nam center for human rights and cultural diversity 2012 annual

Non-Aligned Movement Center forHuman Rights and Cultural Diversity

2012 Annual ReportN A M C H R C D 2 0 1 2 A n n u a l R e p o r t

The Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity (NAM-CHRCD) is an outcome of the Non-aligned Movement Ministerial Meeting on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, held on Sep-tember 3-4, 2007, in Tehran. In the final doc-ument of the meeting, entitled “the Tehran Declaration and Plan of Action”, the Mem-ber States decided to establish the Center in Iran.

Taking into consideration the virtues of his-torical traditions and the values of all civiliza-tion and cultures around the world, the Cen-ter as an educational- research institution provides scientific analysis and promotes discourse in global human rights and cultural diversity issues. Under the heading “Unifying Diverse Cultures towards the Enrichment of the Universality of Human Rights”, the main function of the Center is to prepare a plat-form for the exchange of knowledge, good practices, general reflections, and to have in-tensive debate in order to contribute to the advancement of human rights, with a special focus on the common human rights chal-lenges that developing countries encounter.

The NAMCHRCD 2012 Annual Report is also availableonline at www.namchrcd.com.

Published February 2013

By: The Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity(NAMCHRCD)

This publication may be reproduced in whole or in part and in any form for educational or non-profit purposes without special permission from the copyright holder provided acknowledgment of the source ismade.

NAMCHRCD would appreciate receiving a copy of any publicationthat uses this report as a source.

Design and Layout : Zahra Alvandi

About The Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human

Rights and Cultural Diversity (NAMCHRCD)

INTRODUCTIONMessage from the Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2012 Academic Partners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Best Friends in 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2012 ACADEMIC & DIPLOMATIC EVENTS

Academic EventsInternational Seminar: Emerging New International Human Rights Institutions/Mechanism in the NAM Region, The UN Palace, Geneva, 16 March; . . . . . . . . . 10

International Workshop on Human Rights and Development, 21 May; . . . . . . . . 12 International Seminar on Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education, 1-2 July, Tabriz (Iran); . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

The Second International Summer School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, 9-11 July, Tehran; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

Book Launch Alongside of the 16th NAM Summit in Tehran, the First Volume of “The NAM Yearbook on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity”,27 August; . . . . . . . . . 30

International Fall School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, 17-21 September, Geneva; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

The Second International Conference on Human Rights and Cultures: Legal Cultures in Support of the Jurisprudence of Humanity, 12-14 November, Tehran; . . . . . . 40

Diplomatic EventsParticipation in the NAM Ministerial Meeting, Sahrm El Sheikh – Egypt , 7- 10 May;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

Participation in the 16th NAM Summit - Tehran , 26- 31 August; . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Opening Ceremony of the New Office, 29 August; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR 2013 ACADEMIC EVENTSThe Third International Summer School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, 1-3 July, Tehran;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

The Third International Conference on Human Rights and Cultures: the NAM and Enhancement of International Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights, 3-5 November, Tehran;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

The First International Student Seminar on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, 10-11 December, Tehran; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

ANNEXES

Short Biographies of Authors/Lecturers and Abstracts of Papers/Lectures . . . . . . 71

Table of Lectures and Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131

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INTRODUCTION

Message from the Director2012 Academic PartnersBest Friends in 2012

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5N A M C H R C D 2 0 1 2 A n n u a l R e p o r t

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A The 16th NAM Summit in Tehran held in last August was almost coincided with the fifth anniversary of the great NAM Ministerial Conference on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity which convened on September 3-4, 2007 with the participation of more than 100 high-ranking delegations in Tehran. The said conference is still considered the second largest diplomatic event in the history of Iran right behind the 16th NAM Summit. As the result of the final document of the Conference, approved in consensus, the NAM member states decided to set up a body called “the NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity” in Tehran.

With the establishment of the Center, a permanent mechanism has been created in the NAM region for institutionalizing the intercultural dialogue on human rights. The innovative approach adopted by this Center is visibly seen in its motto: “Unity of diverse cultures towards the advancement human rights”, which has laid the foundation stone for its diverse and varied scientific activities.

With a special focus on the common human rights concerns and challenges that developing countries encounter and taking into consideration the virtues of

historical traditions and the values of all civilization and cultures around the world, the Centre, as an educational research institution, provides scientific contribution to the enrichment of the universality of human rights and to the implementation of human rights through localization of its concepts.

In line with its objectives, the Centre during the year 2011 and 2012 has held several successful international academic events with the participation of more than 1200 attendees (including more than 150 speakers). In compare to 2011 the number of our academic programs in 2012 has raised to two times more.

In 2012 the Centre extended its activities outside Iran with holding two international academic events in Geneva, the latest of which was in September when the Centre, in cooperation with some prestigious academic institutions, held its first one week Autumn School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, alongside of the 21th Session of Human Rights Council in the UN Palace.

Along with the academic events you will read more in this report about some diplomatic events in which the Centre was engaged in 2012. First, in response

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to the invitation by His Excellency, Mr. Mohamed Kamal Amar, the Foreign Minister of Egypt, dated 5 April 2012, I represented the Centre in the NAM Ministerial Meeting, held in Sahrm El Sheikh, on 7-10 May.

Second, the Centre launched its first volume of “the Nam Yearbook on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity”, on the occasion of the 16th NAM Summit ( 26- 31 August) . The Yearbook containing 28 academic articles and in about 800 pages, was available in a package on CDs and hard copies, along with the Centre’s 2011 Annual report in the document Centre of the Summit.

Third, on 29 August, as a side event to the 16th NAM Summit in Tehran, the Centre was honoured to have His Excellency Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, the Foreign Minister of Islamic Republic of Iran, opening its new office in a ceremony with the presence of some distinguished guests of the Summit.

Finally, on the same day, I gave an official report on the activities of the Centre to the NAM Ministerial Meeting at the 16th NAM Tehran Summit.

During the last two years the Centre been benefitted from the fruitful and productive cooperation of several distinguished scholars as well as prestigious international institutions, some of which have had great contribution in organizing the academic events. Thanks to these invaluable contributions and to the activities it has undertaken in recent years, the Centre has been able to prove its scientific mettle.

In this line and to accomplish its plans for 2013 and the years after the Centre is very much relying on the support of its friends and partner institutions, as well as on the support of every individual and institution around the world who have commitment to the promotion of human rights.

Kamran Hashemi , Ph.D

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The ICRC , Iran

Iranian Red Crescent Society , Iran

Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

UNESCO Chair for Human Rights, Peace and Democracy at Shahid Beheshti University, Iran

Iranian Center for Women and Family Affairs of Presidency

Iranian Islamic Human Rights Commission

UNESCO Chair of Bergamo University, Italy

School of International Relations, Iran

UNESCO Chair of La Rioja University, Spain

Collège Universitaire Henry Dunant, Switzerland

2012 NAMCHRCD Academic Partners


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Dr. Kathleen Cavanaugh Senior Lecturer of International Law in the Faculty of Law, Irish Centre for Human Rights (ICHR), National University of Ireland, Galway.

Special Thanks to the NAMCHRCD Best Friends in 2012:

Dr. Janet BlakeSenior Lecturer in Law at the University of Shahid Beheshti, Iran.

Dr. Pouria Askary The ICRC’s legal advisor and IHL programme responsible in Iran.

Dr. Linda Briskman Professor of Human Rights at Swinburne University in Australia.

Dr. Michele Brunelli Professor of History of Asian Countries and Institution of the Muslim world, at Bergamo State University ,Italy.

Mr. Mohammad Shahabeddin Mohammadi Araghi ,Under Secretary General for International Affairs and IHL , Iranian Red Crescent.

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Academic Events

International Seminar: Emerging New International Human Rights Institutions/Mechanism in the NAM Region,The UN Palace, Geneva, 16 March;

International Workshop on Human Rights and Development, 21 May;

International Seminar on Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education, 1-2 July,Tabriz (Iran);

The Second International Summer School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity ,9-11 July, Tehran;

Book Launch Alongside of the 16th NAM Summit in Tehran, the First Volume of “The NAM Yearbook on

Human Rights and Cultural Diversity”,27 Augus;

International Fall School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, 17-21 September, Geneva;

The Second International Conference on Human Rights and Cultures: Legal Cultures in Support of the

Jurisprudence of Humanity, 12-14 November, Tehran;

Diplomatic Events

Participation in the NAM Ministerial Meeting, Sahrm El Sheikh – Egypt , 7- 10 May;

Participation in the 16th NAM Summit - Tehran , 26- 31 August;

Opening Ceremony of the New Office, 29 August;

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Within the NAM region decades have passed since the establishment of the Inter-American and African regional systems of human rights. Bearing in mind the vast historical, cultural, and political diversity of the NAM region, the event brought together experts in the area to explore the extent to which existing or potential institutional arrangements, such as the OIC, the Arab League, the ASEAN, and the SAARC, might advance human rights mechanisms in other parts of the region.The seminar also addressed the extent to which the activities of the NAM like-minded group in the UN, the Non- Aligned Movement Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, and other potential or existing institutions and groups among the NAM Member States, can contribute to the promotion and protection of human rights in the region and globally.

International Seminar: Emerging New International Human Rights Institutions/Mechanism

in the NAM Region(16 March 2012, the UN Palace, Geneva)

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Titles of Lectures :- Prof. Michele Bruneli, Bergamo State University, Italy:- “ Elaborating some indicators measuring the Governance, as one of the basis and a

mechanism for the implementing Human Rights ” - Dr. Elvira Dominguez-Redondo, Senior Lecturer, Middlesex University, London:- “ Universal Periodic Review: Beyond Naming and Shaming” - Dr. Kamran Hashemi, Director, NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity,

Tehran:- “Emerging New Regional Human Rights Mechanisms in the Muslim World”- “The NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity and its Role in Promotion

of Human Rights in the NAM region and globally - Dr. David Keane, Senior Lecturer, Middlesex University, London:- “Regional Human Rights Systems of the Future: Likelihoods and Challenges” - Ms. Irene Pietropaoli, PhD Candidate, Middlesex University, lecture, Regent’s col-

lege, London:- “ASEAN Regional Human Rights Protection: Lessons from the African and Inter

American Regional Systems” - Prof. Francisco Rivera Juaristi, Director, International Human Rights Clinic at Santa

Clara University School of Law, California:- “Lessons learned from the Inter-American System: A comparative approach on the

issue of access to regional human rights mechanisms”


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On the Occasion of 21st May, World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development,

International Workshop on Human Rights and Development,(21 May 2012, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran)

On 21 May, Edalat Hall (Hall of Justice) of Shahid Beheshti University hosted more than 200 of Iranian and foreigner professors, researchers and students. The Workshop focused on the following themes:

- The Mutuality of Human Rights and De-velopment;

- The Right to Development;

- Indivisibility, Interdependence and, In-terrelatedness of Human rights;

- The Relationship between Human Rights and Development in the UN;

- Ethics, Human Rights and Development;

- Human Rights, Development and Con-flict.

The current report will cast a fleeting glance at the most important issues discussed during the sessions and will give a short

explanation on the workshop as a whole.The program opened on recitation of some

verses of the Holy Quran and afterwards three host speakers inaugurated the workshop. The first to speak was Dr. Bagher Shamloo, the president of the faculty of law, Shahid Beheshti University, who bid warm welcomes to the audience and participants

“Since human rights and fundamental freedoms are indivisible, the full realization of civil and political rights without the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights is impossible. The achievement of lasting progress in the implementation of human rights is dependent upon sound and effective national and international policies of economic and social development;” Article 13 , Proclamation of Teheran, 1968

Organized by:• The NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

• in Cooperation with UNESCO Chair for Human Rights, Peace and

Democracy at Shahid Beheshti University- Iran,

Report of the Workshop

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and expressed his good thoughts on organizing such programs and hoped that these programs would enhance divine morality and citizenship morale. He held that one of the main human right responsibilities of the UN was to curb the threat and remove the obstacles in the way of human development. Dr. Shamloo maintained that some feature such as the love of science, innovation and creativity are bestowed upon human beings and are the prerequisites for approaching the divine community. He held that a country that heralds the divine culture must be associated to those divine characteristics that are mentioned in human rights. Of this characteristics, one could mention the divine forgiveness towards the beings which should be embedded in the way a government treats the immigrants and refugees.

The next speaker was Dr. Kamran Hashemi, the director of Nam Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, who gave a short account of the centre and briefly reviewed last year’s activities of the center and introduced future plans. Through giving a preliminary explanation of the right to development and the different standings of the North and South on this issue, he opened the workshops discussions.

The next speaker at the opening ceremony was Dr. Bagher Ansari, faculty member of the faculty of law of Shahid Beheshti University and Director of the UNESCO Chair at the University, gave a historical account of the relationship between human rights and development since the 1950’s and pointed out the seemingly simple challenges in this regard.

The first panel opened with the lectures given by a couple of professors from Shahid Beheshti University. The first speaker was Dr. Mohammad Hossein Ramazani who gave a lecture on sustainable developments and human rights. He analyzed the human rights conceptual shifts during Stockholm (1972), Rio (1992) and Johannesburg (2002) conferences and considered human rights as the common language for the human beings and a platform for sustainable developments. He concluded that participative democracy and good governance are the key to solving all environmental problems. Thus doing justice to healthy environment within the framework of human rights is dependent upon the realization of article 10 of Rio Declaration that has considered the right to participation.

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The next two speakers addressed the sanctions and their relevance Human Rights. Dr. Mohammad Jafar Jahromi Ghanbari expounded the relationship between “economic sanctions and human rights”. He said that since the establishment of the United Nations and the non-violence act, a habit has been out of using economic sanctions to further political goals and this has violated human rights. H maintained that this trend will challenge the political and social responsibility of the United Nations and also will undermine the individual’s and nation states’ rights to development. Hence, it is necessary to modulate the sanctions according to principles such as congruence and reciprocity. Dr. Hooman Movassagh gave a lecture on “sacntions, human rights and freedom of scientific researches” based on the notion of freedom.

Following the aforementioned lectures, Dr. Ali Akbar Gorji, the deputy of UNESCO Chair at Shahid Beheshti University, who chaired the first panel, expounded the relationship between democracy and development. Since he believed that there is not a precise definition of democracy and development, he defined democracy as a political system in which peoples satisfaction is of the essence and public will has a say in public policy

makings and decision makings. He defined development as a condition where people can have a decent life with an acceptable life quality. Although the interactions between the two concepts goes well back in time, however, the theoretical discussion between them have arisen only recently and during the closing years of the twentieth century. Although there are disagreements on the relationship between democracy and development, it is a fact generally agreed upon that there will be no development and welfare unless democracy is established and even if without democracy some sort of development happens, it won’t last and it won’t be sustainable. Therefore, it could be argued that the safest path to development is adherence to democratic values.

Dr. Mohammad Rasekh closed this session with a lecture entitled, “Rights, the cause or effect of development?” and pointed to domestic and international dimensions of right and development. He stated that development is a policy and unless the rule of law and necessary institutions are established, the rights and justice will not be served, notwithstanding how much thought is put on them.

The second panel was chaired by Dr. Hooman Movassagh in the afternoon. The opening lecture of this session was given by Professor Michele Brunelli, Director of UNESCO Chair at Bergamo University – Italy, under the title of “Ethics in international cooperation for development”. He made an assessment of the ethical foundations of international cooperation from human rights implementation and its influential point of view. Ethics in international relations require mutual trust and respect for human dignity and could be guaranteed


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through implementation of global and indispensible human rights. He highlighted two solutions for furthering ethical principles in international cooperation for development. The first solution was at the national level, that is, various actors must define a collective approach based on which different roles of all political sections participating in international cooperation is regulated and scrutinized. The second approach is at the international level, based on which the efficacy of United Nations system for monitoring treaties is taken as a priority.

Dr. Ghasem Mohammadi, faculty member of Shahid Beheshti University faculty of law, was the next speaker. His lectures topic was “The transformation of values in the process of development”. He mentioned some examples to better illustrate to the rules and evaluations in the process of development and concluded that if we take development as a value, then it is necessary to create balance between development and other values. Therefore, it could be asserted that development requires a review of the totality of society’s values.

Dr. Janet Blake, faculty member of Shahid Beheshti University faculty of law, was the next lecturer. She talked about “Human Rights and Millennium Development Goals” and pointed to a gap between human rights and Millennium Development Goals in implementation phase of these goals. She also pointed to the progress made by Iran in realizing Millennium Development Goals and gave a short account of the challenges facing the country in its way towards reaching these goals.

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Then, Dr. Johanne Boucahrd, UNESCO Chair at Freiburg University (Switzerland), commenced his lectured on cultural rights and development. He assessed the role of cultural rights in development through explaining “human-oriented approach toward development”. The approach is holistic and coherent and puts individuals, families and communities at the center of information, participation and accountability. The fundamental objective of this approach is to strengthen the potentials and liberties of the individuals in a way that enables them to take part in social development. The foundation of such approach is laid within cultural rights, that is the rights that are intertwined with human identity, facilitate communications and make it possible to participate and have your voice heard.

Dr. Hadi Oveysi, associate professor of Environmental Research center of Shahid Behehsti Univeristy, reviewed the basic of sustainable development and attributed the failure to achieve sustainable development to lack of clear philosophical and ethical foundations. This discussion was carried on with a lecture given by Dr. Seyyed Mohammad Ghari seyyed Fatemi, faculty member of Shahid Beheshti University faculty of law, on ethics of international development. He distinguished between Hobbesian approach (utilitarian approach based on which national interest, wealth and strengthening the power is of the essence) and Kantian approach (ethical approach which defines national interests and boundaries as a means to achieve human dignity, interaction and human equality). He maintained that ethical development must be at the service of development ethics and unless the society is ethically developed, development is not possible.

The third and final session was opened by Dr. Mohsen Mohebbi, member of Iranian Chamber of Commerce, who explained the relationship between the multinational corporations and human rights.

Then afterwards Dr. Mohsen Abdollahi, faculty member at law faculty of Shahid Beheshti University, analyzed the right to peaceful nuclear technology. He asserted that nuclear fuel cycle, compared to other fuels, is more stable, clean and sustainable and through citing some of international treaties and documents such as N.P.T, Stockholm Declaration and the UN Security Council resolutions he maintained that having nuclear energy is the indispensible right of every nations and unless Iran has not committed any unlawful act with regards to developing nuclear capabilities, it is a flagrant violation of human rights to stop it from achieving nuclear energy.

Following the lectures that were mentioned above, Dr. Reza Eslami, faculty member at law faculty of Shahid Beheshti University and the chairman of the third panel, gave a lecture on privatization and human rights. Privatization must aim at reducing the monopolizing efforts of the government and transfer its activities to the private section specifically in economic spheres. Privatization will increase public participation, promotes economic freedom , the rule of law and established legal institutions, helps good governance and adherence to the law, establishes free press and media, strengthens NGO’s and

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brings about an increase in democratic governance indicators such as accountability, responsiveness, transparency and curbing corruption.

The last but not the least lecture entitled “World Bank and human rights” was given by Mr. Faraz Firouzmandi, Faculty member of Payam e Nour University. He tried to find an answer to this question whether the World Bank is required to respect human rights norms. According to him, the World Bank’s non-compliance with human rights and its not entering this field is justified in two

ways; the World Bank is not a member of any human rights conventions and there is no resolute affirmation on human rights in the objectives of the World Bank except for the phrase “improve workers’ living conditions”. On the other hand, the World Band and its staff are clearly prohibited from interfering in socio-political affairs of its member states. Mr. Firouzmandi concluded that, despite the aforementioned justifications, the World Bank has an international legal character and this very character could be a cornerstone for responsibility and rights. A question and answer session was the closing session. In the closing session, Dr. Ansari summarized the discussions and praised the professors and students efforts in the workshop and expressed his gratefulness to the NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity and hoped for more similar sessions and workshop in the future. Certificates were given to the participants at the end of the workshop.


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International Seminar on Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education

(1-2 July 2012, Azad University, Tabriz ( Iran) )

This was the first event held outside of Tehran by the NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity. The seminar was organized in response to the particular requirements of developing countries to advance their policies and practices in human rights and humanitarian law education.

Organized by:NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in Cooperation with: Swinburne

University of Technology- Australia, the ICRC ,Islamic Human Rights Commission, Irish Centre

for Human Rights (National University of Ireland-Galway), Iranian National Committee of

IHL, Azad University of Tabriz and some other governmental organizations in Tabriz

Fifteen lecturers were invited to attend seven panels and give their lectures to an audience of about 200 people in Shahriar Conference hall in Azad University – Tabriz ( the Capital of Province of East Azarbayjan- Iran) . The non- Iranian lecturers who attended the seminar were: Dr. Nina Burridge (Faculty of Art and Social Sciences at the Technical University of Sydney-Australia), Ms. Stephani Rinaldi (The UN relief and work agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East in Amman), Dr. SU Ming Khoo ( National University of Ireland, Galway), Professor Linda Briskman (the Institute for Social Research at the Swinburne University of Technology- Australia), Mr. Darkov Darkov Jordanov (Civil Society Advisor to the ICRC, Geneva), Mr. Sukhdave Singh Juganda Singh (ICRC headquarters in Beijing) and Dr. Toh Wah Seng (Pedagogical expert, Batu Lintang Teachers’ Training Institute and advisor to the ICRC in Malaysia) .

The Iranian lecturers who attended the program were: Dr. Naser Ghorbannia ( Mofid University, Qom) , Dr. Hossein Sharifi Taraz Kouhi, Dr. Bagher Ansari ( Director of UNESCO Chair at Shahid Beheshti University) , Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Meghdadi (Mofid University, Qom), Dr. Saeed Mansouri (Iranian National Committee of IHL), Dr. Zarafshan (Director of the Research and Educational Planning Organization at Iranian Ministry of Education), Mr. Dastgheib (center for Islamic studies and LHL in Qom) and Dr. Kamran Hashemi ( Director of NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity).

A brief review of the seven panels will be given in the following pages.

Report of the Seminar


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Opening Ceremony

The program opened on reciting some verses of the Holy Quran after which the representatives of the organizing institutes bid welcome to the audience and invitees. Through reading a verse from the holy Quran1 Dr. Kamran Hashemi in his opening speech pointed out the lofty position of human rights in the rich Islamic culture. He described human rights education as conducive to creating cultural platforms for the developing of human rights in the society and also maintained that this platform could be built only by virtue of rich cultural reserves and endogenous cultural trends in every society. He also added that the seminar on Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education seeks to define and clarify the methods for education and culture-building in the field of human rights which is consistent with endogenous culture. He held that it is possible to enjoy the potentials and dynamics of these cultures to enhance human rights culture.

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First Panel: Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Priorities and Challenges

This session opened on a lecture by Professor Linda Briskman. The lecture’s topic was “Challenging Racism through Human Rights Education”. She used the Australian case study to address the question of how to cope with racism and maintained that racism and xenophobia is not created by individuals but by the powers (governments). She added that the rights of the natives and immigrants are not enshrined in any Australian law and maintained that the feeling of inclusion into a society is integral to multiculturalism. “The fact that the immigrants and Muslims are told how to behave indicates that we have not accepted other cultures” she added. So far our approach has been sort of a cultural simulation rather than honoring other cultures.

