Political Violence and Adolescent Out-group Attitudes and Prosocial Behaviors: Implications for Positive Inter-group Relations

The negative impact of political violence on adolescent adjustment is well established. Less is known about factors that affect adolescents' positive outcomes in ethnically divided societies, especially influences on prosocial behaviors toward the out-group, which may promote constructive relations. For example, understanding how inter-group experiences and attitudes motivate out-group helping may foster inter-group co-operation and help to consolidate peace. The current study investigated adolescents' overall and out-group prosocial behaviors across two time points in Belfast, Northern Ireland (N = 714 dyads; 49% male; Time 1: M = 14.7, SD = 2.0, years old). Controlling for Time 1 prosocial behaviors, age, and gender, multi-variate structural equation modeling showed that experience with inter-group sectarian threat predicted fewer out-group prosocial behaviors at Time 2 at the trend level. On the other hand, greater experience of intra-group non-sectarian threat at Time 1 predicted more overall and out-group prosocial behaviors at Time 2. Moreover, positive out-group attitudes strengthened the link between intra-group threat and out-group prosocial behaviors one year later. Finally, experience with intra-group non-sectarian threat and out-group prosocial behaviors at Time 1 was related to more positive out-group attitudes at Time 2. The implications for youth development and inter-group relations in post-accord societies are discussed.

The European Convention on Human Rights and the United Kingdom's Supreme Court

This article reviews the attitudes displayed by the UK's Supreme Court towards claims based on human rights law.

The European Court of Human Rights and Domestic Violence: Valiuliene v Lithuania

This article analyses the recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on the issue of domestic violence, with a particular focus on Valiuliene v Lithuania. It seems that to date the Court’s jurisprudence on this issue is somewhat inconsistent, and with Valiuliene v Lithuania the Court was given an opportunity to clarify its approach in this area. There are certainly a number of positive aspects to the Court’s judgment, however there are also difficulties with the approach of the Court in this case. Overall it is to be hoped that the judgment in Valiuliene v Lithuania will mark the beginning of a more coherent jurisprudence as regards domestic violence.

Context, institution, or accountability? Exploring the factors that shape the performance of national human rights and equality bodies

The past two decades witnessed a global proliferation of national human rights and equality bodies. Yet the research literature remains critical of their performance, positing a series of explanations for the gap between the expectations of civil society and the contribution they make. Through a comparative analysis of six statutory human rights and equality bodies in the United Kingdom and Ireland, this article explores the range of factors that shape their performance.

Human rights and traditional values

A series of ‘traditional values’ resolutions, passed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2009, 2011, and 2012, were the result of a highly controversial initiative spearheaded by Russia. Do these ‘traditional values’ underpin human rights? If not, why are religious traditions or, indeed, any traditional values worth preserving at all? Why are they valuable from the point of view of adherents to that tradition? Should the larger society take into account the fact that a practice is based on tradition in deciding whether or not to override it in the name of human rights? Put more technically, in what does the normativity of tradition lie, for adherents and non-adherents of that tradition? These are the questions that this essay explores, in the context of the recent debates over the scope and meaning of human rights stimulated by the Human Rights Council Resolutions. Much of the support for the Resolutions comes from what can broadly be called the global South. In several books, particularly Human Rights, Southern Voices, and General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law from a Global Perspective William Twining has explored the question of how to reconcile human rights norms and belief systems embedded in the global South (including ‘traditional values’), and in doing so has drawn particular attention to intellectuals from that part of the world, in particular Francis Deng, Yash Ghai, Abdullahi An-Na’im, and Upendra Baxi. I suggest that those concerned to recognize the legitimate concerns that significant sections of the global South have about the human rights project, concerns reflected in the ‘traditional values’ Resolutions would do well to pay more attention to the ‘Southern voices’ on whom Twining rightly focuses attention.

Dignity, Rights and the Comparative Method

This chapter considers the role of dignity in the development of constitutional rights, and relates this to the use of the comparative method, which has long been associated with the development of constitutional rights.

Childhood, Rights and Justice in Northern Ireland

Building on primary research and previous publications (Haydon, 2012; Haydon, 2014; Haydon and Scraton, 2008; McAlister, Scraton and Haydon, 2009; Scraton and Haydon, 2002), this chapter will provide a critical analysis of children’s rights and youth justice in Northern Ireland. More broadly, it will consider recent research concerning the criminalisation of children and young people in the United Kingdom and profound concerns regarding the policing and regulation of children raised in successive concluding observations about the UK Government’s implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 1995, 2002, 2008). From this generic context, the chapter will map the ‘particular circumstances’ of Northern Ireland - a discrete legal jurisdiction to which powers for justice and policing were devolved only in 2010. Emerging from four decades of conflict and progressing through an uneasy ‘peace’, rights-based institutions and enabling legislation have, in principle, promoted and protected human rights. Yet children and young people living in communities marginalised by poverty and the legacy of conflict continue to experience inconsistent formal regulation by the police and the criminal justice system, while enduring often brutal informal regulation by paramilitaries. The chapter will explore evident tensions between the dynamics of criminalisation and promotion/ protection of children’s rights in a society transitioning from conflict. Further, it will analyse the challenges to securing children’s rights principles and provisions within a hostile political and ideological context, arguing for a critical rights-based agenda that promotes social justice through rights compliance together with policies and practices that address the structural inequalities faced by children and young people.

EU Social and Labour Rights and EU Internal Market Law: Study for the EMPL Committee

EU Social and Labour Rights have developed incrementally, originally through a set of legislative initiatives creating selective employment rights, followed by a non-binding Charter of Social Rights. Only in 2009, social and labour rights became legally binding through the Charter of Fundamental Rights for the European Union (CFREU). By contrast, the EU Internal Market - an area without frontiers where goods, persons, services and capital can circulate freely – has been enshrined in legally enforceable Treaty provisions from 1958. These comprise the economic freedoms guaranteeing said free circulation and a system ensuring that competition is not distorted within the Internal Market (Protocol 27 to the Treaty of Lisbon). Tensions between Internal Market law and social and labour rights have been observed in analyses of EU case law and legislation. This study explores responses by socio-economic and political actors at national and EU levels to such tensions, focusing on collective labour rights, rights to fair working conditions and rights to social security and social assistance (Articles 12, 28, 31, 34 Charter of Fundamental Rights for the European Union). On the basis of the current Treaties and the CFREU, the constitutionally conditioned Internal Market emerges as a way to overcome the perception that social and labour rights limit Internal Market law, or vice versa. On this basis, alternative responses to perceived tensions are proposed, focused on posting of workers, furthering fair employment conditions through public procurement and enabling effective collective bargaining and industrial action in the Internal Market.