in the Student Handbook & Course Information module on ELITE. The assessment will be marked out of 100.

Declaration

By submitting this assessment, you confirm that:

• Your assessment submission is entirely your work, and that you have fully referenced and correctly cited the work of others, where required. You also declare that the contents of your submission have not been generated by a third party, or through an Artificial Intelligence generative system. If this statement is untrue, you acknowledge that you have cheated.
• The work in this assessment has been carried out in accordance with the Regulations of The University of Law.
• You have read the Student Discipline Regulations and understand any Assessment Related Offence/Academic Misconduct can lead to consequences and undermine academic integrity.
• Any word count stated by you in your submission is correct.
• The contents of this Assessment are confidential. You must not disclose, discuss or express an opinion on the contents of this Assessment or your answer to it to any other person, by any means.
• You are fit to sit according to the Assessment Regulations.

Please note that you may not consult any member of The University staff nor any other person on any aspect of the content of this Assessment. If you are in any doubt as to how to interpret any word or phrase in this Assessment you should decide for yourself which interpretation to adopt.

QUESTION

“All regional human rights regimes have, at some point in their development, undergone reform; in particular, all three regions have evolved to create regional human rights courts. The institutional setups of each system, however, continue to operate differently… All three regional human rights regimes are committed to dynamic interpretations of the substantive provisions of human rights treaties. While this is the case, each treaty has unique rights provisions and courts and commissions have interpreted both the substantive and the procedural articles of their respective treaties differently over time. All regional human rights regimes are committed to delivering a diverse range of remedies to victims of human rights violations, but the actual remedies and their intrusiveness in the domestic legal orders of states differ significantly.”

Source: Başak Çali, Mikael Rask Madsen, Frans Viljoen, ‘Comparative regional human rights regimes: Defining a research agenda’ (2018) 16(1) International Journal of Constitutional Law 128, 133.

With reference to the statement above, examples, supporting legal authority and academic literature/research, you must critically analyse and carry out a cross-comparison of the convergences and divergences of the three main regional human rights regimes you have studied on this module (the European, Inter-American and African system). In doing so, you must critically discuss and evaluate the effectiveness of each system in protecting and enforcing human rights and identify which system you believe is the most effective, providing reasons for your choice.