The other relevant factor is social justice and the need for equal access for all individuals.

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We have devised a body under the name of The Program for Human Rights Education to be incorporated in the educational system. In these educational bodies the immigrants and natives backgrounds are included. It is also important to engage the human emotions and inclinations in the process and it is ultimately to figure out how to reconcile with those who bear apartheid thoughts.

The next speaker was Mr. Dastgheib. He held that Humanitarian Law is based on human emotions and morality which ultimately leads to convergence. He added that war has been banned in the twentieth century whereas it used to be considered a natural right before ,while war is forbidden in Islam in any form. More capacities and potential could be made, if the humanitarian law discussion could break away from narrow mindedness and tight frameworks and a humanitarian network consisted of an assembly of jurisprudents and jurist could be constructive in this respect.

Second Panel: Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Structural and Content Resources

The session opened on a lecture under the title of “Fundamental Human Essentials in Process of General Human Rights Education: Emphasizing on Cultural Diversity” by Dr. Sharifi Tarazkouhi who mentioned that human rights education is a variable which is affected by many different phenomena. Through increasing human rights awareness, accountability will increase and that will lead to loosening of social attachments and ultimately enhances mutual understanding and active participation. Observing these essentials will 1- let us consider other people and respect them and 2- reduce the abuse of rights. The two teachings mentioned here will provide us with a package to teach us how to live collectively.

The next speaker was Dr. Bagher Ansari who gave a lecture entitled “Cultural Diversity and Educational Materials and


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Content, from International Human Rights Law Perspective”. He maintained two ways for teaching the content of human rights education; first to incorporate human rights in various courses such as history and social sciences and second to assign a distinct course on human rights.

He added that there are challenges in the way of human rights education: 1- conceptual misunderstanding, for example, distinguishing human rights from citizenship rights, natural rights or constitutional rights, 2- an interpretational perspective without observing local and national considerations, 3- considering the costs of human rights education signifying that the language of human rights is a platform for protesting, demanding and criticizing and may engage students in contradictions.

Third Panel: Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education

Dr. Toh Wah Seng gave a lecture on “Exploring the Humanitarian Law (EHL) in the Schools: Goals, Content and Methodology”. Then

Mr. Sukhdave Singh Juganda gave a lecture entitled “Implementation of EHL in Asia: Focus on NAM member countries.”

Fourth Panel: Cultural Diversity and Humanitarian Law Education

The second day of the seminar started upon the opening of the fourth panel. This session started with a lecture given by Mr. Darko Jordanov, under the title of “Mini EHL, A Tool for Humanitarian Education”. He held that for an educational tool to be suitable and functional must have two characteristics: 1- relevance, 2- manageability. Assuming that education is a tree, this tree would yield fruits like peace education and teaching the values. Global education and Mini EHL for the school offers a relevant and manageable human rights course for the school and five hours would suffice to teach it in five section: 1- Perspectives on Humanitarian Law 2- Fundamental Principles 3- Comparing Humanitarian Law and Human Rights 4- Humanitarian Law Violations 5- Reaction and Punishing the violations of Humanitarian Law.


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The next lecturer was Dr. Zarafshan, who expounded human rights education from the educational systems of Iran’s point of view. He declared that the pedagogical planners face three questions: to teach what, to whom and how. In this regard, there are about a hundred concepts defined for the educational system to deal with. The priorities should be identified based on the needs of the country. Two documents have been devised in the educational system in recent years. As well as defining the criteria for merit in these documents, an attempt has been made to regulate the individual relationship with God, with self and the genesis on the whole.

The other lecturer of this session was Dr. Saeed Mansouri who gave a lecture on Humanitarian Law and Islamic Culture and cast a quick glance on the activities of the Iranian National Committee of IHL. He mentioned that the Committee has a secretariat at the Iranian Red Crescent Society and has published several textbooks, held moot courts and has so far organized workshops in 17 provinces. He held that there is huge potential for teaching humanitarian law in Islam and it has been suggested that a university major be created under the title of Humanitarian Law.

Fifth Panel: Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education: Potential Risks, Solutions and Goals

“Cooperating for Imperfect Justice, the Beautiful Risk of Education for Human Rights” was the topic of the opening lecture of this session given by Dr. Su Ming Khoo She mentioned that some consider the imperfect justice as a threat to human rights, whereas speaking of perfect human

rights, it seems that we are far away from achieving it and it more seems like an ideal. There the word imperfect is more proper here cause it matches the reality better. The question remains that: does perfectionism contribute to making the condition better or the movement will stop? In the Cambodia Court it was held that perfectionism is the enemy of justice. We should see how we can approach justice. Education is a risky business and we must be prepared to embrace loads of questions and challenges when we embark on this affair.

The next lecture was Dr. Mohammad Meghdadi whose lecture topic was “Reviewing the Role of Legal Clinics in Human Rights Education. He said that the legal clinical method enjoyed a proper level of cultural flexibility. This method that has been used at Mofid University of Qom, is based on cultural values. There are for educational elements in this method: 1-procurability 2- accessibility 3- acceptability and adaptability which sustain the education. The legal clinic is a people based institution that has been established at the side of the Law Faculty and by means of its technical and legal expertise and with the help of the students gives gratuitous services to people. Through this method a law student encounters real life situations and learns interactive techniques and improves his or her sense of responsibility.


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Sixth Panel: Islamic Thought and the Importance of Human Rights Education and Humanitarian Law

The opening lecture of this session was by Dr. Naser Ghorbannia under “Islamic Thoughts Potentials for Enriching and Promoting Human Rights Education and Philanthropic Values”. He mentioned that in the year 1947 the anthropology institute of the United States issued a declaration that doomed the idea of the universality of human rights to fail. Cultural diversity demands the acceptance of provision right in the conventions. Although diversity of cultures is respectable, however human rights aims at reforming some of the cultures, traditions and customs that are deemed as harmful. One of the responsibilities of the religions is in this sphere. There are many cases of human rights in Islam that could be identified and presented through research and studying such as “don’t want for others what you don’t want for yourself”. Nevertheless, it cannot be said all the aspects of human rights is approved by Islam and there are

some conflicting spheres where the matter of disagreement could be resolved though discussion and dialogue. But in the case of humanitarian law and cultural diversity there are many teachings is Islam such as the ban on the use of poisons and toxics for poisoning the water sources.

During this session the report of the Iranian Islamic Human Rights Commission on “the Religions and Human Rights Education” was read by the representative of the Commission.

Seventh Panel: Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education: Experiences and Case Studies

Dr. Nina Burridge opened this session with a lecture on ”Promoting Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education in Australian Schools: Intersecting Pathways to Socially Joint Communities”. According to her until the 70’s the non-English inhabitants of Australia were not included in the body of laws and just the whites had the right to education. She mentioned that in recent


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decade the bulk of the problems are about the refugees. The people should be educated on how to treat the minorities and it is important to rear citizens who respect justice and learn to do so in their childhood games.

The last lecturer of the session was Ms. Stefanie Rinaldi whose lecture was entitled “Sen’s Capability Approach and Human Rights Education: the Special Case of Refugee Camp Situations. Ms. Rinaldi Mentioned that this approach was based on the Sen’s theory in which equal weight is given to both the opportunities and potentials. Every individual must be able to determine the way of his or her life. She mentioned that

human rights education has three parts: 1- Education about Human Rights, 2-Education by Virtue of Human Rights and 3- Education for Human Rights, among which the third part is intended by human rights education and signifies the situation in which the individuals are empowered and can take a more active role in social participation. Human rights education promotes the support for the refugees and through empowering the individuals it is possible to obtain the economic rights of the people.

At the end of this two-day seminar, a thanksgiving ceremony was held and the certificates were handed to the participants.


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The Second International Summer School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

(9-11 July 2012, School of International Relations, Tehran)

Organized by:NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in Cooperation with:

School of International Relations- Iran

Swinburne University of Technology- Australia

Items of Discussion:•The Relationship between Cultural Diversity and Human Rights;•Historical and Current Contribution of Cultures to the Enrichment of the Concept of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law;•Cultural Limitations to the Implementation of Human Rights;•Cultural Rights; •Rights to Cultural Identity; •Cultural Values and Human Rights; •Human Rights and Ethics;•Protection of Human Rights in Multicultural Communities;•Universality and Relativism of Human Rights;•The Question of Indivisibility of Human Rights; •Specific Human Rights Issues in Developing Countries.


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Day 1: Monday 9 JulyIntroductory Session

08.30-9:300Welcoming addresses

Dr. Mostafa Boroujerdi - Dean, School of International Relations

Mrs. Mansoureh Sharifi Sadr- General Director, Human Rights and Women Department, MFA

Professor Linda Briskman- Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Dr. Kamran Hashemi - Director, NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

9:30- 11:00

Introducing the Summer School Programme

Dr. Janet Blake- Shahid Beheshti University Prof . Linda Briskman - Swinburne University of TechnologyDr. Kamran Hashemi - NAMCHRCD

11:00 - 11:30Break

Panel 1: International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law

11:30-12:30Dr. Alireza Deyhim- University Lecturer International Crimes and Responsibility of States

12.30-14.00 Lunch Break

14:00- 15:00

Dr. Pouria Askary- ICRC, Iran Introduction to International Humanitarian Law

15:00- 15:30Break

Panel II: Aspects of Multiculturalism

15:30- 16:30Dr. Janet Blake- Shahid Beheshti UniversityAspects of Cultural Diversity - Intangible Cultural Heritage, Diversity of Cultural Expressions and Linguistic Diversity

16:30 -17:30 Workshop Dr. Janet Blake- Shahid Beheshti University Prof . Linda Briskman - Swinburne University of Technology

The Agenda


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Day 2: Tuesday 10 JulyPanel III: Human Rights and Ethics

8:30 – 10: 30Dr. Reza Mousazadeh – School of International Relations Human Rights and Moral Values

Dr. Seyed Ali Mahmoudi – University Lecturer Utilitarian- Deontological Morality” and the Real Politic

10:30- 11:00Break Panel IV: Women, Children and Family

11:00- 13:00Prof. Nasrin Mosaffa- Tehran University Cultural Diversity and Human Rights of Women

Dr. Mahya Saffarneya- Imam Sadeq University Family Law System in Modern World: A Multicultural Approach.

13:00- 14:00Lunch Break

14:00-15:00Dr. Kamran Hashemi- NAMCHRCDRights of the Child and Muslim Legal Traditions

15:00- 15:30Break

Panel V: Human Rights, Development and Developing Countries

15:30- 17:30 Dr. Seyed Mohaamd Javad Sajjadpour- – School of International RelationsHuman Rights and Developing Countries

Dr. S.A Vahid Gharavi- School of International RelationsHuman Rights and Development

Day 3: Wednesday 11 JulyPanel VI: Universality and Cultural

Relativism

8:30- 10:30 Mr. Mostafa Alaei - MFAThe relationship between cultural diversity and human rightsDr. Javad Zarif - School of International RelationsHuman Rights: Universality and Cultural Relativism 10:30- 11:00Break

Panel VII: Group Rights and Minority Rights: Right to Cultural Identity

11:00- 13:00Prof. Linda Briskman - Swinburne University of TechnologyConducting research with culturally diverse groups: Limits and prospects

Dr. Kamran Hashemi – NAMCHRCD Right of Minorities to Identity: Muslims’ Experience 13:00- 14:00Lunch Break

Panel VIII: Regional Human Rights Systems in the Developing World

14:00- 16:00Dr. Timothy F. Yerima- Kogisate Universiy - Nigeria African human Right system in comparative analysis with the European and the American system of human rightDr. Kamran Hashemi - NAMCHRCDRegional Human Rights System in the Muslim World 16:00- 16:30 Break16:30- 17:30General Discussion and Closing of the Summer Schoo


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Text of Address by, Her Excellency, Mrs. Sharifi Sadr,

Director General for Human Rights and Women Department ,

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran

First, I would like to welcome all the Iranian and foreign guests to this Second International Summer School on human rights and cultural diversity and wish this event organized by NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in cooperation with School of International Relations and Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology- Australia a big success.As human beings, all of us have been raised within a particular culture, and have inherited different subjective and objective elements from the very culture that come to the surface in our perceptions and attitudes.

Such a plurality of identity rooted in culture and social, political, religious and historical background of each society has also been approved according to Islamic thoughts and the holy Koran, where God the almighty explicitly reiterates :( O’ people, we created you from males and females, and divided you into tribes and groups in order to make you understand)1

Accepting this plurality of ethnic groups and tribes doubtlessly comes with accepting its related requirements and necessities, which is recognition of human dignity for all as well as

1- The holy Quran, 49:13


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respect for different cultural/social identities. In the holy Koran, human beings are clearly considered as owners of a God-given dignity2. This kind of plurality and diversity is of course for a particular purpose, which is driving us to stick to moral values, as well as piousness. Koran explicitly states after recognition of diversity and plurality that the most honored person before God is the most pious one3. In addition, in Islamic teachings the ultimate all-encompassing development of human rights relies on a proper culture as well as correct cultural doctrines. This statement implies that developing various dimensions of human rights is not possible without having a correct perception of the universe, mankind, human life and human capacities along with moral values and God-given rationality, in addition to proper legal principles.Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear ColleaguesAs usual, I.R.IRAN supports all the wise, sympathetic and politically unbiased endeavors to develop human rights on a global 2-« And surely We have honored the children of Adam, and We carry them in the land and the sea, and We have given them of the good things, and We have made them to excel by an appropriate excellence over most of those whom We have created ». The holy Quran, 17:70.3-The holy Quran, 49:13

basis. To this end, it particularly encourages activation of academic institutions and civil entities to support the influential presence of different cultures in developing human rights. Such entities, can certainly make a difference by managing to strengthen the required cultural basis for complying with human rights from bottom upwards, in other words from the main body of the society, and not by dictating certain criteria and principles from above without preparing the necessary grounds and socio-cultural capacity, in a mandatory way.As formation of NAM in 1961 was a result of efforts made to prevent global political and cultural domination, naturally the organization is trying to play its role in preserving cultural diversity and boosting human rights in a proper way. To this end, it is necessary for this Summer School and all similar academic events to study different dimensions of human cultural rights as well as concerns of developing communities on issues related to human rights, also in the framework of joint entities like NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity.Thank you


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Book Launch Alongside of the 16th Tehran NAM SummitThe First volume of

The NAM Yearbook on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity(26- 31 August 2012)

The Centre was honoured to launch the first volume of “the NAM Yearbook on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity”, on the occasion of the 16th NAM Summit in Tehran. The Yearbook containing 28 academic articles and in about 800 pages, was available on CDs and hard copies for the guests, along with the Centre’s 2011 Annual report in the document Centre of the Summit


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In September 2012 the NAM Summit will be held in Tehran and the Centre is honored to launch a digital volume of its first year book, entitled : “ NAM Yearbook on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity”. The volume contains 28 selected papers submitted to the three academic events held in 2011 by the Centre . The Volume is divided into the themes of: Cultural Diversity and Constructions of Human Rights; Islamic Culture and Human Rights; Responses to Conflict Situations; Traditional Knowledge and Human Rights; Contemporary issues; and Country Case Studies. However, one of the strengths of the collection is the interlocking of themes that is apparent in many of the papers. An overview of the contents follows.

Cultural Diversity and Constructions of Human Rights

In advancing theoretical understandings and debates on universalism and cultural relativism, Louis E. Wolcher refers to the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity that implies that the ‘universal’ is more precious than the ‘diverse’. He refers to the liberal preference for individual rights and asks how it can be reconciled with the ‘illiberalism’ that may be necessary for cultural self-preservation. Wolcher contends that to advance debates it is necessary to examine concrete cases that are likely to disrupt the unity of the normative field. If the international law of human rights counts the human family as one, then the notion of cultural differences reconstitutes this one into many.

Michele Brunelli provides a theoretical analysis of the question of universal and inalienable rights that rises above cultural traditions of groups. We are taken through the journey of the decrees of history that eventually resulted in the transition to transcultural precepts of rights that sanctioned the universality of rights in modern day declarations. He raises some problematic questions arising from this.

Next, Camilo Pérez-Bustillo turns to grassroots movements in Latin America that construct alternative counter-hegemonic paradigms of human rights as a way of addressing tensions. He discusses his ideas through the lens of people movements of groups excluded from full recognition of their rights, with particular attention to Indigenous peoples. He asserts that contemporary efforts to develop counter-hegemonic paradigms of global justice and human rights must include an examination of previous struggles and needs that remain unmet.

Despite the fact that the rights of minorities are generally more secure than those of the majorities, Riaz Ahmad argues that global endeavors inspire some hope for a ‘dignified human existence’. Taking us through theoretical discussion, international norms and the post-colonial case study of India, the author advocates the importance of the global movement for minority rights while recognizing the limitations relating to specific contexts.

An Overview of the Yearbook:


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Islamic Culture and Human Rights

Kamran Hashemi examines the extent to which Islam might contribute to the internal promotion and protection of human rights. He refers to the approach in the developing world of ‘cultural-religious oriented approach’ as a way towards human rights fulfilment. The paper surveys traditional Muslim law and its relevance to the concept of rights. The author points out that the both the OIC and the Arab League, the largest intergovernmental organizations comprised of Muslim states, avoid referring to controversial or ambiguous areas between religious traditions and human rights.

Hajar Azari and Abdollah Bagheri refer to how in Islam, wisdom or intellect is one of the greatest gifts that humankind can enjoy although scholars have different views on its place in Islamic law. Particular attention is given to the question of protection of women victims’ rights in the context of the Islamic legal system where, the authors assert, that applying the ability of intellect to protect the rights of women victims is an important method to guarantee their rights.

The paper by Morteza Yusefi Rad claims that International Humanitarian Law in Islam enjoys a strong basis and stability, arising from both theoretical and practical principles of Islam. In the chapter we are led through a series of theoretical and practical Islamic principles that reach the conclusion that the principles of humanitarian law in Islam, which are applied to all of humankind in wartime, not only enjoy an innate and conscience-based approval but are also supported religiously.

Mykhaylo Yakubovych explains how an

exegetical tradition (tafsir) still plays an important role in Islamic religious outlook. Based on a study of Arabic texts, he points to the mutual influence of modernity and Islamic religious tradition. He shows how Islamic culture benefits through tafsir relations between modern law principles and Quranic teachings, as a way of enriching cultural experiences in order to serve humanity.

The topic of freedom of religion as a human right occurs in both the Western world and in Muslim communities. Jointly, Valeollah Ansari and Abdollah Bagheri conducted a comparison on freedom of religion between Islamic laws and international law. They concluded that after studying Islamic principles that came centuries before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Islam explicitly addresses the principle of freedom of religion and prohibited every type of compulsion and coercion in religion.

Responses to Conflict Situations

A contribution by Michel Veuthey advocates the importance of International Humanitarian Law. He outlines the different ways in which humanitarian law can be expressed and argues that, by its very nature, humanitarian law aims through acts of humanity, to preserve the survival of humankind, to ensure that ‘civilized’ life is still possible and to maintain the conditions for a return to peace. He presents the role of humanitarian law in restoring peace as opening the possibility of dialogue and addressing specific humanitarian problems.

Issa Ahmadabadi states that as we got closer to the twentieth century the ‘just war theory’


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became more diluted. With the realization that conflicts and wars have always been present, attempts have been made to regulate wars and armed conflicts through rules that order or avoid inhuman acts of hostility. Using an Islamic framework, areas of international documents are analyzed including children, women, the elderly, the infirm, and medical personnel, concluding that although war is permitted in some circumstances, targeting those who are not involved is against the Shariah and prohibited.

The field of transitional justice is interrogated by Thomas Obel Hansen, who asserts that there is a need to update aspects of transitional justice theory, a field that emerged around what is described as the third wave of democratization. In arguing for a more nuanced approach that goes beyond the sole normative framework of liberalization and democratization as the end product of transitional justice, the paper argues for a differentiated normative framework. Illustrative examples are presented to distinguish between modes transitional justice in different contexts.

Traditional Knowledge and Human Rights

Using a starting point that traditional knowledge is the cornerstone of the cultures of Indigenous peoples and local communities, Hassan Soleimani explores the contemporary question of intellectual property protection, referring to instruments and forums that advance this discussion. In doing so, the paper suggests that current international arrangements on intellectual property do not provide sufficient protections for the traditional knowledge holder from abuse by others.

By exploring Vietnam’s traditional values, Nghia Hoang Van demonstrates how ancient traditions can inform the development of human rights. She points out that traditional Vietnamese culture incorporated the ideas of human rights that are enshrined in international instruments. The arguments are advanced by tracing history and values from the 10th century onwards, differentiating between the traditions, and emphasizing the specific contribution of Confucianism to shaping modern Vietnam and the evolution of universal human rights.

Ways in which the rights of Indigenous peoples to their cultural heritage and practices have been denied, are outlined by Linda Briskman. She highlights the issue of the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities that occurred in Australia and other nations. To illustrate that practices aimed at removing the rights to culture are systemic, she examines themes apparent in two further examples of asylum seekers and Gypsies and Travellers.

From an anthropological perspective, Firouz Gaini explores the question of the cultural rights of children as part of a larger debate on the universality of human rights. By comparing empirical data from different parts of the world, the paper focuses on the consequences for children of human rights violations that impact on culture. The author posits that the best way to protect cultural diversity is by defending children with cultural rights as a shield against culturally homogenizing processes of globalization. Children’s rights are about cultural emancipation and the elimination of ethnic discrimination that afflicts many children.


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Contemporary Issues

The paper by Su-ming Khoo explores a capabilities approach and its potential contribution to the ground beyond the Universalism and Cultural Relativism debate, which has dominated the conversation about culture and human rights. Drawing on extensive literature sources, she examines the prospects and limits of the work of capability theorists in forging the connection between education and capability. She explores in depth the merging of the human rights and the capabilities approach.

Taking an innovative approach, Soumitra Subinaya uses her paper to provide a platform for people in India whose voices have been suppressed. Applying the concept of empowerment through legal literacy she presents three case studies from Orissa – tribal people, transgender people and women. She suggests that a more human rights friendly and humanitarian concept of justice is enabling people to realize their freedom through accountable and transparent modes of economic liberty delivery, with legal literacy as an enabler of justice and freedom.

Jakub Kryś draws on examples from a number of countries to explore the question of the meaning of multiculturalism and the challenges that confront the notion, with some voices proclaiming that multiculturalism cannot co-exist with fundamental individual human rights. Adopting John W. Berry’s framework of intercultural relations, we are led through a range of differing approaches to multiculturalism.

Samireh Ahmadi and Faraz Firouzimandi use the case study of the right to social security as an Economic, Social and Cultural Right within a social market economy. Taking us through international legal protections and historical processes, the authors turn to the question of the social market economy and its approach to questions of social justice, rights and responsibilities, solidarity and social balance. They apply their analysis to the United Kingdom over a ten-year period.

In their joint paper, Mohammad-Javad Javid and Esmat Shahmoradi explore the question of the relationship between culture and nature that they contend has been an issue of extensive debate. They argue that the invariant core within humans is their very nature, and that cultures can be universal and philanthropic as long as they are established based on human’s nature and essence.

