Implications from international human rights perspective

The Korean Council
26 February 2021, 3rd International Symposium
Restoring the Right to Justice and Truth


Implications of the ruling from international human rights perspective

Baek, Buhm-Suk   Professor, College of International Studies, Kyung-Hee University & Member, United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Advisory Committee
Panel 2. State immunity vs. Grave human rights violations

1. It is not an overstatement to say that today is an era of human rights. Since the adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, international human rights law has expanded its scope of application. In line with such expansion, the number of international treaties governing various human rights fields has also increased. Indeed, the international community and the United Nations have attempted to internationalize human rights by legalizing the concept of human rights in various fields for over 70 years. While such attempts are ongoing, more attention has been paid to how individual states implement international human rights norms since the 1990s. Through this process of internationalization and internalization of human rights, the understanding of sovereignty has gradually changed as well. Under international human rights law, the concept of sovereignty as the right of a state to not be interfered upon by another state has expanded and developed into sovereignty as the state’s obligation to guarantee the basic rights of individual citizens of individual states. The relationship between human rights and sovereignty must now be understood as complementary. Protection and promotion of human rights can simultaneously mean respect for sovereignty.

2. International human rights law, which developed after the Second World War, has gradually embodied the rights of victims to remedy for human rights violations and the state's obligation to guarantee such rights. Major international and regional human rights treaties explicitly guarantee the rights of victims to receive effective remedy as independent human rights. ...

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