Human rights and democracy: Evolutions and challenges

Managing ethnic, racial, religious and linguistic diversity is one of the unsolved challenges of modern times. The nature of diversity varies from country to country. These identities are politically salient in some countries, and conflicts based on these identities are ubiquitous. One mechanism that such states use to manage identity-based conflicts is constitutional designs that mainly involve federalism. The contributions of different constitutional mechanisms and theories to reducing identity-based conflicts will become very clear when their integrative and disintegrative attributes are identified and investigated. The result of this investigation will inform us of the impacts of various forms of constitutional design on managing identity-based conflict. This paper investigates the integrative and disintegrative aspects of constitutional mechanisms, theories and principles, such as federalism, consociationalism, centripetalism taking the nature of identity politics into account.

Considering the ongoing democratic crisis and the steadily growing participation of transnational companies in the international arena, this study aims to discuss if there is any legal duty of transnational corporations to respect and protect democracy as a human right. It does that by initially discussing Thomas M. Franck article “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance“ at its thirtieth anniversary, revising its thesis in regards to the current stage of democratic decay and changing phenomenons in the international sphere. Concluding on the inexistence of a functional right to democracy, or at least a “dormant“ status of the “emerging right to democratic governance“, this paper shifts its attention to the latest developments in the field of business and human rights, both normatively and scientifically. It concludes proposing the use of the terminology “rights of democracy“ as an existing legal framework through which companies can be demanded to respect a democratic regime.

The current paper focuses on the infringement of international public law and jus in bello in Ukraine and its general and specific consequences. In order to prevent negative effects on European States, intergovernmental organizations are currently obliged to find the appropriate solutions being settled to a superior way of thinking than the one used for the creation of the conflict. Polemic paradigm of international relations has to be abandoned? Political solutions are collective decisions? European Union might play its strategic role as global actor? Choose between absolute human rights or financial interests or political ego? Which is the proper position regarding the European States with double role: receiver of refugees and provider of migrants? Taking into account the progressive vision of the international courts making references to the refugee law, new legal rules and solutions adopted by judiciary are the structured guarantees for the peace and security of the human kind?

Surprisingly, the 70-year party rule in Mexico has not been examined thoroughly by legal scholars. Notwithstanding that, political scientists and historians have proven that a central feature of the PRI regime was the constant use of state violence to restrain and control. Legal scholars should engage with this chapter of Mexican history since the harm done to individuals through state violence could have been widespread and systematic. From 1929 to 1998, human rights violations occurred continuously and had as targets different population groups, such as peasants, students, or political opponents. In addition, some of these attacks occurred in the context of fighting guerrilla warfare (that could amount to non-international armed conflict). Finally, examining the history of state violence in Mexico could also help identify continuities and combat current patterns of abuse, impunity, and systematic human rights violations.

The Venezuelan refugee and migrants crisis is creating new challenges in Inter-American Law. With more than six million Venezuelan abroad, this is the second crisis globally and the first in the region. The uniqueness of that crisis has demonstrated that the Inter-American Law was not prepared for a mass migration crisis. In that sense, the paper explores the current situation of migrants and refugees in the Inter-American Law and suggests two lines of reforms. In the first place, it is necessary to overcome the concepts of migrants and refugees to focus on humanitarian standards regarding massive crises. The second line is that the Inter-American Law should facilitate the socio-economic assimilation of migrants and refugees from the human mobility perspective as a favorable condition to promote inclusive development.

A decade ago, the Fundamental Law of Hungary brought significant changes in the system of fundamental rights (FRs) protection. The changes, viewed in isolation, do not infringe constitutional requirements - some of them can be considered an improvement. The paper, however, argues that the assessment must go beyond examining the institutions and their status in themselves and cover the structure of the whole system. It cannot be limited to the isolated evaluation of the competences of the individual institutions but must extend to their connections. Even within the framework of constitutional, EU and international requirements, states have a wide margin of discretion in setting up and reorganizing the national system of FRs protection. The paper offers indicators to evaluate such a reorganization and concludes that the developments in Hungary decreased the standard of FRs protection, even if most individual changes cannot be considered a weakening factor in themselves.