Hosein Sartipi suggests in his paper that although there has been progress in promoting human rights since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, many challenges remain. His paper poses many questions and debates set within the context of human security, the economy, cultural diversity and peace.

Country Case Studies

In describing human rights violations against North Indian migrants, Dadarao C. Kirtiraj speaks of the insecurity and social exclusion of a group of in-migrants from other states in India to Pune City who move to seek better opportunities. The paper is derived from an analysis of research collected


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from the marginalized people discussed. Although the Indian Constitution demands non-discrimination, the research reveals that discrimination has been commonplace among this migrant group.

Presenting a challenge to individualistic Western notions of human rights, Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani discusses the advancement of understandings that are collectivist and focus on duties and responsibilities. It is suggested that the concept of human dignity is more appropriate to Malaysia, as it is embedded in the local communitarian culture and values in Malaysia. The contribution of Islam to the debate on human dignity in Malaysia is traced as the sources of human dignity are rooted in religious perspectives. The author uses topical examples relating to freedom of religion, moral policing, including legal rulings, and free speech, to apply the understandings.

According to Abul Bashar Mohammad Abu Noman, the Bangladesh judiciary shies away from consideration of international law in domestic courts in order to ensure that the common law system remains loyal to traditions. In arguing for more incorporation of international human rights law domestically, the author points out that although Bangladesh is little different from other common law countries there are a number of contextual factors that inhibit the adoption of international norms. He proposes ways forward for the enforcement of international human rights law in Bangladesh.

From an Indian perspective of a country with a myriad of minorities, Dinesh Kumar describes the importance of the issue of

cultural identities that have also been subject to controversy. Through a summary of historical processes and legal findings and provisions, Kumar provides evidence of the safeguards in place to protect minority interests.

The paper by Nadaraja Kannan posits that Myanmar’s human rights record has been deplorable, with large sections of the population subject to great sufferings including displacement and imprisonment. He traces the movement for democratic reforms before turning to questions of a ‘roadmap’ for change following the 2010 elections, as well as other human rights developments that have gone alongside the transition from half a century of military rule to civilian rule. He concludes optimistically that the current is now being steered in a reform direction of democratic rule.

The low social status of women in Tajikastan is discussed by Ozoda Nurmatova and Gulbahor Jumaboeva. They trace the developments for women from the Soviet era, when women’s participation increased, to the Civil War that saw a return to traditional roles. Even now, rates of education of women in rural areas are low and the authors highlight the traditional barriers inhibiting the attainment of rural females from full school education. Through interviews conducted with four young females in the region of Garm, a sensitive area in terms of tradition, religion and security, the authors present information on the barriers to the enjoyment of the right to education and active citizen engagement. They conclude with suggesting cooperation with religious leaders in order to uproot social barriers.


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International Fall School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

(17- 21 September 2012, Geneva)

In the one week course the participants had the opportunity to participate to the 21th Session of Human Rights Council in the UN, interact with experts in the field and related UN and the ICRC high ranking officials

Organized by:NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

in collaboration with:

UNESCO Chair of Bergamo University- Italy, UNESCO Chair of La Rioja University - Spain,

Collège Universitaire Henry Dunant- Switzerland


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MONDAY 17

9.30 – 10.00 Welcome addressMichele Brunelli, UNESCO Chair of Bergamo University

Kamram Hashemi, NAM Centre for Human Rights and CulturalDiversity

Michel Veuthey, Président, Collège Universitaire HenryDunant

10.00 – 11.00 Michel VeutheyCollège Universitaire Henry Dunant,International Institute of Humanitarian Law

Introduction

11.00 – 11.15 Coffee-break

11.15 – 12.15 Kamran Hashemi NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural DiversityHuman Rights, Cultural Diversity and the Muslim World

12.15-13.00 Debate 13.00 – 15.00 Lunch (IOM, cafeteria)

15.00-16.30 Pierre Yves Fux, Minister, Deputy Head, Asian Division, DFAE, SwitzerlandThe international system of human rights

17.00 Debate17.30 – 19.30 A walk through to international Geneva19.30 Dinner at Bains des Pâquis

The AgendaInternational Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO)


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TUESDAY 18 NGO Lounge, Palais des Nations9.30 – 10.30 Accreditations at Pregny Gate

10.30 – 11.30 Paul Dembinski Professor, Fribourg University, Director of Observatoire de la Finance

Economy, Global Governance and Human Rights11.30 – 12.00 Debate12.00 – 12.30 Paul Gaullier

Researcher, Collège Universitaire Henry Dunant Presentation of the order of the day of the Human Right Council session

12.45 Lunch (Cafeteria Palais des Nations) 14.00 – 15.00 Visit to the Palais des Nations15.00 – 18.00 Participation to the Session of the Human Right Council (21th Session)

WEDNESDAY 19 International Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO)9.30 – 11.00 Michel Veuthey

Introduction to International Humanitarian Law

11.00 – 11.15 Coffee-break11.15 – 13.00 Michel Veuthey

Practical case study on International Humanitarian Law

13.00 Lunch14.30 – 16.00 Giuliano Comba

Head, UPR Unit, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights The Universal Periodic Review

THURSDAY 20 International Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO)9.30-10.45 Johanne Bouchard

Coordinator of Programs, Collège Universitaire Henry DunantPractical case study on Cultural Rights

10.45 - 11.00 Coffee-break11.00 – 13.00 Cultural Diversity and Human Rights:

Clearing the GroundMichele Brunelli, UNESCO Chair of Bergamo University

Johanne Bouchard, Fribourg UNESCO Chair, Coordinator of Programs,Collège Universitaire Henry Dunant

Kamram Hashemi, NAM Center for Human Rights and CulturalDiversity

Mylène Bidault, Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights


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13.00 Lunch (OIM Cafeteria)Transfer to the Palais des Nations

15.00 – 16.30Side-eventSalle XXI Paleis desNations

The NAM and the International Human Rights System after the XVISummit

17.00 – 18.00 Participation to the Session of the Human Right Council (21th Session)

FRIDAY 21 NGO Lounge9.30 - 10.45 Paul Gaullier

Researcher, Collège Universitaire Henry Dunant Presentation of the website of the High Commissioner of HumanRights

10.45 - 11.00 Coffee-break

11.00 - 13.00 Participation to the Session of the Human Right Council (21th Session)

15.00 - 16.00 Briefing on the Council of Human Rights sessionAnne-Marie Colandrea, Researcher, OIDEL

20.30 Official dinner


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The Second International Conference on Human Rights and Cultures: Legal Cultures in Support the Jurisprudence of

Humanity (12-14 November 2012, Tehran)

Law reflects the culture of a given society, and thus reception in another culture is not possible, because law is a product of that society and of its particular attributes or idiosyncrasies, like other institutions such as language, family, religion and so on. The world’s legal diversity is a source of strength. More cooperation between legal practitioners and scholars from different cultures, exchanges of experience and judicial training, cause to the strength and the mutual trust among these different legal cultures. We can indeed bring these different legal cultures together without eliminating the differences.

Organized by:The Non-Aligned Movement Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity ( NAMCHRCD)

in Cooperation with:

the ICRC,

Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI – Galway,

Iranian National Committee of Humanitarian Law, and

Centre for Women and Family Affairs, I. R. Iran Presidential Office

Law reflects the culture of a given society, and thus reception in another culture is not possible, because law is a product of that society and of its particular attributes or idiosyncrasies, like other institutions such as language, family, religion and so on. The world>s legal diversity is a source of strength. More cooperation between legal practitioners and scholars from different cultures, exchanges of experience and judicial training, cause to the strength and the mutual trust among these different legal cultures. We can indeed bring these different legal

cultures together without eliminating the differences.

The way legal cultures con-tribute to the right to a fair

trial and to the administra-tion of justice in a norma-tive and practical manner, requires further exploration.

Under the heading “Unify-ing Diverse Cultures towards the Enrichment of the Uni-versality of Human Rights “, the Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity (NAM-CHRCD) held its second in-ternational conference on human rights and cultures under the title of “Legal Cul-tures in Support of the Juris-prudence of Humanity”, an academic forum for scholars and practitioners all over the world.

The aim was to arrive at a shared idea, experience and understanding of the

«Truly, the jurisprudence of humanity began millennia ago; to ignore this in the teaching and doing of law and jurisprudence is to squander the common heritage of mankind»


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historical role and contemporary capabilities of public and private legal cultures on the following sub-topics:

- Shaping the ideas or concepts behind human rights law and humanitarian law principles on issues related to right to fair trial, such as, equality, non-discrimination and presumption of innocence;

- Criminal Justice, Criminal law, Criminal policy, Crimes and Punishments;

-Family law and laws protecting women, children, minorities, the disabled, the elderly, poor, migrant workers and other vulnerable; - Human rights law and humanitarian law jurisprudence;- Sanctions in human rights law and law of armed conflicts.


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Agenda

Monday, 12 November 2012 Time Speaker Topic

9:00-10 :30

Opening

His Excellency Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, Foreign Minister of the I.R. Iran Ms. Maryam Mojtahaedzadeh, the President’s Advisor and Head of Center for Women and Family Affairs Ms. Mansureh Sharifi Sadr, Director General of Human Rights andWomen Affairs Department, MFAMr.ohammad Shahabeddin Mohammadi Araghi , Under Secretary General for International Affairs and IHL , Iranian Red CrescentMr. Pierre Ryter, Head of the ICRC’s Mission in Iran Dr. Kathleen Cavanaugh, Irish Center for Human Rights, NationalUniversity of Ireland, Galway Dr. Kamran Hashemi, Director of NAM Centre for Human Rightsand Cultural Diversity

10:30-11:00 Break

11:00 -12:00

Panel 1: Introduction

Kamran Hashemi An Introduction to the “Cultures inSupport of Humanity”

Michele Brunelli Jurisprudence of Humanity as a HumanRights Tool: A Proposed Action

12:00- 13:00

Panel 2: Fair Trial

Bahman Akbari &Zahra Akbari

Islamic Thought Capacity Regarding Sup-port of Humanitarian Judicial Justice

Javad Tahmasebi Evaluation of the New Criminal Procedure Bill

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:00

Panel 3 : Fair Trial

Robynn L. Allveri Protocol No. 24: Fact or Fiction for EURoma?

Mohammad-JavadJavid &

Esmat Shahmoradi

Access to Justice in the National Courts,with a View to International Instruments

Kathleen Cavanaugh Faith in Democracy? Freedom of Religion in a EuropeanContext

Jawad Fakhr Tusi Two Alternative Solutions for Temporary Detention and Recourse to a Jury, with the Aim of Maximal Protection of Human Rights in the Charge

16:00-16:30 Break

16:30 -18:00

Panel 4: International Humanitarian Law(IHL)

K.C. Sowmya Principle of Distinction in Law of Armed Conflict and the Role of PMSCs: A CriticalAppraisal

Supria Rao Protecting the Right to Education: The Need for New Norms to Protect Educational Institutions and Personnelfrom Attack

Srinivas Burra Changing Contours of the Legal Status of International Terrorism: Implications for Human Rights and InternationalHumanitarian Law


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Tuesday, 13 November 2012Time

Speaker Topic

9-11

Panel 5 : Islam and InternationalHumanitarian Law

Angelika Schopp The ICRC>s Global Dialogue on Islamand IHL

Mohammad Ebrahimi The Historical Evolution of Humanitarian Law from a CulturalPerspective

Hussain Diba The Impact of Islamic ethics in support of International Humanitarian Law norms

Ahmad Moballaghi Protection of Medical Units during War Time from a Perspective of IslamicJurisprudence

11:00- 11:30 Break Break

11:30- 13:00

Panel 6 : Women andFamily

Fariba Hajiali Financial Rights of Wife

Irene Schneider Gender and Honor in the Iranian PenalCode of 1997

Mahya Saffarneya Humanity in Family; Morality or Law?

13:00-14:00 Lunch Lunch

14-16:00

Panel 7 : Women andFamily

Silvia Tellenbach Changes in the Conception of Family as Reflected in German Criminal Law

K. Elumalai Laws Protecting Women in a Culturally Diverse and Secular State India: Lessonfor Learning

Fereshteh Rouhafza

16:00-16:30 Break Break

16:30 -18:00

Panel 8 : Cultures Diversity andProtection of Vulnerable

Seyed Ali Mahmoudi Liberty, Critique, and Hate Speech

Mostafa A’laei Defamation of Religions, CulturalDiversity and Human Rights

Alireza Delkhosh Cultural Diversity as Common Heritageof Mankind

Kamran Hashemi Race, Religion, and Human Rights Struggle for Protection of VulnerablePeople

Wednesday, 14 November 2012Time

Speaker Topic

9:00- 10:30

Panel 9 : Culture of Peace

Reza Eslami Right to Culture and the Right to BeDifferent: Convergence or Divergence?

Janet Blake The Role of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in Building a Culture of Peace

Zahra Noparast Right of People to Peace


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10:30-11:00 Break Break

11:00-13:00

Panel 10 : Case Studies

Abul Bashar MohammadAbu Noman

National Human Rights Protecting Mechanisms in Pakistan: A CriticalAnalysis

Soumitra Subinaya & Mahdi Yousefi

International Humanitarian Law from the Perspective of the Lanjia Saoras, A Primitive Indian Tribe Untouched byMillennia of Civilizational Progress

Shahrzad Fouladvand The International Criminal Court (ICC)and the Rights of the Accused

Masoumeh Khosravi Human Rights situation in China: OrganHarvesting and People’s Beliefs

13:00-14:00 Lunch Lunch

14:00-15:30

Panel 11 : Women andChildren

Alireza Ahmadian Zarchi Removing the Dowry in Iranian Law Due to an Imbalance with the Laws ofShiaism

Abul Bashar MohammadAbu Noman

A Human Right-based Approach for Combating Trafficking in Women andChildren: Bangladesh Perspective

Nasrin Mosaffa Kefalat in the CRC

15:30-16 Break Break

16:00- 17:30

Panel 12 : Ethics andHumanity

S. M. Masum Billah Human Rights Education in Bangladesh:A Pro-poor Approach

Laura Galeotti Ethical Principles of international Cooperation Evaluated in Terms of the Effectiveness of Human Rights

Pouria Askary Modern International Law and theCulture of Humanity

17:3-18:00 Closing


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Text of Address by His Excellency Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran

in the Opening Ceremony of Conference

Assalam-o-Alaikum,

I am very pleased to attend, for a second time, this learned meeting of scholars, thinkers and experts who have dedicated themselves so enthusiastically to the very important and valuable cause of human rights and cultural diversity.

Being present among you, dear committed researchers, who are working with great vigor and energy to better safeguard and secure more effective respect for human rights and dignity keeps our hopes alive that there are still groups of thinkers in different fields of law and human sciences who are assiduously probing into the unknown or lesser known aspects of human nature with special focus on human needs and harms and also the necessity for protecting the mankind from the menaces raised by acquisitive tendencies in the world community.

Dear friends,

This valuable gathering is specially significant as it is being held at a time when the Islamic Republic of Iran was host, just in last August, to one of the greatest meetings of the heads of state and government and also the other top-ranking officials of 120 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement in which the leaders of this international body adopted very important decisions in different areas including protection of human rights and dignity which was duly reflected in the Final Declaration of the NAM 16th Summit.

In this document, the NAM member states not only renewed their commitment to the firm convictions of the founders of the movement concerning human rights but they also laid emphasis on the need to respect the beliefs, cultures and sanctities of different nations and peoples.

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

يا أيها الناس إنا خلقناكم من ذكر وأنثى وجعلناكم شعوبا وقبائل لتعارفوا

”O mankind !We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes ,that ye may know each other.“

(Al Hujurat)13/ )


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Also, in the fourth paragraph of the Final Declaration, the member states reiterated that human rights issues are to be dealt with through cooperation in a constructive, non-confrontational, non-selective, fair and equitable manner based on an objective balanced impartiality away from any political considerations.

Distinguished audience,

In spite of the numerous instruments and also the rich literature so far produced by the international community on the need for respecting the diverse mosaic

of the beliefs and cultures of the human community which is hailed, of course, as a good example of “common heritage of mankind”, much to our regret, we have been witnessing specially in recent years a wave of blatant sacrilegious acts against the beliefs and religions of other nations particularly Muslims with an over-one-billion-strong population who have suffered most from such hatred campaigns.

Insulting the beliefs of human societies is, undoubtedly, a flagrant violation of the fundamental human rights under the basic instruments of international law. And also

Dr. Salehi: Contribution of different cultures in determining the international norms and standards of human rights will undoubtedly prepare the ground for their more extensive participation in international human rights cooperation which, in turn, shall impart universal legitimacy and recognition to human rights..... Also, practically speaking, utilizing the rich sources of different cultures can facilitate significantly the process of localization of the modern concepts of human rights and their inclusion in the cultures of different societies.


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due to their inflammatory and provocative aspects they contain the elements of other types of crime and violence as well.

This huge campaign of sacrilege is waged against Muslims’ beliefs in spite of the fact that based on the sublime teachings of Islam all religions and human beliefs are respected and Muslims are not allowed to insult or hold in contempt the beliefs of other peoples (even those which are understood to be misguided).

Distinguished scholars,

A glance at the literary, mystical and religious literatures of different cultures demonstrates that invitation to equality and brotherhood, altruism and humanitarianism and avoidance of war, discrimination, violence and prejudices are among the most fundamental principles shared by all time-honored cultures and civilizations.

Human rights reflect the most noble ideals of humanity in their entirety. Hence, human rights, in view of their sublime value, can not be reduced to the level of positive laws enacted by human beings and be treated as such. Also, protection, implementation or promotion of human rights cannot certainly be claimed to be the monopoly of a small part of the international community. Rather, they are to be accepted and respected by all and a common platform is needed to be set to enable a universal dialogue among all states and nations to engage with equal rights in and contribute to such a joint endeavour for their universal recognition and respect.

There is no doubt that all nations and peoples across the globe in spite of their different cultural, historical and religious

backgrounds, characteristics and values share the universal concept of human rights. Recognition of plurality and diversity of cultures and ethnicities which has also been affirmed by the Holy Quran is meant to foster better understanding in human relations rather than create barriers to them.

Contribution of different cultures in determining the international norms and standards of human rights will undoubtedly prepare the ground for their more extensive participation in international human rights cooperation which, in turn, shall impart universal legitimacy and recognition to human rights and the use of the collective wisdom of a wider part of the international community will further enrich its contents. Also, practically speaking, utilizing the rich sources of different cultures can facilitate significantly the process of localization of the modern concepts of human rights and their inclusion in the cultures of different societies.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Building the proper conditions in which human rights will not remain only a slogan and will become a way of life and human dignity, too, will be turned from a “word on paper” into a “common practice” is a strategy which has been constantly pursued by honest human rights activists. Islamic Republic of Iran, too, relying on the sublime teachings of Islam, the cultural values of its nation and also the lofty goals and objectives of the Non-Aligned Movement which my country currently chairs will do its utmost to widen, to the extent possible, the scope of the activities of NAM in pursuit of its


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progressive human rights objectives. And, hence, it warmly welcomes any initiative or suggestion raised by dear scholars and thinkers for that very purpose.

At the end, I hope that the NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, as the only human rights institution associate to the NAM, through its continuous scholarly activities and also by organizing gatherings for exchange of views among scholars and thinkers such as the present one, can

provide the proper environment and also a platform for an inter-cultural human rights dialogue at the global level and also produce effective mechanisms for the participation of different cultures in the advancement and promotion of human rights both at the conceptual and practical levels and present them to the true and honest advocates and supporters of human rights and dignity in the world.

Thank you


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Distinguished Participants,

Human rights are rooted in the nature of human beings and thus indivisible from the very existence of this masterpiece of creation. For this reason, the dignity, value and exalted worth of human person are the centrepiece in the teachings of divine religions. “Rights” in the divine logic are not originated in the conventions; rather they are bestowed upon human being by their creator. They are thus universal, independent of conditions, transcend all boundaries, be they temporal or geographical, and do not lend themselves to distinctions of race, sex or other superficial attributes and barriers. Nor do they sacrifice the rights and values of the individual for the well-being of the community, or the health of human society, as these rights emanate from the totality of human person.

Dear friends, In 1940s world powers waged a devastating war and in the end of that war, having caused huge losses in human lives, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other norms arising from the international human rights instruments were adopted based on certain historical backgrounds and social contexts, and given the particular cultural resources in dealing with the realities of the then international community.

It goes without saying that the human rights movement shall take a dynamic approach in order to be responsive to the concerns and requirements of the people in every era. The current human rights concepts and norms shall not remain static and they need to

Text of Address by Her Excellency,

Mrs. Sharifi Sadr,Director General for Human

Rights and Women Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of

the Islamic Republic of Iran,


In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

يا ايها الناس اتقوا ربکم الذی خلقکم من نفس واحدهو خلق منها زوجها و بث منهما رجال کثیر او نسانا )نسا1(O people ,observe your Lord ;the One who created you from one being ,and created from its

mate ,then spread from the two many men and women )Nesa1(


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develop in line with the developments taken place in human life as well as his intellectual evolution. For this purpose employment of all civilization capacities, a major part of which has been already reflected in the legal culture of different nations, is an undeniable requirement.

Ladies and Gentlemen,Now, as a Muslim woman, I wish to refer very briefly to the approach of the Divine Book of Muslims, as one of the examples of our rich cultural asset, towards women. Unlike the impression and understanding of the people of the time, this Holy Book did not make any difference between man and woman. As explicitly reflected in the Surah I quoted at the beginning of my speech

as well as other Quranic verses men and women have been created from a single soul and essence.

Based on the Holy Quran both man and woman at the beginning of creation were equally placed in Paradise and blessed with divine blessings. On different occasions Quran is referring to the mysterious story of Adam and Eve without describing women as a creature with satanic nature believing that every human being shall be responsible for his/her own acts and behaviour.

One of other humiliating views towards

women in the ignorant culture at the advent of Islam was that woman is spiritually and mentally weak and she cannot reach the sublime spiritual positions. This occurs while the Holy Quran doesn’t make any difference between men and women in this respect, stipulating that gender does not play any role to this end and every man or woman who can use his/her opportunity in the present world in an optimal manner will receive outstanding rewards and positions in the next world.

Out of the negative attitudes towards women which still persists is that from the very first creation of human beings man has been master of woman and woman has been created just to please man and meet

his requirements and accordingly woman is inferior to man and in another word she is secondary human being in every society.

This occurs while the Holy Quran does not consider man superior over woman and it stipulates that these two are supplements to each other. Whenever Quran speaks of a noble man or a holy male personality immediately after it speaks of a noble woman or a holy female personality. Quran is admiring wives of Adam and Abraham and it honours and fully respects mothers of Moses and Jesus, the Christ, stipulating that they have been so honoured that the divine

Mrs. Sharifi Sadr: The noble teachings of Islam on woman are quite visible in the revolution taken place with respect to Islamic jurisprudence of humanity. The rights defined by Islam for women, in many cases, supersede those of man and the progressive aspects of the Muslim law cannot be witnessed, in several cases even in the contemporary modern judicial systems through the world.


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message was revealed to them and angles of the Almighty spoke to them. And even and as Quran reveals, Saint Mary was even fed by divine food sent by the Almighty God and reached divine and spiritual perfection.

Distinguished Participants, The deep influence of the Islamic approach towards man and woman are quite visible in the revolution taken place with respect to Islamic jurisprudence of humanity. The rights defined by Islam for women, in many cases, supersede those of man and the progressive aspects of the Muslim law cannot be witnessed, in several cases even in the contemporary modern judicial systems through the world.

It goes without saying that investigating the Islamic jurisprudence of humanity in different areas of public law or private law and their introduction in order for them to be employed in the modern world can

be significantly contributing to the further enrichment of the human rights concepts.

This drive within such a legal cultures asset whether in the field of Islamic or other civilizations is needed to be shouldered by scholars and academic personalities. To this the initiative adopted by the NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, manifested in “Unity of Cultures towards the advancement of Human Rights” as its maxim, is considered as the core and prime objective of this centre in all its scientific activities. In conclusion I wish for success of such scientific activities and especially the efforts to be made by the participants of this conference towards further promotion of role of legal cultures in support of the jurisprudence of humanity.

Thank you


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Text of Address His Excellency,

Mr. Pierre Ryter,

Head of the ICRC Mission in Iran,


Your Excellencies, Honourable guests,distinguished professors, researchers and scholars,ladies and gentlemen,

As a guardian and promoter of International Humanitarian Law, the ICRC would like to commend the NAM center for Human Rights and cultural Diversity for this conference and to express gratitude for being associated to its organization.

It was 150 years ago that the founder of the Red Cross & Red Crescent Mouvement, Henry Dunant, published “a Memory of Solferino”, the starting point of what has developed into international humanitarian law and modern humanitarian action.

Three years before, in 1859, Henry Dunant witnessed the horror of war on the battle-field of Solferino, in Northern Italy. Thirty-eight thousand wounded, dying and dead, remained on the battlefield, and there ap-peared to be little attempt to provide care.

Shocked, Dunant himself took the initiative to organize the civilian population, espe-cially women, to provide assistance to the injured and sick soldiers, without regard to their side in the conflict. As they saw these former ennemies lying peacefully side by side, the women of nearby city Castiglione used the expression “Tutti fratelli” (All are brothers).

“Tutti fratelli”, this expression has remained until today the motto of the Red Cross & Red Crescent Movement which is promoting humanity as the core value and as the core principle of humanitarian law and of humanitarian action.

Your Excellencies, Honourable guests, distinguished professors, researchers and scholars,

Since a memory of Solferino was first published in 1862, Henry Dunant’s hometown Geneva has been transformed into the world humanitarian capital. Is there a specific legal culture in this Swiss city that may explain this destiny?


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Geneva is known as the “Rome of the Protestant” ever since Jean Calvin became the spiritual leader of the city in the 16th century. Another famous citizen from Geneva is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This year, we are celebrating the 300th anniversary of his birth in the city of Calvin.

Several parallels between Rousseau and Dunant can be drawn: their strict Calvinist education in Geneva, from where both were expelled later in their life, their struggle against slavery, their respect for non-western cultures and their promotion of universal values.

Rousseau’s central belief - Man is good and society corrupts him - has influenced revolutionaries all over the world, in particular through his book “the Social Contract” published in 1762.

Dunant was not a revolutionary. He did not try to change the social and political

order of his time. However, like Rousseau, Dunant believed that human beings were compassionate by nature. Through the Geneva Conventions, which can be called a “humanitarian contract”, compassion became a corner stone of international law.

Mr. Ryter: Here in Iran, clerics and religious scholars are studying international humanitarian law with an Islamic perspective.... The legal culture which supports the jurisprudence of humanity is deeply rooted in Islam and deserves to be better promoted.


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Ladies and gentlemen,

Like Rousseau, Dunant was interested by non-western cultures. His first book, published 5 years before “a Memory of Solferino”, described how Islam had contributed to the abolishment of slavery in Tunisia.

Here in Iran, clerics and religious scholars are studying international humanitarian law with an Islamic perspective. Tomorrow morning, a panel will be dedicated to this subject. The legal culture which supports the jurisprudence of humanity is deeply rooted in Islam and deserves to be better promoted.

Indeed, at a time when humanitarian law and humanitarian action are faced with many new challenges in a increasingly glo-balized world, it is important to promote once again the universality of humanitarian rules, values and principles.

Thank you


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Diplomatic Events

In response to the invitation by His Excellency, Mr. Mohamed Kamal Amar the Foreign Minister of Egypt, dated 5th April 2012, Director of the Centre, Dr. Kamran Hashemi represented the Centre in the NAM Ministerial Meeting, held in Sahrm El Sheikh, on 7-10 May 2012.

Participation in the NAM Ministerial Meeting Sahrm El Sheikh – Egypt

7-10 May 2012


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Participation in the 16th Nam Summit - Tehran 26- 31 August 2012

Director of NAMCHRCD attended the 16th

NAM Summit in Tehran. He also gave a

report on the activities of the Centre to the

NAM Ministerial Meeting at the Summit


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The Statement of Dr. Kamran Hashemi

Director of NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

to the NAM Ministerial Meeting, the 16th NAM Summit, Tehran

29 August 2012

In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful

At the outset I would like to express my appreciation to Mr. Chairman and the distinguished delegations, for giving me the opportunity to submit a short report of the activities of my Centre to the meeting.

The NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity (NAMCHRCD) is an outcome of the NAM Ministerial Meeting on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, held on September 3-4, 2007, in Tehran. In the final document of the meeting, entitled “the Tehran Declaration and Plan of Action”, the Member States decided to establish the Center in Tehran.

Today morning almost five years of the above mentioned conference and on the occasion of the 16th NAM Summit in Tehran my Centre was honoured to have his Excellency Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi , the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Islamic Republic of Iran who opened our new office in a ceremony with the presence of some distinguished guests of the Summit. The invaluable statement of Dr. Salehi at the ceremony has been circulated in this room.

The Centre is also honoured to launch the first volume of the Nam Yearbook on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, on the occasion of the 16th NAM Summit. The Yearbook containing 28 academic articles and in about 800 pages, is available on CDs and hard copies, along with the Center’s 2011 Annual report in the document Centre of the conference.

Taking into consideration the virtues of historical traditions and the values of all civilization and cultures around the world,


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the Centre as an educational- research institution provides scientific analysis and promotes discourse in global human rights and cultural diversity issues. Under the heading “Unifying Diverse Cultures towards the advancement of Human Rights”, the main function of the Centre is to prepare a platform for the exchange of knowledge, good practices, general reflections, and to have intensive debate in order to contribute to the advancement of human rights, with a special focus on the common human rights concerns and challenges that developing

countries encounter.

In line with its objectives, the Centre during the year 2011 held three successful international academic events with the participation of more than 600 attendees (more than 100 speakers and more than 500 participants) from more than 30 countries.

Also as you will see in the 2011 annual report, we have an ambitious intensive academic agenda for 2012, as there has been almost one important academic event for each month of the year, two of which held in Geneva. In compare to 2011 the number of our academic programs in 2012 has raised to three time more.You will read more about our academic programs in the 2011 annual report but I may mention to three most impressive features of our academic events here. First,

in organizing these programs the Centre hugely has been benefited from the kind and generous cooperation and partnership of several organizations and institutions, as well as renowned figures and scholars who have devoted their invaluable time and work to the success and enrichment of the events.


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The second is the incredible diversity of opinions raised by the speakers as well as the challenging comments and questions raises by the participants during all of the sessions, which enliven and enrich the events. Another beautiful feature of the events is the consideration and voluntarily cooperation of friendly young participants, who were available everywhere for help. They have already established a network to keep in contact with and support the Centre. Also they are in the process of establishing an international NGO called “the NAM Youth for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity” (NAMYHRCD).

In the year 2011 we had a small budget to cover the accommodation and other expenses of our guest speakers during their visit to Iran. We also could cover the cost of tickets of 11 guest speakers coming from developing countries. For the year 2012, we have had a more secure budget to devote more funding to facilitate the participation of our guests coming from the NAM region. Finally, I have to add that according to the draft statute of the center, representatives

of NAM member states are welcome to participate in the activities of the Center, including by joining the board of trustee and the academic council of the center. In this line and to accomplish our plans for 2012 and the years after we are very much relying on the governmental support of every single NAM member state, and on the support of our friends and partner institutions, as well as on the support of every individual and institution around the world who have commitment to the promotion of human rights.

Thank you

In organizing its programs the Centre hugely has been benefited from the kind and generous cooperation and partnership of several organizations and institutions, as well as renowned figures and scholars who have devoted their invaluable time and work to the success and enrichment of the events.


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On the Occasion of the 16th NAM Summit, Tehran The Opening Ceremony of the New Office of

the NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity 29th August 2012 - Tehran

Being close to the Specialized Library of the Ministry of Foreign Affair, the Iranian Centre for International Conferences, and School of International Relations, have provided for the Center good condition to follow up its academic programs

As a side event to the 16th NAM Summit in Tehran, the Centre was honoured to have His Excellency Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, opening its new office in a ceremony with the presence of some distinguished guests.


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At the outset I would like to express my appreciation to you for attending this ceremony. This ceremony has almost coincided with anniversary of the great ministerial NAM conference on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity which convened five years ago on September 3-4 2007 with the participation of more than 100 high-ranking delegations in Tehran. The said conference was attended by 98 member states, 10 observer states, 3 international observer organizations and 5 international organizations and is still considered the second largest diplomatic event in Iran right

behind the NAM Summit which is currently being held in Iran.

As the result of the final document of the Conference, approved in consensus, the NAM member states decided to set up a body called “the NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity” in Tehran.

Dear Friends,The NAM member states enjoy long-standing cultural and civilizational backgrounds and the major civilizations of the world came in the existence in the lands which now constitute the main body of the Movement.

Text of Address by His Excellency Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi,Minister

of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the Opening

Ceremony of the New Office

In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful

ا خلقناكم من ذكر وأنثى وجعلناكم شعوبا وقبائل اس إن ها الن يا أيلتعارفوا

O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes,».»that ye may know each other

(Al Hujurat/13)


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As always, NAM intends to utilize this cultural diversity to bring about more prosperity for nations, not to create a new pole against other poles already in place or to be a new challenge to other civilizations of the world. It is and will always be in the blood and nature of the NAM to avoid bellicosity. This is the reflection of the justice-seeking spirit and ideals of humankind to overcome insecurity, discrimination and instability.

While the motto of “respect for the human dignity and human rights” has become a sacred concept and the rallying point of all cultures and civilizations, u n f o r t u n a t e l y the political and instrumental use of human rights has, for the most part, diluted its spiritual, moral, cultural and religious aspects. The world today expects NAM to play its part and lead the world towards a better status quo, peace, security and genuine freedom and human rights for the whole world. NAM has been critical of the inability and inefficacy of the hegemonic system dominating the global relations in promoting the human dignity and status, respecting human rights and establishing a desirable international community and has been trying to open new horizons in this regard.

As a matter of fact, NAM has always been the harbinger of hope for the independence-seeking nations of the world and needs to be commended for holding the Human Rights & Cultural Diversity conference 5 years

ago and deciding to establish this center in Tehran in order to create a mechanism for an independent human rights dialogue needed for gaining an exalted status that is expected from NAM.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Honorable ColleaguesWith the establishment of the NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, a permanent mechanism was created for institutionalizing the intercultural dialogue on human rights aimed at enhancing the

contributions made by NAM to the universal dialogue on human rights. In this line, the activities of the Center have been geared towards expounding human r i g h t s - r e l a t e d teachings of different cultures as well as creating a conceptual

and scientific framework for the institutionalization of intercultural human rights dialogue towards promoting respect for Human Rights. The innovative approach adopted by this center is visibly seen in its motto: “to unify diverse cultures towards the advancement human rights”, which has laid the foundation stone for its diverse and varied scientific activities.

As an international academic institution, the centre has been able to prove its scientific mettle, thanks to the activities it has undertaken in recent years. Rest assured that the activities of the center will remain in line with those of the NAM member states and other organizations and coalitions of the developing countries.

Dr.Salehi : While the motto of «respect for the human dignity and human rights» has become a sacred concept and the rallying point of all cultures and civilizations, unfortunately the political and instrumental use of human rights has, for the most part, diluted its spiritual, moral, cultural and religious aspects.


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With 120 members, the center can be the second largest trans-regional human rights organization in the world after the UN human rights bodies, and according to its draft statues representatives of all the 120 member states may be present on its board of trustees or the scientific board. Trying its utmost to be the best host possible, the Islamic Republic of Iran hopes that it will be able to help the center achieve its goals. However and in order to ensure full success, the participation of all the members of NAM in guiding the activities of the center, is an inescapable necessity.

In conclusion, I hope that this center will prove to be an asset and a capable scientific hand to NAM and the developing countries in the area of Human Rights just like the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization (AALCO) in New Delhi has been in the area of international law.

Thank you

Dr. Salehi: I hope that this center ( NAMCHRCD) will prove to be an asset and a capable scientific hand to the NAM and the developing countries in the area of Human Rights just like the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization (AALCO) in New Delhi has been in the area of international law.

INTRODUCTION

The Third International Summer School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, 1-3 July, Tehran;

The Third International Conference on Human Rights and Cultures: the NAM and Enhancement of International Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights, 3-5 November, Tehran;

The First International Student Seminar on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, 10-11 December, Tehran;

CANNOUNCEMENTS FOR 2013 ACADEMIC EVENTS


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Organized by

The Non-Aligned Movement Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in Cooperation with some Prestigious Local and International Institutions

Items of Discussion:• The Relationship between Cultural Diversity and Human Rights;• Historical and Current Contribution of Cultures to the Enrichment of the Concept of

Human Rights and Humanitarian Law;• Cultural Limitations to the Implementation of Human Rights;• Cultural Rights;• Rights to Cultural Identity;• Cultural Values and Human Rights;• Human Rights and Ethics;• Protection of Human Rights in Multicultural Communities;• Universality and Relativism of Human Rights;• The Question of Indivisibility of Human Rights;• Specific Human Rights Issues in Developing Countries.

Registration Requirements:Filled in Application Form; Please contact: Ms. Alvandi at: [email protected] Fee: 1800000 Iranian Rials ( 60 $ ) to be paid to the Secretariat. Registration Deadline: Thursday, 27 June 2013.Languages: The working language of the event is English.

Venue: Will be announced later.

Time: 8:30- 18:00.

Participants Will Receive Valid Certificates

The Third International Summer Schoolon Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

1-3 July 2013, Tehran


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Organized by

The Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in Cooperation with some Prestigious Local and International Institutions

In line with its motto “ Diverse Cultures towards the Advancement of Human Rights”, the NAM Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity (NAMCHRCD) will hold its third international conference on human rights and cultures to provide an academic forum for scholars and practitioners all over the world to arrive at a shared idea, experience and understanding on the issues related to human rights and cultural diversity

To this end and on the role the Non-Aligned Movement can play towards the advancement of human rights and humanitarian law, one of the resolutions has been initiated by the NAM and adopted by the UN for several years entitled, “Enhancement of International Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights” is of the focus of this conference.

Based on the UN documentations on the issue, and the study prepared by the UN Advisory Committee (A/HRC/19/74), some of the subthemes of the conference are as follows:

• The legal definition of international cooperation in the field of human rights;

• Operationalization of the concept of international cooperation in the field of human rights

• Best practices enabling the reinforcement of international cooperation in the field of human rights;

Non- Aligned Movement and Enhancement of International Cooperation

in the Field of Human Rights Tehran, 3- 5 November 2013

Call for Papers and Lectures The Third International Conference on Human Rights and Cultures:


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• The areas and the role of key actors (UN agencies, funds and programmes).

• The role NAM and developing counties can play towards the enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights and humanitarian law;

• Challenges for international cooperation in the field of human rights and humanitarian law.

• Paper and Lecture Submission Requirements

• Candidate authors of papers and key note speakers are cordially invited to forward the abstracts of their papers/ lectures in English (approx. 250- 500 words) in Microsoft Word format, to the following address: [email protected] by the deadline of 31 May 2013 along with an autobiography (maximum up to 300 words).

• The Secretariat will review the abstracts and inform the applicants of the decision of the jury.

• Key note speakers are not required provide full papers for the conference but candidate authors of papers need to email their full papers by the deadline of 31 July 2013 for the final review. It should be noted that the admission of an abstract does not necessarily imply the admission of a paper.

• The Secretariat would request authors to prepare papers exclusively for this conference, in the sense that they are not previously published or presented in other fora.

• The Secretariat will provide the opportunity for the authors and key note speakers to present their papers/lectures during the conference either by poster or by presentation.

• NAMCHRCD would be pleased to provide the authors of the admitted papers and keynote speakers with accommodation, transportation and meals in Tehran during their stay at the conference.

• A limited amount of funding will be provided for covering flight expenses of NAM citizen authors of best accepted papers coming from developing countries. Applicants who require financial assistance should inform the secretariat in advance.

• The abstracts of papers/ lectures along with the autobiographies of authors/ speakers will be published in February 2014 in “the 2013 NAMCHRCD Annual Report”

• Accepted papers will be published in the third digital volume of “the NAM Yearbook on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity” which will be available on the website of the


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Center :www.namchrcd.com in September 2014.

Registration Requirements only for Audience ( Not Speakers):

Filled in Application Form; Please contact: Ms. Alvandi at: [email protected] Fee: 1800000 Iranian Rials ( 60 $ ) to be paid to the Secretariat. Registration Deadline: Wednesday, 30 October 2013.

Languages: The working language of the event is English.

Venue: Iranian Centre for International Conferences, Tehran

Time: 8:30- 18:00

Contact: Dr. Kamran Hashemi, at: [email protected]

Speakers and Participants Will Receive Valid Certificates


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Organized by

The Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in Cooperation with Some Prestigious Local and International Institutions

The annual seminar will be organized each year by the NAMCHRCD, giving students and young scholars the opportunity to deliver a lecture on a research project related to human rights and humanitarian law issues before the experts in the field, and receive feedback and suggestions. Also during the seminar human rights and humanitarian law issues will be explored through the presentations and following discussions.

Participation Requirements• Applicants are cordially invited to forward the abstracts of their research projects/

papers in English (approx. 250- 500 words) in Microsoft Word format, to the following address: [email protected] by the deadline of 31 October 2013 along with a short autobiography.

• There is no registration fee for participation in the seminar.

• The best abstracts along with the autobiographies of authors will be published in

February 2014 in “the 2013 NAMCHRCD Annual Report”

Languages: The working language of the event is English.

Venue: Secretariat of NAMCHRCD, Shahid Aghaei Str. Neyavaran, Tehran

Contact: Dr. Kamran Hashemi, at: [email protected]

Participants Will Receive Valid Certificates

The First International Student Seminar on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

Tehran, 10- 11 December 2013

On the Occasion of 10 December, “World Human Rights Day”

INTRODUCTION

C2013 UPCOMING ENENTS

DANNEXES

Short Biographies of Authors/Lecturers and Abstract of Papers/LecturesTable of Lectures and Papers Acknowledgments


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The study will discuss the relationship between the cultural diversity and human rights in more than one aspect: the human rights per se, the universality of human rights and the roots of the notion of cultural diversity in the human rights documents developed and adopted in the United Nation system and other organizations.

In this study, the notion of cultural diversity, based on the abovementioned documents, is reflected as a general and broad term that refers to a wide range of concepts such as national and historical conditions, national, historical and regional particularities, development circumstances, etc. Therefore the study seeks to focus on the following three elements:1-Human rights, the nature, the genesis and the question of universality;2-The nature and aspects of cultural diversity within universality;3- Roots of cultural diversity in documents and practice.

The study suggests that Human rights is a “dynamic and evolving process”. Thus the Universality of human rights should constitute a learning process in which different cultures and religions could involve in intercultural dialogue and interaction aiming at reaching cross-cultural basic elements to facilitate the implementation of universal rights.

Mostafa A’laye (1955) MA in Politics,

holder of Human Rights Certificate

from Prince Edward Island ,Canada and

San Remo Institute, Italy . Expert on

human rights and women rights. Expert

on human rights and social affairs at

the missions of the Islamic Republic

of Iran in Geneva and New York for 8

years. Several executive responsibilities

including chairman, advisor and senor

expert in General Assembly committees

of the United Nations in New York and

Commission on the Status of Women and

Human Rights Commission in Geneva and

Organization for Islamic Countries (OIC).

Researcher, author and instructor in the

field of Human Rights.

E-mail: [email protected]

The relationship between cultural diversity and human rights

Abstract

Short Biographies of Authors/Lecturers and Abstract of Papers/Lectures


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Justice" is one of the most complex concepts that the human have thought about. Complexity of the concept of justice, on the one hand and difficulties in its practical occurrence on the others, has made justice inaccessible.The concept of justice is a praised one in the Islamic religious texts too. As injustice is so blameworthy in Quran, establishment of justice is one of the greatest messages and commands of Allah. Allah enjoins Al-Adl and Al-Ihsan and giving (help) to kith and kin and forbids Al-Fahsha' (i.e all evil deeds, e.g. illegal sexual acts, disobedience of parents, polytheism, to tell lies, to give false witness, to kill a life without right, etc.), and Al-Munkar (i.e all that is prohibited by Islamic law: polytheism of every kind, disbelief and every kind of evil deeds, etc.), and Al-Baghy (i.e. all kinds of oppression), He admonishes you, that you may take heed. This verse is the global declaration of Islam which Imam Baqir (pbuh) used to recite it in the sermon of Friday prayer. This verse is addressed the most comprehensive and the most perfect plan for human community and civilizations, and says: "I believe in whatsoever Allah has sent down of the Book [all the holy Books, this Qur'an and the Books of the old from the Taurat (Torah), or the Injeel (Gospel) or the Pages of Ibrahim (Abraham)] and I am commanded to do justice among you, Allah is our Lord and your Lord. For us our deeds and for you your deeds. There is no dispute between us and you. Allah will assemble us (all), and to Him is the final return" Whenever Justice is combined with other concepts, other concepts will be resulted. So the "economic justice" means justice regarding economy of society, and the "political justice" means justice regarding politics and governance. And "judicial justice" means justice regarding judgment. In other words, the concept of justice has few manifestations:1. Justice in speech: Veracity2. Justice in thought and imagination:3. Justice in behaviour (moderation, justice and tolerance);3.1. Justice in governance (just judgment)3.2. Justice in making peace (just peace)3.3. Justice in enmity (just war)Keywords: justice, moderation, application of justice, veracity

Bahman Akbari was born in Tehran in 1963 and studied Islamic theology in Qum from 1984 to 2001. He has been the cultural representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran for two terms in Uzbekistan and Tanzania. He is a research scholar in the field of Islamic studies, and is currently holding the position of the advisor to the Vice President of the Organization of Culture and Islamic Relations, and is a member of the Academic Council of Interreligious Dialogue. He has also participated in a number of national and international conferences, and has several scholarly papers to his credit in the field of Islamic studies.Email: [email protected]

Islamic thought capacity regarding support ofhumanitarian judicial justice

Abstract

Zahra Akbari was born in Tehran by 1989 moreover studied Religion and mysticism in Alzahra University since 2006 to 2010. She continued her educated in Comparative Religion in master degree in ALzahra University as well also was participated in nation and International Conference then published different article in Islamic concept moreover she participated in the training workshop in Lebanon. She is the editor of the Bikaran Journal at Alzahra University for 6 years which is appreciated by the president of Ministry of Science and Technology as a first journal ranked among all university.


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The legal systems of the European Union (EU) and the United States are premised upon many common norms, often resulting in parallel bodies of jurisprudence. Due to these shared legal principles, one would expect the EU and the United States to use similar standards in the adjudication of asylum claims. The EU and the United States have a solid history of promoting human

rights and assisting asylum-seekers. Both have promulgated and/or joined international agreements to respect human rights, and to assist victims of human rights violations. Finally, both have welcomed large numbers of asylees into their respective territories. Yet despite the overall similarities in the human rights regimes of the EU and United States, a significant point of divergence occurs when a person requests asylum from an EU member state. The difference is so stark in fact, that it is hard to reconcile with the previously-mentioned similarities.Asylum adjudicators in the United States employ a case-by-case approach, regardless of the applicant’s country of origin. On the other hand, EU adjudicators are legally required to presume that an asylum claim filed by an EU national is without merit. Such cases are effectively “dead in the water.” This EU presumption flows from the “Protocol on Asylum for Nationals of Member States of the European Union” (Protocol No. 24), one of the main subjects of this paper. Protocol No. 24 has been under intense scrutiny, from within and outside the EU. Major revisions to Protocol No. 24 are needed, because it does not match the reality faced by some EU minorities. For example, the Roma (“Gypsies”) in certain EU member states are subject to marginalization, racist attacks, arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention, police beatings, and a largely complacent police and judicial system. The difference in EU and United States asylum standards

becomes shockingly clear in Roma cases. As a former immigration attorney in the United States, this author successfully represented a large number of Roma asylum applicants from Bulgaria. If these applicants had requested asylum in the EU, their cases would most likely have been denied. In general, the EU’s reputation as a promoter and defender of human rights is well-deserved. However, Protocol No. 24 eviscerates the asylum claims of thousands of Roma who come from EU countries. It creates an almost irrebuttable presumption against the EU asylum applicant, stating that EU member states are “safe countries of origin,” and that EU-origin asylum claims are presumed to be “manifestly unfounded.”The multi-faceted approach of the U.S. asylum regime provides a more thorough and meaningful review of Roma asylum claims. Cases are assessed on an individual basis, with little (if any) legal presumptions against the applicant. The EU would be wise to adopt a similar policy and reject the exclusionary mandate of Protocol No. 24.

Robynn Allveri Current Position:

Law Faculty at Koç University

(since Sept. 2011); Bachelor of

Arts in Political Science from the

University of Arizona (1993-with

Honors); Juris Doctor degree

from Southern Methodist

University (1996); Former United

States immigration attorney

for 10 years (private practice);

Faculty member of San Diego

State University (2006-2011), and

University Of California-San Diego

(2010-2011); Currently teach

Business Law at Koç University.

Email: [email protected]

Asylum Protocol No. 24: Fact or Fiction for EU Roma

Abstract


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In a relatively short time the concept of “sustainable development " has become firmly established in the field of international law. The principle of “sustainable development " is a part of modern international law by reason not only of its inescapable logical necessity , but also by reason of its wide

and general community. The “right to development” is a principle example of “third generation " rights. The Vienna conference in June 1993 affirmed the right to development as a fundamental human rights. Human rights approach to sustainable development have both a national and international dimension.While state parties to the various international human rights treaties are responsible for protecting and promoting the rights of people under their own jurisdiction they also have a duty to cooperate internationally and afford international assistance where needed in the realization of the human rights of all people.The 1993 world conference on human right and the 1995 world summit for social development highlighted the importance of an integrated approach to social advancement. Lasting progress depends on respect for human rights and effective participation of citizens in public affairs .nevertheless; we also know that democracy and human rights will prove elusive

without social justice and sustainable development.Since the early 1990 human rights have played a prominent role in international development cooperation .united nations (UN) global conference from Rio in 1992 to Rome in 1995 have highlighted the crucial links between the three key goals of the UN charter: peace, development and human rights.At the same time, increased importance has been given to linking development and human rights. Development is a comprehensive process directed towards the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. Moreover, as the UN global conferences have reaffirmed, development is an inalienable human right and an integral part of fundamental human freedoms. The sustainable human development paradigms a holistic strategy for development that embraces all human rights, economic, social, cultural, civil and political.(There is an inseparable relationship between sustainable development and human rights. This relationship can be seen in many different ways. Yet just as

Nasim Arash Atour has B.A.

degree in judicial law and Master

of international law from Islamic

Azad University, Tehran. Her main

interests and fields of study are:

human right and international law.

She participated in the summer

course on public international

law from 9 to 27 July 2012 in the

Hague academy of international

law.


Relationship between human rights and sustainabledevelopment

Abstract


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the environment and development are closely bound to each other, they are also bound to human rights. The respect for human rights has been recognized as a prerequisite for development. If people’s fundamental human rights are threatened, if people lack the basic human rights of food. Health, education, shelter, freedom of expression and the right to political participation. Their ability to participate in sustainable development is hindered.For example freedom of expression enables people to challenge unsustainable practices. To demand their rightful place in developing alternatives for sustainability and changing social and economic structures which negatively affect their communities.Discrimination against social groups jeopardizes their right to shelter, health, food, education and other fundamental human rights. The recognition of the rights of half of humanity, women, as human rights is also the base upon which a sustainable future will be built.Every day, adults and children die from hunger, and one in three children in the world suffer from malnutrition. This is one of the greatest violations of human rights. Where in a world of plenty, people die from hunger, a world where the distribution of resources, rather than scarcity, is the problem.As this generation of youth continues the struggle for a social and economic development that respects the environment .cultures and peoples. The respect for human rights must be kept also at the centre of the debate .without respect for human rights. The ability of people to move to a sustainable future will be hindered.The conclusion of this paper suggest that human rights are included in the notion of sustainable development implicitly postulating that development does not recognize human rights is not sustainable.


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Presenting gifts to women during the time of marriage has a lengthy precedent throughout history.Such a gift has been transformed in Islam with its own set of unique rules and it has been labeled as <Mehriyah>. The Prophet of Islam (s) tried to show the amount of the dowry

to his followers by specifying 50 Dinars for each of his wives(equivalent to around $5000 today). Due to the fact that the dowry amount has been raised enormously during modern times (reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars) compared with the previous three decades [2], it has caused a lot of problems such as an avoidance of marriage, a collapse of already established marriages and even the imprisonment of the husbands what conflicts deeply human rights issues (during situations when the amount was demanded and they were unable to pay). In this essay, we have strived to provide certain solutions towards resolving the current issues plaguing the concept of the dowry and these have been formulated through assessing the social and legal perspectives of the dowry, its background and the reasons behind its current growth. Solutions such as making an obligation that the dowry is paid in full before registration of the marriage and replacing intellectual properties with material properties such as the right of divorce and the right of choosing the place of residence with money and gold are the boldest solutions discussed in this essay.

Alireza Ahmadian Zarchi after

studying two years German

literature in College of Foreign

Languages in Tehran attended

at Islamic schools for 10 years

up to PHD level -Dars’e Kharej-

(Howzeh-Islamic seminary-). He

did his M.A. in Islamic Law and

Family in Middlesex University,

London and now is PhD Candidate

and is writing his thesis on

“Mental and Physical Violence

against the Wives Derived from

Financial Issues, The Main reason

of Divorce Due to the Obstacles

In Iran Family Law”.

Email:Alireza.Ahmadian.Zarchi@

gmail.com

Removing the Dowry in Iranian Law Due to anImbalance with the Laws of Shiaism

Abstract


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From the standpoint of international law “peace” in, its simplest terms, is understood as the absence of (armed) conflict between States and/or within a State. This conception notion of peace is, of course, important (especially the body of humanitarian law) and should be a proper subject for

discussion, especially in our region today. However, for the purposes of this paper, I prefer to take a broader conception of peace – what might be called the “culture of peace” – and to try as far as possible to concentrate on the values that underpin the building of such a culture of peace. This notion of peace comprises important elements that relate to people being able to enjoy a sense of security in their lives that, in turn, allows for an attitude of tolerance towards others. A culture of peace can be built on the national level through taking a human rights approach that gives value, in particular, to notions of equality and non-discrimination and guarantees basic rights and freedoms. In addition, respect for cultural diversity within the national society is also a precondition for this. On the international level, the establishment of an international order that truly ensures justice and equity between the States and peoples of this world is an additional requirement. Two questions are pertinent to the exploration of the above ideas: How many serious internal conflicts occur within States that generally guarantee the human rights and fundamental freedoms of their citizens and respect the diversity of cultures residing in them? How many of the wealthy nations of the world are the victims of externally-driven armed conflict of an international character?

Janet Blake is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the

University of Shahid Beheshti in Tehran; where

she teaches International, Environmental and

Human Rights Law. Her main specialization is

in cultural heritage law. After working in the

Cultural Heritage Division of the Council of

Europe (1993-1994) while researching her PhD

in International Law, she held a Leverhulme

Special Fellowship at the School of Law in the

University of Glasgow (1996-1998) and, since

1999, she has worked closely with UNESCO as

an International Consultant. In that capacity,

she has written Preliminary Studies on (1)

the advisability of developing a standard-

setting instrument for intangible cultural

heritage and (2) safeguarding endangered and

indigenous languages that were submitted to

the General Conference (2001) and Executive

Board (2008), respectively. She also acted as

Rapporteur for the Restricted Drafting Group

that prepared the initial draft of the 2003

Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage.

She has published three books on intangible

cultural heritage as well as several articles on

safeguarding cultural heritage, environmental

protection law and justice, human and cultural

rights, cultural diversity and sustainable

development.


The Role of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity inBuilding a Culture of Peace

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This introductory talk begins by asking the question – What is cultural diversity? The notion is then explained both “as a fact” and also from the point of view of cultural policy-making on the international and national levels. The challenges that cultural diversity poses for governments is also noted here. Cultural diversity as a value is also addressed as is the relationship between cultural diversity and human rights. This leads to an examination of the relationship between cultural diversity and human rights, whereby the former is understood as a fundamental element in human rights given the constitutive role of culture in identity and the importance of identity to human dignity. The way cultural diversity is treated in international instruments is then presented and some of its important domains are set out. The second part introduces cultural rights and rights related to culture - although cultural rights are often the most directly implicated in preserving diversity of cultural identities, they are by no means the only human rights relevant to culture. However, cultural rights present a special set of challenges both to governments and to human rights theorists that have led to the neglect of this set of rights. These are introduced here as follows: t); the ‘culture’ in cultural rights; the ‘right to cultural identity’; identifying cultural rights (as opposed to rights related to culture); collective versus individual rights; and universal (HR) standards versus cultural relativism.

An Introduction to Cultural Diversity and CulturalRights

By Janet Blake Abstract


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The presentation draws on examples of research conducted with marginalized populations, particularly refugees and Indigenous peoples.In analysing the Australian experience, ethical dilemmas are discussed. These include questions of voice and representation

when conducting research with Indigenous peoples, as well as concerns about research becoming a 'recolonising' project imposed on people who have experienced suffering through dominant societal approaches.Another dilemma arises with refugee research, particularly with people in closed detention environments in Australia and other western countries. As a general principle in conducting research with vulnerable populations, participation in development, design and implementation can assist in reducing the power imbalance between researcher and researched.

Linda Briskman is Professor

of Human Rights at Swinburne

University in Australia. She has

a background in Social Work.

Her main areas of research are

in the fields of Indigenous rights

and asylum seeker rights. She

publishes in both areas and has

received awards for her work.

E-mail: [email protected]

Conducting research with culturally diverse groups:Limits and prospects

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The paper would try to find a common and a shared definition of the term “Jurisprudence of Humanity”, taking as a starting point the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In a second part the paper would also try to find how the jurisprudence of humanity can be built and achieved,

giving some proposed actions that could be carried out at different levels by governments, social actors and civil society. As for the proposed action the paper will show the framework of a possible future European Union project having as a target the respect and the fulfilment of some rights of a particular vulnerable group in Europe, those of the Muslim migrant women

Michele Brunelli is Professor

of History of Asian Countries

and of History and Institution of

the Muslim world, at Bergamo

State University – Italy. He has a

degree in Political Sciences and

a PhD in History, Institutions

and International Relations

of African and Asia Countries.

He is Member of the Scientific

Committee of Bergamo UNESCO

Chair on Human Rights and Ethic

of International Cooperation,

following the projects the Chair is

activating in Asian countries. He

managed several European Union

project in different fields, such as

economic and social development

in Russian Federation; education,

with particular attention to the

Parental participation in the

EU and issues concerning the

relationship among development,

human rights and transnational

crime, with particular attention to

drug trafficking.


Jurisprudence of Humanity as a Human Rights Tool: aproposed action

Abstract


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There are 14 sectoral conventions dealing with certain specific acts of terrorism. These treaties define nearly fifty offences under international law. There is a tendency to consider these treaties as establishing a sort of evolving code of terrorist offences. Historically, after the League of

Nations initiative adopting the convention against terrorism in 1937 no major effort was made under the United Nations until 1972. When the UN Secretary General first suggested putting an item entitled Measures to Prevent International Terrorism on the General Assembly agenda in 1972, it met with considerable opposition. It was finally put on the agenda, but the title of the agenda item was changed from ‘Measures to Prevent International Terrorism’ to an unusually long title of “Measures to prevent international terrorism which endangers or takes innocent human lives or jeopardizes fundamental freedoms, and study of the underlying causes of those forms of terrorism and acts of violence which lie in misery, frustration, grievance and despair and which cause some people to sacrifice human lives, including their own, in an attempt to effect radical changes”. The title of this resolution suggests that

Srinivas Burra is currently working as Assistant Professor

at the Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University, New

Delhi. Earlier He worked as Legal Adviser with the Regional

Delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross,

New Delhi and as Senior Legal Officer with the Asian African

Legal Consultative Organization (AALCO) Secretariat in New

Delhi. His doctoral research was on the topic of “International

Human Rights Law: A Study of Reservations to Multilateral

Human Rights Treaties” from Jawaharlal Nehru University,

New Delhi. At South Asian University He teaches Masters

level students international law, legal research methods

and methodology, international humanitarian law and

international criminal law. His research interests include but

not limited to international human rights Law, international

humanitarian law, international criminal law, international

refugee law, law of treaties, legal theory, law of international

organizations, legal protection of migrant workers,

international terrorism, transnational organized crime and

work of the International Law Commission. He teaches, as

visiting faculty, at the Indian Society of International Law and

Indian Law Institute, in New Delhi on topics covering public

international law, including international human rights law,

refugee law, humanitarian law, international criminal law, law

of international organizations and the UN Charter.


Changing Contours of the Legal Status of International Terrorism. Implications for Human Rights and

International Humanitarian Law

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the acts that are considered as terrorist need to be contexualised in the reasons that lead to such acts rather than branding them as mere violent acts. Resolutions of similar nature were adopted in 1976 with similar language. Further resolutions were adopted in 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983. All these resolutions were framed in the language similar to the 1972 resolution.In continuation of its efforts, in 1985, the General Assembly adopted a resolution stating that ‘it unequivocally condemns, as criminal, all acts, methods and practices of terrorism wherever and by whomever committed’. Later on, the General Assembly also adopted resolutions in 1987, 1989 and 1991. As the language of these resolutions suggests there was a clear shift in the attitude of the General Assembly in its perception of the problem of terrorism. The significant change in the resolutions that were adopted from 1985 is that they unequivocally condemn terrorism. Previous resolutions of the General Assembly on terrorism have merely expressed concern about terrorism seeking the international community to focus also on the root causes of terrorism. By its resolution 49/60 of 9 December 1994, the General Assembly, adopted a milestone Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism. In the operative paragraphs of the Declaration, Member States of the United Nations solemnly reaffirmed their unequivocal condemnation of all acts, methods and practices of terrorism, as criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by whomsoever committed, including those which jeopardize the friendly relations among States and peoples and threaten the territorial integrity and security of States. All these later resolutions and the work of the Ad hoc Committee on international terrorism and the relevant Security Council resolutions are intended to criminalize the acts of terrorism without focusing on the root causes of terrorism. However, this emphasis on criminalization of terrorist acts has certain implications for human rights and international humanitarian law framework. My proposed paper intends to analyze the developments relating to international terrorism in relation to human rights and international humanitarian law.


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The Australian nation in the 21st Century is a vibrant social democracy. It is a modern microcosm of the world with over 200 languages spoken in its vast landscape. It lays claim to having one of the world’s most successful transitions to a multicultural nations and to being at the forefront in the creation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This is contested

ground, as many academics argue that Australia’s race relations history, firstly with its Indigenous peoples and later with non Anglo-Celtic immigrants, is underpinned by a lingering undercurrent of racism and indifference to human rights. At the intersection of these two themes of human rights and cultural diversity, Australia appears to have an unflattering history. Australia is one of the few democracies without a Human Rights Charter or Human Rights Act. According to some experts this has lead to the contravention of human rights for the more marginalised members of the Australian community. This view is contested by leading politicians and social commentators who are adamant that Australians aren’t overtly racist. They maintain that Australia still has one of the most tolerant racially diverse societies in the world. Indeed, some reports find that migrants see Australia as a very tolerant country compared to their country of origin (Ang et al, 2002, Forrest and Dunn 2007). This is the context in which this is paper is located. It will provide a brief overview of Australia’s recent history, in the area of cultural diversity, Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations and human rights. Discussions on human rights will be from an educational perspective rather than the more orthodox legal framing of such a topic as human rights. In highlighting the key issues of debate as they have played out in the Australian context it provides examples and insights from academic research. The final part of the paper will seek to analyse the underlying intersections between these themes and suggests that education, both at the school and tertiary level is one major pathway towards implementing change in order to promote socially just communities where the rights of all peoples in Australia’s multicultural landscape are respected.

Nina Burridge is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has been involved in tertiary education since 1991 in Education faculties at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney. Her main research interests and publications centre on Indigenous education with reconciliation as a key theme; education for human rights and cultural diversity in schools and community settings. She was the founding director of the Institute of Aboriginal Studies and Research at Macquarie University from 1997 – 1999. She is on the management committee of the Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre at UTS. She sees herself as an academic whose involvement in community organizations and social action groups informs her professional work in Education. Nina holds a number of community based positions including chairperson of the Don Chipp Foundation, board member of the Burdekin Association – a non-profit organisation working with homeless youth and she is involved with a number of local community groups dealing with social, political and cultural issues.Email: [email protected]

Promoting cultural diversity and human rights education in Australian schools: intersecting pathways to

socially just communities

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This presentation is designed to revisit the principles that underpin a ‘good education’ in preparing the global citizens of tomorrow. It suggests that while in modern industrialised social democracies like Australia (and indeed in many countries in Europe), the focus in education policy making has been largely instrumentalist, driven by the need for human capital investment and measured by national and international testing regimes, there is a more important purpose to education. The focus of this presentation is on another defining purpose of education. What Martha Nussbaum (2009) calls ‘education for human development’.Education for human development encompasses all the quality pedagogical practices of engaging young minds to gain knowledge and succeed at school, within a framework of promoting education for a just and inclusive society on a local as well as an international scale. This type of education is based on the egalitarian principles of equal respect for, and entitlement of, all human beings to basic levels of human rights, human dignity and opportunities for advancement despite their ethnicity, gender and socio-economic circumstances.What it advocates is a curriculum that provides greater emphasis a social justice human rights discourse, on the importance of ethics in everyday life and on the need to understand the great diversity of cultures that make up our 21st Century classrooms. Education for human development does not just emphasise education for profit, or for future human capital investment, but it has an emphasis on developing young minds to think about issues of social justice, equity and human rights not just as individuals but as members of a collective humanity.“Education for human development …….. the goal of producing decent world citizens who can understand the global problems to which this and other theories of justice respond and who have the practical competence and the motivational incentives to do something about these problems. How, then, would we produce such citizens?” (Martha Nussbaum, Education for Profit, Education for Freedom, 2009)

Education for Global Citizenship in a Just and InclusiveSociety

AbstractBy Nina Burridge


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Within Europe, competing narratives frame the discourse on religious pluralism. The first narrative examines the primacy of national models and the principles of subsidiarity (which underpins EU law) and inter-governmentality. At the intergovernmental level, the relativity (in social, legal

and political spheres) is reflected in the different (and competing) national models of Church-State relations. The mechanisms which attempt to adjudicate (or referee) the obvious tension between these national and relativistic models and European level institutions inform the second narrative. The second narrative plays out at a transnational level, and endeavours to create new strategies of innovation, where new forms for the regulation of religion are emerging. It is here, I argue, that a limited pluralist European model of regulating or ‘managing’ diversity has emerged. The limitation in this pluralist model reflects the tensions that exist between the national and transnational aspects of the model itself and the structural limitations of the informal, rather than official nature of the religion—European institutions relations. It is also reflective of emerging debates on religious pluralism and the democratic state. To what extent is it necessary for the regulation of religious freedoms in the ‘public square’ in order to protect the democratic state? What restrictions on minority religions should be considered ‘necessary in a democratic society’ and what limitations should be placed on state interferences in minority religions are necessary to protect against the undue influence of a dominant religion? This paper will examine these questions within a European framework, focussing on Muslims in Europe.

Kathleen Cavanaugh is currently

a Lecturer of International Law in

the Faculty of Law, Irish Center

for Human Rights (ICHR), National

University of Ireland, Galway. Her

publications and research topics

include: the study of nationalism,

ethnic conflict, political violence,

entrenched emergencies,

freedom of religion and militant

democracy. Her forthcoming

publications include Minority

Rights in the Middle East (co-

authored with Joshua Castellino)

is with Oxford University Press

(forthcoming exp 2012) and

“Narrating Law” in Anver Emon,

Mark Ellis and Benjamin Glahn,

eds, International Law and Islamic

Traditions (forthcoming OUP, exp.

2012).

Email: kathleen.cavanaugh@

nuigalway.ie

Faith in Democracy?Freedom of Religion in a European Context

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The cultural plurality and diversity of life forms in the history of social life of the mankind, both in the national and international communities, has repressed frequently in the form of racial, religious wars and cultural Genocides.The necessity to protect of cultural diversity has a special position in the basic documents of contemporary international law and human Rights rules.Having tolerance against different cultures, ethnicities, religions and languages

and the dialogue among different civilizations is a crucial element in the establishment of peace, understanding and friendly relations among people of different cultures and peoples of the world.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has taken an important step to ensure the universality of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights as the first instrument on human rights, in its preamble presented itself as “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations”. It went further by stating: “Recognition of the human dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.The Universality of human rights has been re-emphasized and acknowledged in two International Conferences on Human Rights, respectively in 1968 in Tehran and Vienna in 1993. These amount of emphasis on human rights by the basic Human Right documents on the subject of "cultural diversity" and the recognition the need to respect cultural diversity, made UNESCO to announce the cultural diversity as a part of the "common cultural heritage”. (UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity- November 2, 2001)So, like the aerospace, resources under the seabed which laid beyond national jurisdiction territory of states , underwater cultural heritage and human

genomes, the Cultural diversity is a common heritage which belongs to all generations. Accordingly, UNESCO in 2003 , in the respect of the destination between tangible cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage, has introduced the rules on the protection of intangible cultural diversity which can be considered as an important element to the protection cultural diversity.

Cultural Diversity as Common Heritage of Mankind

Abstract

Alireza Delkhosh ,PhD in International Law , Allameh University,I.R.Iran, is an Associate Professor of Law, Azad University .His research focus on International Criminal Law and International Humanitarian Law. Some of his books and articles are: "Combating International Crimes; State’s Duty to Cooperation”, "Obligation of States to Cooperate with International Criminal Court”," International Humanitarian law in Armed conflicts and Non-International Conflicts: differences and commonalities”," The case of Libya, a challenge between Absolute sovereignty of states and Regulation of Human Rights "," The case of Darfur from Humanitarian perspective ", and several other articles on international law Criminal law, the law of succession of states and International responsibilities.Email:[email protected]


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In an Islamic culture the discipline of Ethics can be divided in two groups of teachings which both strengthen the protection, preservation and implementation of Humanitarian Law. The first group focuses on very general ethical norms regulating social interactions in general. However, the same

ethical norms strengthen the respect of humanitarian law norms. The second group focuses on more specific ethical norms in Islam which harmonise with precise humanitarian rules inherent to International Humanitarian Law. The teaching of these norms results in the development of the desired human personality assuring compliance with humanitarian law. This article discusses in detail the influence of both groups on protecting humanitarian laws and regulations

Hussain Diba is head of the

International Department of the

Islamic Promotion Office, Qom.

He got his Bachelor of Laws

in 1992, M.A. in Philosophy in

2000 and Ph.D. in Philosophy

of Religion (Kalam) in 2004.

While conducting ethical and

philosophical researches, he

managed some research centres

namely: 1- Centre for Research

in Jurisprudence of Judiciary,

Director 2- National Centre for

Answering Religious Questions,

Director 3- Academy of Islamic

Sciences and Culture, Vice-

Chancellor for Research. In recent

years, his research interest has

been moral education issues,

especially moral psychology. He

has written several books and

articles in philosophy, philosophy

of religion and moral education.


The Impact of Islamic ethics in support of InternationalHumanitarian Law norms

Abstract


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Throughout history the dilemma of humankind was the nature of cultures; a culture of violence and impatience leads to disrespect of human values and ethical norms, aimed at protecting prisoners, wounded, disabled and those incapable of fighting. As a consequence, we have been witnessing

during wars excessive violence, savage slaughter and sometimes even genocide. This article describes the view of religions toward the phenomenon of war. It reflects on the role of human behaviour to limit avoidable damages of war and to promote the protection of those not directly participating in the hostilities, which will ultimately limit the undesirable impact of war and unnecessary bloodshed. Further, the article investigates the perspective of various cultural contexts and suggests the development of International Humanitarian Law as the written heritage of human cultures.

Mohammad Ebrahimi is a

faculty member of Beheshti

University. He holds a PhD in

Jurisprudence and Principles of

Law and accomplished the forth

level of Usul e Fiq and Fiq studies

at the Hawzah, Qom . He is the

author of various books including

“An Introduction to Islamic Law 1 &

2”, “Islam and Public International

Law 1 & 2”, “Philosophy of

Law”, “Marriage rules with non

Muslims”, “Analytical History of

Islam 1 & 2”.


The historical evolution of Humanitarian Law from a cultural perspective

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1. Introduction: In this part, an attempt shall be made to establish the mutual co-existence of people living harmoniously in culturally Diverse and Secular State India by observing as well as following their own religions faith, trust and custom. Second, the rational behind the constitutional

ideal and goal to respect all the Religion and their Custom or usage prevalent and giving the same the force of law shall be analyzed. Third, the reasons and basis for specific incorporation of secular character in the Indian constitution shall also be traced out including with help of case laws decided by highest judiciary in the country. 2. Status of Women India: In this part, an attempt shall be made to trace out the status (social, religious and legal) given to women in India since ages. Second, efforts shall also be made to portray the status given to women in various religious texts, puranas, vedas and ancient legal codes such as Kautilya’s, Artheshastra. Third, added emphasis shall be placed on the role assigned to and status enjoyed by women during the last 110 years (1900-2012). 3. Laws Protecting women in India: The major and important laws and legal provisions protecting women in India broadly governing birth, childhood, adolescent age, married life and old age shall be discussed briefly. Second, the different laws governing women belonging to different Religion shall also be briefly touched upon, particularly on solemnization of Marriage, Divorce, Adoption and right to inheritance of property etc. Third the special social, economic welfare legislation governing exclusively women shall also be highlighted. Such

laws may include: Maternity Benefit laws, laws ensuring equal remuneration to women vis-à-vis men, prohibition of employment of women beyond certain hours

K. Elumalai is director of School

of Law, IGNOU, New Delhi. He

holds a Ph.D. in Law from S.K.

University, Anantapur, India;

LLM from Delhi University,

India; M.Phil in Economics,

Madras University, India and

M.A. in Economics from Madras

University, India. His experience

includes teaching graduate and

post graduate classes, training /

workshops organized on human

rights related issues, engagement

in MOOT Courts on IHL topics and

membership in several academic

and expert committees. He is the

author of 5 books and more than

25 opinion pieces in newspapers

and research magazines.


Laws Protecting Women in a Culturally Diverse andSecular State India: Lesson for Learning

Abstract


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in specified undertakings etc. Last but not the least, the objective and purpose behind the establishment of National Commission for Women exclusively along with their functions, duties and responsibilities shall also be discussed. 4. Constitutional Protection accorded to women in India: In this part, the constitutional rights, protection and privileges bestowed upon women shall be traced out. Special emphasis shall be laid on political right and empowerment conferred upon women in India. The political right refers to the right to participate in the electoral process in the country to choose right candidates to govern the country. The political empowerment of women in Indian context refers to reservation of seats in the panchayat elections as well as in various other local bodies.5. Laws protecting women from the angle of Human Rights: The important constitutional and legal provisions aimed to protect Human Rights i.e. (i) Right to equality, prohibition of discrimination on the ground of sex, (ii) Equality of opportunity in employment, (iii) Right to freedom (Political, economic, social), (iv) Right to life and liberty, (v)Right against exploitation, (vi) Right to freedom of Religion , (vii) Cultural and Educational Rights, (viii) Special privileges available to women during arrest, interrogation custody and Trial etc. shall be discussed with help of desired case laws wherever consider necessary. 6. Conclusion: In this part, an effort shall be made to summaries in brief the important provisions under various law in force to protect women in general and their rights, liberty and life in particular in India. Last but not the least, an effort shall also be made to identify the unique legal provisions prevalent in India towards protection of women so as to enable other countries to take cognizance of such legislation for bringing similar legislation in their respective countries.


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This article first examines the right to culture in the international human rights law, especially with regard to the equality, non-discrimination and non-violence principles, and also verifies the characteristics as well as the requirements of the right to be different. The article then argues that, within the concept of global citizenship, these two fundamental human rights, if recognized and practiced, could promote peace and coexistence among cultures as well as tolerance and respect among individuals. The article thus emphasizes the importance of citizenship education which builds the capacity of the individuals and empowers the societies.

Reza Eslami (LL.M. & Ph.D., McGill

University, Montreal, Canada),

Associate Professor of Faculty of Law at

Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran,

Iran. Areas of research and teaching

includes international human rights law,

public liberties, rights of women and

minorities, peace and development;

publishes in human rights field; and

organizes workshops for civil society

organizations on human rights issues.


Right to Culture and the Right to Be Different: Convergence or Divergence?

Abstract

To guarantee human rights in Islamic jurisprudence, especially when he/she is subjected to Judicial proceeding,

progressive and significant measures have been predicted that have dramatic and undeniable advantage compared with similar institutions in other legal systems In the provided opportunity I will talk about the two important solutions of Islamic law recommended for similar institutions:1) Dealing with temporary detention and offer alternative solutions.2) The Inefficiency of the jury in cases related to political offenses and offer alternative solutions.

Jawad Fakhr Tusi is a teacher

at Hawzah and University. He

completed Level 4 in Hawzah

and MA in Theology & Islamic

Studies. Some of his works are:

Jurisprudence and Legal Rights of

the Accused (Book), Likely New

Fiqh for Ruling on Stoning (Book),

Humanitarianism: Fixed or Dual

Value (Article).

Two alternative solutions for temporary detention and recourse to a jury, with the aim of maximal protection of

human rights in the charge

Abstract


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This paper aims at highlighting the ethical principles of international cooperation and I want to specify that we need a multi-actor approach. In particularly, this approach requires the reinforcement of the role of coordination and monitoring in all political sectors involved in international cooperation.

The maim source I used is the “Bergamo Document”, elaborated by Bergamo UNESCO Chair, because it comes from a good collaboration of the UNESCO chairs and it summarizes the guidelines of the Chairs. Furthermore, the paper describes the ethical principles of international evaluated in terms of the effectiveness of human rights and the equity in reciprocal and variously asymmetrical relationships, for state that it is necessary to introduce a “social balance” in international reports and a new system of bilateral reports to evaluate ethical principle in international cooperation.

Laura Rachele Galeotti is a PhD Candidate in

International Relations at the Department of

International Cooperation of Bergamo University. In

2003 she obtained her diploma in accounting and

law and in 2010 has completed a Degree Bachelor in

International Cooperation in University of Bergamo

defending a thesis about the political thought of

Ayatollah Khomeini. In 2011 she finished a master’s

degree in geopolitical and has introduced a thesis

about Islam in Central Asia. Now, in her doctorate

she’s studying the role of Islam in Central Asia because

she would like to go deep to the heart of the revival

of Islam after the independent from Soviet power.

During her studies she did two apprenticeships, in

the first experience she was in Africa and worked

with a primary school for a training course in a search

for Comparative Education. Instead, for the second

apprenticeships she went to Canada where she worked

at NGO Equitas and she participated in an International

course on human rights for four months. Currently,

she has numerous published articles about Middle

East and Central Asia in web site www.equilibri.net.

This work experience shows her interest in the field

of Islamic Studies and helps her to develop an ability

to communicate historical and geopolitical knowledge

with enthusiasm.


Ethical principles of international evaluated in terms ofthe effectiveness of human rights

Abstract


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Today, development, in all aspects, is regarded as the cornerstone of a global campaign to promote the living condition of humankind.In September 2000, building upon a decade of numerous conferences and summits, the United Nations gathered world leaders in its headquarters in New York to ask them

adopt a crucial and historical programme named as the United Nations Millennium Declaration. The leaders committed their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty (as the main target) and seven other goals which have been known as Millennium Development Goals or MDGs:End Poverty and Hunger, Universal Education, Gender Equality, Child Health, Maternal Health, Combat HIV/AIDS, Environmental Sustainability and Global partnershipThe world leaders agreed on a deadline, 2015, to fulfil their responsibilities in materializing these humanitarian goals in their countries and within their nations.What is of grave significance here is that at the first glance we should believe that all these issues are basic human rights. All human-beings in our planet are eligible to enjoy these basic rights. Thus,

S.A Vahid Gharavi is a lecturer in Politics and Int. Relations

at the School of Int. Relations (SIR) in Tehran; where, currently, he

teaches Diplomacy, European Studies and Regional Studies. He has

already taught different subjects such as: Iran’s Foreign Relations,

History of Iran’s Diplomatic Relations in 19th and 20th Centuries,

Political History of Islam, Islamic Diplomacy and done researches on

Development Theories. In 1987 he got his M. A. in Political Sociology

of Development from Leeds University in Britain and later, in 1997,

accomplished his PhD in politics at the School of Peace Studies,

Bradford University, Britain, 1992-1996. He has taught at SIR and

other universities in Iran in the last 25 years. He was Dean of the

SIR from 2006 to 2008. While teaching at SIR, he has written many

articles on various issues on Iran’s Foreign Relations History, Political

Islam, Iran’s Development and etc. He has participated in many

international conferences in Iran and abroad. He has supervised

many MA and PH.D theses of postgraduate students in SIR and

other Iranian universities. Serving on a mission as Int. Counselor in

The Hague helped him to know Int. organisations , working with the

OPCW, 1999-2001, and worked as the Academic Counselor of the I. R.

of Iran in Brussels from 2008 to 2011, where he participated in many

meetings and conferences within European Institutions (affiliated to

EU) and other European think-tanks. Some of his publications are:

- Third World external debt and its political causes, 1987

-The Rise and Fall of Iranian dictator, Reza Shah Pahlavi, 2005

-Transformational Diplomacy: US Tactics for Change in the Islamic

Republic of Iran,2004-2006, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 6

(2011)

-Society and Culture in The Netherlands, 2012.

-Society and Culture in Belgium, 2012.


Development and Human Rights

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we have to accept the fact that the core of the sustainable Development is human rights and they are intermingled and inevitably inseparable. There is little doubt that current development policies deal indirectly of human rights. In this regard, economic and social rights need to be highlighted. The rights approach mainly focuses on power relations and considers the development as a political process.Since the development machine is run by governments in most developing and less-developed countries, it is the responsibility of the state to act and implement development programs particularly what relates to human rights. In this regard, I will argue that any step taken to implement development programs set out by the United Nations should be based upon human rights.


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Within Europe, competing narratives frame the discourse on religious pluralism. The first narrative examines the primacy of national models and the principles of subsidiarity (which underpins EU law) and inter-governmentality. At the intergovernmental level, the relativity (in social, legal

and political spheres) is reflected in the different (and competing) national models of Church-State relations. The mechanisms which attempt to adjudicate (or referee) the obvious tension between these national and relativistic models and European level institutions inform the second narrative. The second narrative plays out at a transnational level, and endeavours to create new strategies of innovation, where new forms for the regulation of religion are emerging. It is here, I argue, that a limited pluralist European model of regulating or ‘managing’ diversity has emerged. The limitation in this pluralist model reflects the tensions that exist between the national and transnational aspects of the model itself and the structural limitations of the informal, rather than official nature of the religion—European institutions relations. It is also reflective of emerging debates on religious pluralism and the democratic state. To what extent is it necessary for the regulation of religious freedoms in the ‘public square’ in order to protect the democratic state? What restrictions on minority religions should be considered ‘necessary in a democratic society’ and what limitations should be placed on state interferences in minority religions are necessary to protect against the undue influence of a dominant religion? This paper will examine these questions within a European framework, focussing on Muslims in Europe.

\

Shahrzad Fouladvand holds a PhD

in Law from University of Sussex,

United Kingdom. Her doctorate

thesis focused on ‘Complementarity

and cultural sensitivity: Decision-

making by the ICC Prosecutor’.

Shahrzad Fouladvand undertook

field research including a six-month

programme of internship in the

Office of the ICC Prosecutor (OTP) /

Prosecution Division. She provided

legal research and analysis in

relation to the second and the third

investigations into crimes committed

in Darfur. She conducted participant

observation and interviews with

officials in the ICC and in The

Hague. She also holds a Masters

degree in international relations

from Islamic Azad University and

a Bachelors degree from Shahid

Beheshti University. Her research

interests and publications focus

on complementarity regime of the

ICC and criminal justice capacity

building.

Email:shahrzad.fouladvand@

peaceandjusticeinitiative.org

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Rights of the Accused

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The adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was the culmination of a historic exercise that saw the creation of a court with applicable law, rules and procedures that could be acceptable to the nations of the world in order to bring to justice those accused of genocide,

crimes against humanity and war crimes. Principal to the ICC is the principle of complementarity which actively encourages national systems to investigate and prosecute core international crimes and grants the Prosecutor and Chambers a broad discretion in its application. However, in applying this principle, an understanding of the inherent differences between the Rome Statute and national justice systems can have a positive impact both with respect to the ICC and in the domestic implementation of international criminal law.In this context, this paper considers the rights of accused as protected by the ICC and points out that these are not only present in Western legal systems (upon which the ICC is largely based) but also in the Islamic Shari’a tradition. As Article 21 of the Rome Statute stipulates, a source of law for the ICC can include general principles of law derived from national laws of the legal systems of the world, which are consistent with internationally recognised norms and standards. This paper further highlights the fact that an appreciation of cultural differences is important in order to make ICC ratification and implementation a priority; otherwise the Court might be seen as representing the hegemony of western justice over local traditions. It finally suggests that the technical assistance of a professional group with expertise in a broad range of criminal justice areas and who are familiar with the main features of the Rome Statute system and the operation of the ICC is needed to assist States in ICC-related endeavours.

Hussain Diba is head of the

International Department of the

Islamic Promotion Office, Qom.

He got his Bachelor of Laws

in 1992, M.A. in Philosophy in

2000 and Ph.D. in Philosophy

of Religion (Kalam) in 2004.

While conducting ethical and

philosophical researches, he

managed some research centres

namely: 1- Centre for Research

in Jurisprudence of Judiciary,

Director 2- National Centre for

Answering Religious Questions,

Director 3- Academy of Islamic

Sciences and Culture, Vice-

Chancellor for Research. In recent

years, his research interest has

been moral education issues,

especially moral psychology. He

has written several books and

articles in philosophy, philosophy

of religion and moral education.


The Impact of Islamic ethics in support of InternationalHumanitarian Law norms

Abstract


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Discrimination and xenophobia are threats to peace, and in many occasions have led to armed conflicts. Similarly the former UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Doudou Diène finds racism and xenophobia, rather than terrorism, as “the most serious threats to democracy”. On the other hand,

international struggle against non-discrimination, fascism and xenophobia, along with protection of minorities, has been concentrated on the racial and national aspects of vulnerable people, rather than the religious ones. This policy seems no more adequate when as Abdelfattah Amor, the former UN Special Rapporteur on religious intolerance states that “there are borderline cases where racial and religious distinctions are far from clear cut Abdelfattah Amor adds, “apart from any discrimination, the identity of many minorities, or even large groups of people, is defined by both racial and religious aspects. Hence, many instances of discrimination are aggravated by the effects of multiple identities.” Similarly Diène refers to “the centrality of the amalgamation of the factors of race, culture and religion in the post-9/11 ideological atmosphere of intolerance and polarization.” According to him this atmosphere “favors the incitement to racial and religious hatred… [and] is indicated by the latest controversies about the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark.”The main argument of the paper will be on the similar purpose of race oriented human rights instruments such as CERD Convention, Apartheid Convention and Genocide Convention on the one hand, and religion oriented instruments, such as the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief, on the other.

Kamran Hashemi, Ph.D. in Law,

Irish Centre for Human Rights,

National University of Ireland-

Galway, has been working as

a career diplomat for Iranian

Foreign Ministry since 1987.

Also he has been working also as

human rights lecturers in Iranian

Universities since September

2007. In August 2010 he was

appointed as director of Non

Aligned Movement Centre for

Human Rights and Cultural

Diversity in Tehran .Relevant to

his area of research interest, i.e.

Muslims and Human Rights, and

in his personal capacity he has

attended several international

conferences and published a

book: ‘Religious Legal Traditions,

International Human Rights Law

and Muslim States’and a handful

of publications in Iranian and

International journals.


Race, Religion and Human Rights Struggle for Protection of Vulnerable People

Abstract


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The research suggests that while the main purpose of these instruments are to protect all vulnerable people, including some people on the ground of race or ethnic and excluding others on ground of religion is not in line with the purpose of these instruments , and itself is discriminatory . To support the argument, another comparison can be made between the purpose of limiting clauses in Articles 19(2) of the ICCPR and 10(2) of the ECHR on the one hand, and Article s 20(2) of the ICCPR and 4 of the CERD Convention, on the other hand. While the purposes of the limitation clauses of the former articles are such matters as public policy or rights of others, the main purpose of the latter articles are protection of vulnerable ‘others’, which is similar to the purpose of all international and regional instruments on protection of vulnerable, for which affirmative measures have to be undertaken.To protect security and peace and , and in this line to address the shortcoming of legal bases of combating xenophobe and to include all ‘others’ under the protection of anti-discrimination, anti-racism and anti-xenophobia struggle, the paper suggests exploring the concept of ethnoreligousity to be replaced, when appropriate, with merely ethnic ( racial) or religion element.


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The relation between cultural diversity and human rights has been an issue of long- standing debate among human rights scholars, policy-makers and advocates, the most controversial of which has been the conflict between cultural relativism and the universality of human rights. On the other hand, human rights and cultural diversity are intertwined; full respect for human rights creates an enabling environment for guaranteeing cultural diversity. Cultural diversity can be guaranteed only if human rights and fundamental freedoms are protected. Conversely, an environment conducive to cultural diversity will contribute in a significant manner to the full respect of human rights and humanitarian universal values.

Among many different related matters, the way cultures contribute to the enrichment of the concept of human rights in a normative and practical manner in order to achieve wider enjoyment of human rights requires further exploration. As a case study, the paper will focus on the historical and contemporary role of Muslim legal culture in protection of Minorities.

Muslim legal culture on protection of minorities, called Dhimmi system, have experienced a long history of regulating the status of minorities in Muslim territories. Mayer points out that “[i]n particular, the treatment of the Jewish minority in Muslim societies stands out as fair and enlightened when compared with the dismal record of Christian European persecution of Jews over the centuries.”1 She also states: “The annals of history point out to the fact that the same degree of religious freedom as granted by Shariah to the non-Muslims living in Islamic state were non-existent in the history of other religions.” 2 Bielefeldt has a similar comparison as follows: “Historic evidence shows that some Christian minorities and dissidents preferred living under Islamic rule to being persecuted by their fellow Christians in the Byzantine and Habsburg empires. Thus, with regard to religious tolerance, Islam seems to have a better historical record than Christianity.” 3 In fact, Muslims by applying the Dhimmah system have established the widest and oldest system for recognition and regulating the status of

1- A.E. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, Tradition and Politics (Third Edition, Westview Press,

London, 1999), p.136.

2-. R. I. Doi, Non.-Muslims under Shariah (Islamic Law), (Third Edition, Ta Ha Publishers Ltd, London,

1983.

3-Heiner Bielefeldt, ‘Muslim Voice in the Human Rights Debate’, 17Human Rights Quarterly 4

(1995),pp.597-8.

Protection of Minorities Rights to Cultural Identity: The Muslim Experience

AbstractBy Kamran Hashemi


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religious minorities within majority Muslims and their protection; the system has survived for about fourteen centuries in an extended area from Spain in Western Europe to Pacific Ocean in East Asia. In recent centuries the Dhimmah system, by the name of Millet, governed the status of minorities in multi-religious areas under the Ottoman reign in parts of Eastern Europe and most areas of the Middle East and North Africa.Examining the related UN documents and state practices with regard to the protection of religious or ethno-religious minorities in their right to identity, one might conclude that in the absence of any clear binding provision for states, the application of personal legal autonomy regimes could be considered as a clear instance of protecting this right.

The OIC and the Arab League are the largest intergovernmental organizations whose membership is comprised solely of Muslim states. In the early 1990s each organization adopted a human rights document: the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHR) and the Arab Charter on Human Rights (ACHR), respectively. These documents remained inactive for more than a decade until both organizations resumed their human rights activities in early 2000s, leading in March 2008 to the adoption of a new Charter for the OIC, with special emphasis on human rights, as well as the entering into force of a new version of the ACHR. This paper will examine the extent to which Islam might contribute to the internal promotion and protection of human rights and the establishment of intra-Muslim regional human rights mechanisms. A special approach in the developing world towards human rights fulfillment is the “cultural-religious oriented approach”. For Muslims this multifaceted approach is discussed in the “Islam and human rights” discourse. Islam is the central common element among all Muslim states for establishing a human rights system. In this regard, the paper provides a survey on traditional Muslim law and its relevance to the concept of rights. In order to provide a better understanding of the relevance of Islam to human rights, the study makes a distinction between the three Islamic concepts of Islamic core principles/values, Muslim legal traditions, and Shariah. In line with this distinction the CDHR, as the most well known contemporary source of Islam and human rights, is discussed .The paper argues that after two decades since the adoption of the CDHR, and following a long running debate on Islam and human rights, the related human rights documents in the Arab League and the OIC in recent years tend to avoid referring to the controversial or ambiguous areas between religious legal traditions and human rights and leave them to be resolved in the process of time within more progressive endeavors of related states. Instead references to Islam in these documents have been limited to contributing areas of the religion to human rights, i.e. to “Islamic principles and values”.

Regional Human Rights Systems in the Muslim World

AbstractBy Kamran Hashemi


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Access to justice can be defined as the right of individuals and groups to obtain a quick, effective and fair response to protect their rights, to prevent or solve disputes and to control the abuse of power, through a transparent and efficient process,

in which mechanisms are available, affordable and accountable. As an undeniable human right, however, access to justice is impaired in many of the national courts across the globe. A variety of factors contribute to failure of judiciaries to administer justice, which will be investigated in this research. This study reviews some international instruments including the Bangalore Principles on Judicial Conduct (2002), the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary (1985), and the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers

(1990), and draws upon the experience of the relevant international bodies, including Transparency International, to offer practical mechanisms that work to enhance access to justice. The aim is to promote judicial transparency and accountability as two major means which promote access to justice through the judicial sector. Keywords: access to justice, judicial accountability, transparency, protection of human rights.

Mohammad-Javad Javid, PhD, is

Associate Professor of Faculty of Law and

Political Sciences, University of Tehran. He

was born in 1974, Dr Javid, obtained a PhD

in Public Law from the University of Toulose,

France, and a PhD in Sociology from Sorbonne

University. He has published tens of books,

academic-research articles, and interviews

in the local and international scientific and

scholarly journals, and has participated

in a variety of international conferences

across the world. He is currently teaching

at the University of Tehran, and some other

prestigious universities in Iran. The Number

of master’s and PhD theses he has advised/

examined amounts to 50 thus far.

[email protected]

Access to Justice in the National CourtsWith a View to International Instruments

Abstract

Esmat Shahmoradi is currently a university lecturer and

a PhD candidate at Allameh Tabataba’i

University. She obtained a master’s degree

in international law from the University of

Tehran, and another in Translation Studies

from Allameh Tabataba’i University. Attaining

the top rank in the PhD National Exam in

Translation, the top rank in the MA National

Exam in Translation, and rating 7th in the

MA National Exam in International Law, in

addition to other cultural and academic

activities, she goes on to work on issues

of judicial corruption besides socio-legal

barriers to protection of the basic human

rights. Among other publications, she has

recently translated two Persian books into

English: 1. Nāser Qorbān-Nia, Morality in

International Law 2. Hussein Ramazani

Kheradmardi, Political Management: Khājeh

Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī's Perspective.

[email protected]


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There is no international court within the United Nations that has exclusive jurisdiction over human rights violations committed anywhere and everywhere in the world. Therefore, victims of human rights violations often seek judicial redress locally or regionally. The mechanisms that have been created

at the regional level for this purpose are few and fairly recent. Of these, the European and the Inter-American Systems stand as the most developed and established, both in terms of jurisprudence and effectiveness. Newer regional systems, such as the one in Africa, have adopted procedural and substantive aspects of both the European and the Inter-American systems. The outcome of such efforts is yet to be determined. As other regions endeavour to create their own human rights mechanisms and institutions to provide redress for human rights victims, particular consideration should be given to the lesson learned from these other regional systems; particularly the Inter-American system. The types of human rights violations that are typical within the Inter-American system, as well as the economic and political challenges faced in the Americas, make that region an ideal point of reference for newly emerging regional systems that are faced with similar circumstances. Taking the Inter-American system as a case study, this presentation aims to address certain practical questions that must be taken into consideration in defining the scope, methodology, procedure, and structure of newly emerging regional human rights mechanisms and institutions.

Francisco Rivera Juaristi is a

human rights lawyer and law professor

from Puerto Rico. He is currently the

Director and Supervising Attorney of

the International Human Rights Clinic

at Santa Clara University School of

Law in California. He is a former Senior

Attorney at the Inter-American Court

of Human Rights of the Organization

of American States, where he was

also Director of that Court’s Internship

Program. Prior to that, Prof. Rivera

Juaristi was Executive Director of

the Amnesty International Section

in Puerto Rico. He has worked on a

number of high-profile cases involving

grave human rights violations,

particularly throughout Latin America.

His publications include issues such as

indigenous land rights, and business

and human rights. Prof. Rivera Juaristi

has been a consultant for a number

of NGOs, as well as for the United

Nations Development Fund and the

International Labour Organization.

Finally, he teaches Public International

Law and International Human Rights

Law.

Lessons learned from the Inter-American System.A comparative approach on the issue of access to regional

human rights mechanisms

Abstract


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The purpose of my essay is to examine and discuss the distinction between critique and hate speech. With regard to critique, it will be discussed that in religious texts such as Testament and Quran, it is vital to epistemologically distinguish objective and metaphysical propositions. I then examine two concepts of good and right: while individuals are free to enjoy their own concept of good, there is no room for hate speech, for it harmfully breaches the boundaries of liberty of citizens. Additionally, hate speech tramples freedom of conscience, because it invades values and beliefs of individuals. In contemporary world, it is crucial to liberate freedom of thought, conscience, speech, and publication from hate speech, if we desire to live in security, peace, and toleration.

Seyed Ali Mahmoudi , Ph.D. in Political Science (Political Thought), Institute for Humanities and Cultural

Studies, Tehran, 2003.M.A. in Political Philosophy, York University, U.K., 1990.He has completed courses on

Peace Making and Preventing Diplomacy at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (Unitar) and

at International Peace Academy, in Austria. He has been a member of Working Group on ' Dialogue among

Civilizations, and Peace and International Security ', held by School of International Relations (SIR) and the

Unitar, in Tehran, 2004. He currently teaches Islamic and western political philosophy, political science and

methodology at University of Tarbiat Moallem, Allameh Tabataba'i, and Azad University in Tehran. His main

field of research is political philosophy, morality, and religion.He has participated in several international

conferences.He has published eight books. They include: Justice and Liberty, Essays on the Philosophy of

Politics; The Doctrine of Liberty in Hobbs' and Locke's Political Philosophy ; Kant's Political Philosophy, Political

Thought in the realm of Theoretical and Moral Philosophy. The last two books, which are his M.A. dissertation

and doctoral thesis, have been translated into Arabic and published in Beirut (Lebanon) in 2004 and 2007,

respectfully. He has also published more than 80 articles on political philosophy, politics, morality and religion

in different scientific and philosophical journals, and also contributed papers to a number of books. Regarding

Iranian Studies, he has completed six research projects on Ancient Iran and also critical works on the time and

thoughts of some contemporary Iranian intellectuals, such as Sadegh Hedayat, Jalal Ale – Ahmad, Morteza

Motahhari, and Ali Shariati.

Liberty, Critique, and Hate Speech

Abstract

The Purpose of my essay is to examine two schools of morality, that is, utilitarianism and deontology, and to consider which of these two schools are suitable as a basis for real politik. I then will discuss that if none of these two schools are moral and practical enough, what would be the alternative. I suggest utilitarian- deontological morality as a useful and appropriate foundation of real politik.

Utilitarian- Deontological Morality and the Real Politik

Abstract


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In my paper I have discussed the epithets of legal and human rights education in Bangladesh. I have submitted that traditional legal learning and stereotype of human rights education is not sufficient to uphold the rights of the people specially the poor and disadvantaged people. Taking

the example of Human Rights Summer School Model run by Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP) in Bangladesh into context I have argued that legal education must be brought out of the class room and human rights education should be deeply imbibed in the mindset of the students. To fight the discriminatory legal system and omnipotent state power and to respond for jurisprudence of humanity and cultural relativity, there must be anti-generic lawyering premise, who can be termed as rebellious lawyers. The rebellious lawyers should motivate, train up, and mobilize the community people to fight poverty of their own. In fine I have concluded that a pro-poor approach in human rights education can make pro-people judges, lawyers, activists and teachers who can nurture and fashion jurisprudence of humanity.

S. M. Masum Billah is an

academician, researcher and

human rights activist. He has

brilliant academic record, 8 years

of teaching experience in honors

and masters’ level and a number

of quality publications to credit.

He is contributor to the daily

Prothom Alo and the Daily Star

Law page and assistant professor

of law, Jagannath University,

Dhaka. He acted as a member

of Community Law Reform (CLR

program) initiated by ELCOP, an

organization primarily devoted

for empowerment of different

marginalized communities in

Bangladesh. He also acted as

an assistant to the Editor of a

Bangladesh Institute of Law

and International Affair's (BILIA)

publication on District Judges'

Judicial Training Manual.


Human Rights Education in Bangladesh:A Pro-poor Approach

Abstract


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The author condemns attacks on medical units and aid-workers providing assistance during war times (specifically attacks on those not affiliated to any of the parties to the conflict). The presentation will focus on the following aspects. Islamic sources teach to spare the life of those escaping from

the combat zone, those wounded on the battlefield and prisoners of war. Islamic texts instruct the distinction between combatants and those providing medical care and treatment. The Islamic concept of Vezr which highlights individual responsibility for crimes.

Ahmad Moballaghi is the head

of the Judicial Research Centre

of the Islamic Assembly and

Professor at the Qom Hawzeh.


Protection of medical units during war time from the perspective of Islamic Jurisprudence

Abstract


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Despite its popularity and universal acceptance, opinions still differ considerably about conceptual and scope of human rights.1 These differences have major consequences for the promotion and protection of human rights. The full realization and

implementation of human rights is depended on a common understanding of human rights. A common universal understanding2 that ensures the full guarantee of human rights to every human being in very where can be achieved through intercultural dialogue. Such a dialogue acknowledges that differences exist and seeks to develop mutual trust and understanding between people with diverse opinions, viewpoints and values.3

1- - see: Mashood A. Baderin, International Human Rights and Islamic Law (Oxford: Oxford

University Press 2005)p1. See also Weston, B., ‘Human Rights’ in New Encyclopedia

Britannica, 15th Ed., Vol.20, p.713 at p.714.

2 - the importance of a dialogical approach for achieving ‘a common understanding’ of

human rights is reflected in the conclusion adopted by the Council of Europe at the end of

its inter-regional meeting organized in advance of the World Conference on Human Rights

at Strasbourg in 1993. See Council of Europe Doc. CE/CMDH (93)16, of 30 January 1993,

at p.3. See also Robinson, M., ‘Human Rights at the Dawn of the 21st Century’ (1993) 15

Human Rights Quarterly, p.629 at p.632.

3 - See: British Council 2008 Design Department/X174/XXXX, Trust and Understanding,

Javad Mobini completed his BA

at the Kashan University in English

Translation in 2007. Attaining the

top ranks in the MA National Exam

in International Law and also Human

Rights, he started his studies at the

School of International Relations

affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs of the Islamic Republic of

Iran in 2009.Currently he is taking

an MA in international organizations

and international law. In addition to

other activities, he goes on to work

on issues related to the effects of

globalization on international law

and human rights.


Intercultural Dialoguein the Framework of Human Rights

Abstract

Sodaif Ataei completed his BA at the Tehran

University in Political Science in

2008. He started his studies at the

School of International Relations

affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs of the Islamic Republic of

Iran in 2009 and has completed

his MA in the Regional Studies of

North America. He participated

in Japan-Iran Student Exchange

Program at Tokai University 2011.

In addition to other activities, he is

working on public diplomacy and

US Foreign Policy.



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Regarding the issue that cultural legitimacy is essential for the practical efficacy of human rights,4 this paper is trying to examine the criteria that are necessary in fostering intercultural dialogue5 in the framework of human rights to achieve culturally well-grounded endorsements of universally applicable human rights.From the point of view of this paper for conducting a successful intercultural dialogue some criteria should be paid attention including: (I) intercultural dialogue should be taken palace in an inclusive environment through exchanges base on equality, dignity and mutual respect; (II) a necessary margin of appreciation in respect of human rights can be accepted;6 (III) no culture has monopoly or patent on basic human rights7 and (IV) adopting an ‘enlightened interpretations’ approach in order to take a sincere endeavour to reconcile -if necessary- between cultural peculiarities and international human rights standards.

Intercultural Dialoguehttp://www.britishcouncil.org/new/Global/intercultural_dialogue_booklet.pdf (Last

Visited 23 September 2012). This Booklet emphasizes that “The world in which we all live is a world of

differences – differences within cultures as well as differences between cultures. Intercultural dialogue

acknowledges that differences exist and seeks to develop mutual trust and understanding between people

with diverse opinions, viewpoints and values. Intercultural dialogue does not insist on agreement. It is

about fostering understanding between people even though they may see the world in different ways; but

nor does it take place in the absence of value.”

4 - See: Abdullah Ahmed An-Na’im(ed), Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspective, A Quest for Consensus

(University of Pennsylvania Press 1991) p. 433. An- Na’im stresses that cultural legitimacy is essential for

the implementation of international standards of human rights.

5 - The promotion of intercultural dialogue has been paid attention in policies taken by Council of Europe.

The policy of the Council of Europe for the promotion of intercultural dialogue has evolved through a long

series of European ministerial meetings and expert colloquies. The most important steps are connected to

the some documents which can be found in Council of Europe Site at the page:

http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/documents_EN.asp (Last visited 8 October 2012)

6 - See: Arai-Takahashi, Yutaka (2001), Margin of Appreciation Doctrine and Principle of Proportionality

in the Jurisprudence of the ECHR, (Oxford: Hart Publishing 2001). See also: Yourow, Howard Charles

(1996), the Margin of Appreciation Doctrine in the Dynamics of European Human Rights Jurisprudence,

(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1996)

7 - See Council of Europe Doc. CE/CMDH (93)16, of 30 January 1993, at p.3.


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Trafficking in women and children is one of the most burning social problems that Bangladesh facing today. It is well acknowledged that the problem of trafficking is deeply rooted in social, legal and economic structures of a State that influences vulnerable group of people to be

trafficked from their home countries. Bangladesh is a country of origin for large number of traffic victims. Women and children are disproportionately victim of trafficking in any country. This also holds true for Bangladesh, where amongst the traffic victim, women are mostly trafficked for the purposes of forced prostitution. But women and children are also trafficked for domestic service, organ trade, forced labour, using as camel jockeys or for forced marriage. Cross border traffic victims are very often subjected to slavery like conditions and to serious physical abuse. There is also internal trafficking of women and children from rural areas to the larger cities.

Trafficking constitutes both a cause and consequence

Abul Bashar Mohammad Abu Noman is an Associate

Professor of Law, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. He teaches

International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law, Constitutional

Law and Industrial and Labour Law. He did his LL.B (Honours) and

LL.M. from the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. He also did

his second level LL.M. in Human Rights under Dr. Sohmen Human

Rights Scholarship Program from the University of Hong Kong. He has

worked with ILO as an international consultant and conducted a joint

research on Evolution and Current status of Industrial Relation System:

Bangladesh Perspective. He worked as a consultant of the USAID

sponsored project on Promotion of Human Rights Advocacy through

Human Rights Education & Conscientiousness and a team leader of

the project on Developing and Disseminating Human Rights Education

Curriculum for the Secondary School Students. He also worked as

Coordinator of Street Law Program, a human rights awareness-building

project sponsored by USAID. A good number of articles have already

been published to his credit in various referred academic journals on

different issues ranging from human rights, labour rights, child rights,

women rights, environmental law, good governance, access to justice

and post-conflict justice. He has participated and presented paper

in various conferences, seminars and workshop in Australia, Hong

Kong, China, India, Iran, Nepal, Singapore and Thailand. He is also

associated with a number of national and international human rights

organizations.


A Human Right-based Approach for Combating Trafficking in Children: Bangladesh Perspective

Abstract


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of human rights violations. Trafficking amounts to violation of following rights: the right to integrity and security of the person, the right to freedom from torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, the right to freedom of movement, the right to home and family, the right to health, the right to education and the right to live like a human being and not to be treated as commodity. Apart from these, trafficked women and children can also suffer from a multitude of physical and psychological health problems. In particular, women can suffer from reproductive and other gender-specific health problems, sexual exploitation and increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. Human rights are also violated in prosecution against traffickers as traffic victims cannot effectively participate in the justice system due to fear or intimidation by the organized criminal network of traffickers.

In Bangladesh, trafficking is traditionally viewed as a problem of ‘law and order situation’ rather than as a social problem or human rights issue and hence, usually legal measures are prescribed to criminalize the trafficking and penalize the traffickers. The traditional and narrower approach can hardly address the wider aspect of human rights violation involved in trafficking. Therefore, conventional understanding of trafficking merely as a criminal offence cannot fully comprehend the wider social, economic and cultural context of phenomena of trafficking. Viewing trafficking as a human rights perspective necessitates that combating trafficking involves social, economic and legal measures in any country. Human rights perspective should also be taken into consideration in repatriation of traffic victim so as to ensure their safe migration, security, privacy and minimum institutional standards with a women and children friendly atmosphere.

A human rights based approach to trafficking problems is not only essential for true understanding structural causes of trafficking, but also is useful for undertaking preventive measures and remedial steps for combating trafficking. The present study therefore aims to examine the human rights aspect of trafficking problem, to analyze and evaluate the legal protection of traffic victims and effectiveness of legislation concerning trafficking in women and children in Bangladesh and to draw suggestions those are pragmatic in nature for the maintenance of human rights standards in law enforcement.


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According to Article 20(3) of UN Convention on the Rights of Child, alternative care for a child temporarily or permanently deprived of his or her family environment or, in whose own best interests cannot be allowed to remain in that environment could “include, inter alia, foster placement, Kafalah of Islamic

law, adoption or if necessary placement in suitable institutions for the care ofChildren.” Using this institution of the Islamic Law was regarded as an innovation, later used in the Hague Convention on parental responsibility and protection of children 1 that can be analyzed fromvarious perspectives. Despite different interpretations of the notion of Kafalah, the concept can be defined as a voluntary commitment to take charge of needs, upbringings and protection of a minor child, as a father would for his or her child. However,Kafalah does not create a legal parent-child relationship. This paper address the importance of inclusion of religious principles or norms as a provision in international law treaty, and the compromise between international law and the Islamic Shariah that was much needed for ratification of CRC by Islamiccountries. Furthermore, the paper will analyze this important Islamic law doctrine with regards to cases of child protection in event of conflicts in Islamic world, suchas child refugees and migrants.

1 - Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and

Cooperation in Respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children.

Nasrin Mosaffa is Associate Professor of

International Relations from University of Tehran.

She was the first Director of the Centre for Human

Rights Studies in the Faculty of Law and Political

Science at the University of Tehran, where previously

she was deputy and acting dean for a period. Dr.

Mosaffa is the author of eight books and more

than fifty scholarly articles. She has been Director

of the Centre for Graduate International Studies

(1997 - 2010).She carried out implementation

of a five years joint project of Islamic Republic of

Iran and UNDP under the title "National Capacity

Building for Human Rights Promotion and Greater

Access to Justice" with the cooperation of eight

Iranian partners from government, academia

and civil society as National Project Director from

2005.Alongside other activities in UN processes;

in 2005, she was shortlisted as one of the final

candidates for Independent Expert on Human

Rights and International Solidarity.

She has been a visiting professor at Nottingham

and Oxford Universities, and visitor researcher at

University of Essex in 2010 - 2011.Her main areas

of interest are the International human rights,

women’s right, children and the disabled.


Islamic Institution of Kafalah andChildren’s Rights

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The acknowledgment of the importance of peace in the relations among men as well as in the relations between nations by philosophers, and political thinkers is perhaps as old as the written history of the civilization. But the recognition of peace as human rights has a shorter history. One of the turning

points in this regard is the response of the General Assembly of the United Nations to the outcry of civil society and frequent mass demonstration especially in western countries against the nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction and bloody wars that inflicted heavy casualties on civil populations. In November 1984, the Assembly adopted resolution 39/11 on the Right of peoples to peace, which stated that life without war served as the prerequisite for the material well-being, development and progress of countries, and full implementation of the rights and fundamental human freedoms. The Declaration proclaimed that peoples have a sacred right to peace and declared that the preservation of the right of peoples to peace and promotion of its implementation constituted a fundamental obligation of all States. Subsequently the Commission on Human Rights and its successor, Human Rights Council reaffirmed the idea. In its last resolution, A/HRC/20/L.16, the Council, decided to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group with the mandate of progressively negotiating a draft United Nations declaration on the right to peace on the basis of the draft (A/HRC/20/31) submitted by the Advisory Committee in 2013 before the twenty-second session of the Council. In this article the author attempts to analyze the main points of this draft declaration and its relevance to the topic.

Zahra Noparast ,Ph.D. in

International Relations, thesis

entitled: “United Nation’s Role

in the (first) Persian Gulf War”,

currently is candidate for another

Ph.D. in international law, Faculty

of Law, Helsinki University,

thesis entitled: “The Future of

UN Peace-building Operations:

Legal Aspects.”. During last 3

decades she has held 3 related

but separate career, namely:

Diplomatic, Teaching, and

Research. Last posting, the First

Counsellor of I.R. Iran Permanent

Mission-Geneva. She is the author

of umerous articles related to the

subjects such as: Human Rights,

Humanitarian Law, The jurisdiction

of International Criminal Court,

legal aspects of Peacekeeping

Operations, Right of self-defense,

disarmament and the law of

international organizations,

Responsibility to protect.


The Right of People to Peace

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The children who were born or been raised in overseas military bases never having a hometown. They have always moved from one country to another. Being exposed to foreign culture, loss of friendship ties, emotional attachments to specific places, are the aspects of this lifestyle. Even though

the military bases establishing by treaties between countries, the indigenous population is usually not part of the negotiations. Many of these bases which are located in none war zones have also caused troubles for indigenous population. These bases have influenced on local culture and identity, specially the area that is around the base. They can cause a decreased quality of life by noise pollution and environmental contamination.Considering the two different victims of military bases who were mentioned above, the aim of this paper is to describe cultural and identity problems caused by overseas military bases and faces this question that how can the international community monitor the military bases with human rights-based approach?

Keywords: Cultural Rights, Overseas Military Bases, Human Rights, National Identity, Indigenous People, International Community, Military children born abroad.

Mohsen Qasemi was born

in 1984 in Iran. He has a B.A.

degree in Librarian Science from

University of Allameh Tabatabai

University (ATU) in 2006. In 2010

he was admitted to M.A. program

in International Law at Tehran

Payam Noor University.

Email:[email protected]

Overseas Military Bases: What role can Human Rights play?

Abstract


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The recently released report of the Secretary General on children and armed conflict draws attention to a surge in attacks on schools and teachers and the use of schools by armed forces and groups. Aside from the immediate impact: the loss of lives, damage and destruction of school

property, overall decline in school attendance and even the closure of schools, over the long term, such actions deprive children of an education and by the same token, an opportunity to develop skills and competencies that are central to building stability. It may also be argued that such actions undermine the State’s capacity to resolve and recover from those very conflicts.

There has been a growing conviction that attacks on schools and teachers as well as the use and occupation of schools by armed forces or groups in effect represent a grave violation against children and criminal sanctions are necessary to bring the

perpetrators to justice. A recent affirmation of this palpable shift is reflected in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1998 (2011) which strongly condemns such attacks that “impede children’s access to education” and furthermore calls for action against the perpetrators of these violations “through national justice systems and where applicable, international justice mechanisms.”

This paper examines the limited extent to which educational institutions and personnel are legally protected from attack under relevant human rights law and International Humanitarian Law or IHL instruments and the consequent need for new norms so as to ensure that the right to education remains absolute under all circumstances.

Supriya Rao is currently working

at the International Committee

of the Red Cross (ICRC), Regional

Delegation for South Asia, New

Delhi.

Email : [email protected]

Protecting the right to education: The need for new norms to protect educational institutions and personnel

from attack

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In 2004, the first United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education came to an end. A report submitted by the High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests that the main achievement of the Decade was to put human rights education on the agenda of national governments, leading

to the adoption of national policies. It identifies the development of specific methodologies for human rights education as one of the major challenges. As a follow-up, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the World Programme for Human Rights Education. In December 2011, referring to the World Programme, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (‘Declaration on HRET’). The adoption of this declaration represents a milestone in a series of measures aiming to promote human rights education, acknowledging that this particular form of education is crucial for the development of ‘a universal culture of human rights’. The attention to human rights education has recently gained calls for an analysis of its raison d‘être and the influence it can have on the promotion of a universal culture of human rights. This article seeks to address this question relying on Amartya Sen‘s capability approach, which provides a useful conceptual framework for analysing the different dimensions of human rights education. The first section provides an overview of Sen‘s approach and of its main critiques, putting a special focus on the relationship between capabilities and education. The second part will discuss the commonalities and differences of capabilities and human rights before seeking to link capabilities, human rights and education. The Declaration will serve as the main point of reference when establishing this tripartite relationship. In the last section, the theoretical analysis will be applied to refugee camp situations, arguing that human rights education is crucial in enabling refugees to break the vicious circle of exclusion, poverty, and powerlessness.

Stefanie Rinaldi is currently a

fellow of the Mercator Fellowship on

International Affairs; working on the

topic “Fostering Active Participation

through Human Rights Education

in Palestine Refugee Camps”. As

a fellow, she first worked at the

Centre of Human Rights Education

in Switzerland and is now part of the

Human Rights, Conflict Resolution

and Tolerance Programme at the

UN Relief and Works Agency for

Palestine Refugees in the Near East

in Amman, Jordan. She attained an

MA in international relations at the

Graduate Institute for International

and Development Studies in Geneva

and an LL.M. in economic, social and

cultural rights at the Irish Centre

for Human Rights. In between she

worked as a policy advisor for the

Swiss Federal Office for Migration.

In addition, she does voluntary work

for several NGOs, including Amnesty

International.


Sen‘s Capability Approach and Human RightsEducation

The Special Case of Refugee Camp Situations

Abstract


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Historically human societies are deeply impregnated with humanism, and have given birth to concepts and practices which remain as guiding principles of all that place these societies among the world's humanitarian human civilizations. From the inception of war many civilizations

have distinguished between combatants and civilians under an injunction now formally known as the principle of distinction. Distinguishing between combatants and civilians has long represented an important aspect of warfare and has been recognized as the indispensable means by which humanitarian principles are injected into the rules governing conduct in war. The principle had found expressions in legal and non-legal instruments long before the adoption of the Geneva Conventions. A number of ancient legal codes required that belligerents exercise care not to kill civilians. Each ancient civilization – the Islam, the Hebrews, the Chinese, the Greeks and Hinduism – expressed this requirement in different forms, however, the overarching idea remained that certain persons were to be spared the cruelties of war. As a legal principle, the principle of distinction historically rested on the belief that certain persons, because they are presumed innocent, cannot lawfully be targeted. Thus, civilians were protected against armed violence through norms and practices that were later formalized in international humanitarian law. Recently, the question of combatants and the protection of civilian personnel has gained prominence due to the emergence of a new category, that of Private Military/Security Companies (PMSCs). For nearly three centuries, the accepted international norm has been that only nation states should be permitted to fight wars. However, the role of PMSCs in contemporary warfare is becoming increasingly significant, changing armed forces around the world and the way wars are fought. PMSCs are profit driven organizations that trade

K.C. Sowmya is currently

working as Legal Adviser in the

International Committee of

the Red Cross (ICRC), Regional

Delegation for South Asia, New

Delhi. K.C. Sowmya holds M.

Phil (Master of Philosophy) –

International Law; LL.M (Master

of Law) - International Law;

and LL.B (Bachelor of Law).

K.C. Sowmya is co-editor of

the book titled ‘30 Years of the

1977 Additional Protocols to the

Geneva Convention of 1949’, ICRC

Publication, 2008. Also published

an article titled ‘Feminist

Perspective on International

Humanitarian Law’, Vol. 3, No.

1 & 2, March & June, AALCO

Quarterly Bulletin, 2007. And also

did research for the book titled ‘A

Preliminary Study on the Concept

of International Terrorism’, Centre

for Research and Training, AALCO

Secretariat, 2006.

Email:[email protected]

Principle of Distinction in Law of Armed Conflict and the Role of PMSCs: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract


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In order to limit and prevent human suffering during armed conflicts, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in cooperation with national Red Cross and Crescent societies promotes worldwide awareness of and compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Today, more

than half of the ICRC's humanitarian activities are carried out in favour of persons affected by armed conflicts in the Muslim world – be they prisoners, displaced persons, families of detainees or other persons in need of humanitarian assistance. In order to lay the foundations for a better mutual understanding, to dispel existing misconceptions and to find common ground for protecting human dignity in situations of armed conflict, the ICRC in cooperation with national Red Crescent Societies has stepped up a worldwide dialogue on humanitarian principles in Islam and International Humanitarian Law. The speaker will introduce the ICRC's global dialogue IHL and Islam.

Angelika Schopp is Delegate

for Islamic Affairs, International

Committee of the Red Cross.

She works since 1998 for the

International Committee of the

Red Cross. She has supported the

ICRC's humanitarian activities in

India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the

Gaza Strip, Congo and Angola.

Presently she works as Delegate

for Islamic Affairs at the ICRC

office in Teheran.


The ICRC,s global dialogue on International

Humanitarian Law and Islam

Abstract

in professional services intricately linked to conflict and warfare. Their essential purpose is to enhance the capability of a client’s military forces to function better in conflict, or to deter conflict more effectively. PMSCs range from small consulting firms to large transnational corporations that provide logistics support or lease out combat helicopters, fighter jets, companies of commandos, or battalions. The scope of services offered within this industry is expansive and the services provided vary according to the level and degree of their specialization. PMCSs raise a multitude of legal, political and practical questions. Far more worrisome is the current use of PMSCs as substitutes for ordinary soldiers without corresponding rights and obligations. They are not aware when and where they might be considered legitimate targets is morally and legally unjustifiable. The proposed paper will attempt to focus on the involvement of private actors in armed conflict situations and to analyze the effects of blurring distinction between military and civilian actors, which is a culturally and historically tested norm and legally established principle. It will also look into the inadequacy of the existing legal mechanisms under present international instruments.


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Much has been mainstreamed into law from perspectives of the mainstream discourses including mainstream historical discourses. The voices of the indigenous primitive tribes across the world that have remained

untouched over millennia by mainstream civilizations have gone unheard. This paper seeks to be the first of its kind in pouring out the rich unearthed indigenous legal knowledge of the Lanjia Saoras, a primitive Indian tribe, in the context of International Humanitarian Law. Unlike the conventional legal articles, the researcher employs the Oral History Method (OHM) generally used in the social sciences, given the paucity of large secondary research data, and given the oral tradition amongst the primitive Lanjia Saora tribe that is devoid of the written script. These constraints render doctrinaire research difficult. The informed informants in this research range from people belonging to the Lanjia Saora tribe to sociologists to other knowledge-holders

Soumitra Subinaya is a social worker and a student of Law and Sociology at National Law University Odisha. He runs “Association of Psycheanalysts for Soul Search and Spiritual Yoga” (APSSSY), a registered non-profit, working to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in India using inter-faith approaches. He also serves as a GlobalYouthJustice Youth Ambassador, Joseph P. Overton Fellow, and as a reporter to an English Newspaper. His notable achievements include: winning the UNITED NATIONS- Habitat International Essay Contest 2010 for which he received an all-expenses-paid trip to UN Habitat, Kenya; winning the AIESEC International Writing Competition 2010 from the Asia-Pacific for which he received an all-expenses-paid trip to London, U.K.; He was selected with full scholarship for the 2011 NAMCHRCD International Conference on “Cultures in Support of Humanity”, Iran, and, was also selected with full scholarship for the 2011 UNITED NATIONS AOC INTER-FAITH Summer School in Portugal. He loves giving peace talks and promotes inter-faith harmony wherever he travels.Email: [email protected]

International Humanitarian Law from the perspective of the Lanjia Saoras, a primitive Indian Tribe untouched by

millennia of civilizational progress

Abstract

Mahdi Yousefi is 25 years old, a PhD candidate in communication studies at University of Tehran, Iran. He received a B.A. and M.A. degrees in “policy making in culture and communication” form Faculty of Islamic Studies, Culture and Communication, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran. His researches focus on but not limited to Communication theory and philosophy, Culture and communication/media policy, and Intercultural and international communication. He teaches courses on communication theory and intercultural communication in B.A. level at universities in Tehran and Qom. Mahdi Yousefi is a member of ICA (International Communication Association), IAMCR (International Association for Media and Communication Research) and ISA (International Studies Association) and has participated in a number of national and international conferences in the Asia and Europe presenting papers and participating in panel discussions. He knows Arabic and Turkish as well as his native language Persian. Mahdi Yousefi is the author and editor of three books in Persian regarding his research interests as well as the translator of some English books in the field into the Persian. He wrote some scholarly articles in communication theories and intercultural communication as well as media policy and participated in numerous research projects in that area. Mahdi Yousefi has worked as the main research assistant of Professor Hamid Mowlana, a senior scholar in the field of international communication, professor emeritus of American University, Washington D. C. for about four years.Email: [email protected]


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in Odisha. Written works on International Humanitarian Law from a Hindu perspective are not rare but the present research deals with tribal population who predate the Aryan invasion of India and are not Hindus. However, principles from ancient Indian texts and modern International Humanitarian Law have also been provided alongside tribal war laws to show the striking similarities amongst the modern law and the evolved sense of war ethics present in ancient and present tribal India. The focus throughout the paper is however on understanding the war laws of the Lanjia Saora primitive tribe of Odisha, one of the poorest states of developing India. The research reveals that International Humanitarian Law Principles are fundamental offshoots of the human psyche no matter how primitive or contemporary be the civilizational evolution. The researchers in writing this paper for the second NAMCHRCD International Conference on Human Rights and Cultures feel like the lawyer who was questioned by the Court if his argument was supported by any precedent. To this, the lawyer had replied with a “No” and added “If it may please this Court, it can enjoy the privilege of being the first one to set a precedent for the future by accepting my argument.” Similarly, given the non-traditional research methodology and writing style of this research paper, the researchers hope that the readers set a precedent for the future by accepting such pieces of work into mainstream legal research article writing that not only voice tribal perspectives for the first time but also employ oral history method (given the constraints) to explore issues of law and indigenous peoples world over.

Changes within the orthodox approach to security has resulted in a shift from the Westphalia concept to a more a people-cantered view as the best means for tackling the problem of global insecurity. The 1994 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme

(UNDP), argues that threats to human security could be grounded in seven categories: economic, food, health, environment, personal, community and political. Since the failed experience of comprehensive sanctions against Iraq in the early 1990s, the United Nations has increasingly embraced targeted or smart sanctions as a means of limiting the impact of sanctions on human populations. The employment of these smart sanctions, on one hand, indicates a commitment to human security on the part of the international community. On the other hand, the effects of imposing sanctions can threaten and harm the very notion of human security.

Maryam Torabi, former

journalist and researcher, is

a postgraduate student of

International Law at Tarbiat

Modares University , Tehran ,

Iran.


Smart sanctions as a threat to Human Security

Abstract


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During the last decades the conception of family underwent considerable changes in Germany. Though the influence of these changes first and foremost is important for civil law it is also reflected in German criminal law and its application. The contribution will deal with some of the most spectacular

changes that took place during the last 50 years. Some of them are the consequence of developments in society which have taken place before modification of the law, as for example the total change of the system regarding the punishment for abortion. Other modifications of the law serve the aim of educating citizens, for instance punishment provided for spousal rape. The contribution will describe briefly the most important factors and arguments influencing these discussions and changes.

Silvia Tellenbach is the head

of department of Turkey, Iran

and the Arab States at the Max

Planck Institute for Foreign

and International Criminal

Law, Freiburg/Germany. Legal

education: October 1969 to July

1974 studies in law; July 1974

1. juristisches Staatsexamen

(1st legal state examination)

in Freiburg; September 1974

to December 1976 Referendar

(legal apprenticeship) in Freiburg;

December 1976 2. juristisches

Staatsexamen (2nd legal state

examination). Education in Near

Eastern Studies: April 1977 to

July 1984 studies in Freiburg

and Cairo; July 1984 Doctoral

thesis. Subject: Constitution of

the Islamic Republic of Iran. For

research profile, publications

and memberships see: www.

mpicc.de/ww/de/ext/home/

tellenbach.htm.


Changes in the Conception of Family as Reflected inGerman Criminal Law

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The inclusion of rape as a crime against humanity in the statutes of the ICTY and ICTR and the development of case law has expanded the scope of sexual violence as a crime, to find that rape and other gender-based crimes are tactics of war that can amount to genocide and torture and as

such are regarded as significant violations of international criminal law. This then led to a very significant development in international law, the codification of sexual violence in the Rome Statute of the ICC and the landmark Security Council Resolution 1820. However, what happens from here? This paper seeks to explore the notion of reparations for violence against women who are victims of sexual violence in armed conflict. In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights established that violence against women was part of a pattern of systematic violence based on gender, age and social class, in the ‘Cotton Field’ case. This case took a transformative view on reparations. As well as providing monetary compensation for the families affected, the Government of Mexico was called upon to provide symbolic redress and guarantees of non-repetition. The Court declared that the reparations should be ‘oriented to identify and eliminate the structural factors of discrimination’ and in doing so should aim at transforming the underlying gender inequalities that gave rise to the violence. This paper seeks to examine a similar approach under the Rome Statute and the applicability and feasibility of such reparations regimes for sexual violence under international law.

Sangeetha Yogendran completed her

Bachelor's in Law with honours from the

National University of Singapore in 2010.

She completed a 6-month internship with

the International Criminal Court in The

Hague, The Netherlands last year and

then spent several months working with

refugees in Malaysia with the UNHCR.

She is currently undertaking her Training

Contract in a Singapore law firm under

Senior Council to qualify for admission as

an Advocate and Solicitor of the Supreme

Court of Singapore. Following which

she will be starting as a Foreign Service

Officer with the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, Singapore. Having earlier taken

a semester off school, she spent seven

months interning in Cambodia at the

United Nations Assistance to the Khmer

Rouge Trials, and also working with

Access to Justice LLP, a non-profit that is

dedicated to working with survivors of

mass crimes in Asia. She has volunteered

in several faculty-initiated community

work programs and was an active member

of her university's pro bono programme.


Right to Reparations for Women in the Prosecution ofGender-Related Crimes under International Criminal Law

Abstract


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The Events:

A: International Seminar: Emerging New International Human

Rights Institutions/Mechanisms in the NAM Region, 16

March, Geneva.

B: International Workshop on Human Rights and Development, 21 May 2012, Tehran.

C: International Seminar on Cultural Diversity and Human

Rights Education, 1-2 July, Tabriz ( Iran)

D: The Second International Summer School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, 9-11 July, Tehran

E: International Fall School on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, 17-21 September 2012, Geneva

F: The Second International Conference on Human Rights and

Cultures: Legal Cultures in Support of the Jurisprudence of

Humanity, 12-14 November 2012, Tehran

Titles of Papers/Lecturesat the 2012 Academic Events


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# Full name Title of Paper/LectureEvent’s Title : Institute Nationality

1 Mohsen Abdullahi

The Right to Peaceful Nuclear Tech-nology B Shahid Beheshti

University Iran

2Alireza

Ahmadian Zarchi

Removing the Dowry in Iranian Law Due to an Imbalance with the

Laws of ShiaismF Middlesex

University Iran

3Bahman

Akbari & Zahra Akbari

Islamic Thought Capacity Regard-ing Support of Humanitarian Judi-

cial Justice

F

Organization of Culture and

Islamic Relations & Azzahra University

Iran

4 Mostafa A’laei

Defamation of Religions, Cultural Diversity and Human Rights F Iranian Foreign

Ministry Iran

5 Mostafa Alaei The relationship between cultural

diversity and human rightsD Iranian Foreign

Ministry Iran

6 Bagher Ansari

Cultural Diversity and Educational Materials and Content from

International Human Rights Law Perspective

C Shahid Beheshti University Iran

7Robynn L.

AllveriProtocol No. 24: Fact or Fiction for

EU Roma? F Koç University USA

8 Nasim ArashRelationship between Human

Rights and Sustainable Development

F Islamic Azad University Iran

9 Pouria Askary

Introduction to International Humanitarian Law D


Red CrossIran

10 Pouria Askary

Modern International Law and the Culture of Humanity F


Red CrossIran

11 Mylène Bidault

Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Clearing the Ground E

Office of the High

Commissioner of Human Rights

N/A

12 Janet Blake Human Rights and MDGs B Shahid Beheshti University Iran


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13 Janet BlakeAspects of Cultural Diversity - Intangible Cultural Heritage,

Diversity of Cultural Expressions and Linguistic Diversity

D Shahid Beheshti University Iran

14 Janet Blake The Role of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity in Building a

Culture of Peace

F Shahid Beheshti University Iran

15 Johanne Bouchard Cultural Rights and Development B Freibourg

University Swiss

16 Johanne Bouchard

Practical case study on Cultural Rights E Freibourg

University Swiss

17 Johanne Bouchard

Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Clearing the Ground E Freibourg

University Swiss

18 Linda Briskman

Challenging racism through human rights education C

Swinburne University of Technology

Australia

19 Linda Briskman

Conducting research with culturally diverse groups:: Limits and

prospects

DSwinburne

University of Technology

Australia

20 Michele Brunelli

Elaborating some indicators measuring the Governance, as one of the basis and a mechanism for the implementing Human Rights

A Bergamo University Italy

21 Michele Brunelli

Ethics in International Cooperation for Development B Bergamo

University Italy

22 Michele Brunelli

Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Clearing the Ground E Bergamo

University Italy

23 Michele Brunelli

Jurisprudence of Humanity as a Human Rights Tool: A Proposed

ActionF Bergamo

University Italy

24 Srinivas Burra

Changing Contours of the Legal Status of International Terrorism:

Implications for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law

F South Asian University India

25 Nina Burridge

Promoting cultural diversity and human rights education in Australian schools: intersecting

pathways to socially just communities

CUniversity of Technology,

SydneyAustralia


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26 Kathleen Cavanaugh

Faith in Democracy? Freedom of Religion in a European

ContextF

Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI, Galway

Ireland

27 Giuliano Comba The Universal Periodic Review E

Office of the High

Commissioner for Human

Rights

N/A

28 Alireza Delkhosh

Cultural Diversity as Common Heritage of Mankind E University

Lecturer Iran

29 Paul Dembinski Economy, Global Governance and

Human RightsE Fribourg

University N/A

30 Hussain Diba

The Impact of Islamic ethics in support of International Humanitarian Law norms F

International Department

of the Islamic Promotion

Office, Qom

Iran

31 Alireza Deyhim

International Crimes and Responsibility of States D University

Lecturer Iran

32Elvira

Dominguez-Redondo

Universal Periodic Review: Beyond naming and Shaming A Middlesex

University Spain

33 Mohammad Ebrahimi

The Historical Evolution of Humanitarian Law from a Cultural

PerspectiveF Shahid Beheshti

University Iran

34 K. Elumalai

Laws Protecting Women in a Culturally Diverse and Secular State India: Lesson for Learning F

Indira Gandhi National Open

UniversityIndia

35 Reza Eslami Right to Culture and the Right

to Be Different: Convergence or Divergence?

F Shahid Beheshti University Iran

36 Reza Eslami Human Rights Education for Toler-ance C Shahid Beheshti

University Iran

37 Reza Eslami Privatization and Human Rights B Shahid Beheshti University Iran

38 Jawad Fakhr Tusi

Two Alternative Solutions for Tem-porary Detention and Recourse to a Jury, with the Aim of Maximal

Protection of Human Rights in the Charge

FHawzah and

University lecturer

Iran


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39 Faraz Firouzmandi

The World Bank, Development and HR B Payame Noor

University Iran

40 Laura Galeotti

Ethical Principles of international Cooperation Evaluated in Terms of the Effectiveness of Human Rights

F Bergamo State University Italy

41 S.A Vahid Gharavi Human Rights and Development D

School of International

Relations Iran

42

Seyyed Mohammad

Ghari Seyyed Fatemi

Ethics of International Develop-ment B Shahid Beheshti

University Iran

43 Naser Ghorbannia

Islamic Thought>s Potentials for Enriching and Promoting Human Rights Education and

Humanitarian Values

C Mofid University Iran

44 Ali-Akbar Gorji

Democracy and Development B Shahid Beheshti University Iran

45 Fariba Hajiali Financial Rights of Wife F Azzahra University Iran

46 Timothy F. Yerima

African human Right system in comparative analysis with the

European and the American system of human right

D Kogi State University Nigeria

47 Shahrzad Fouladvand

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Rights of the Accused F

The Peace and Justice Initiative,

Utrecht, The Netherlands

Iran

48 Kamran Hashemi

Emerging New Regional Human Rights Mechanisms in the Muslim

WorldA

NAM Centre for Human Rights and Cultural

Diversity

Iran

49 Kamran Hashemi

Rights of the Child and Muslim Legal Traditions D


Diversity

Iran

50 Kamran Hashemi

Right of Minorities to Identity: Muslims’ Experience D


Diversity

Iran

51 Kamran Hashemi Regional Human Rights System in

the Muslim World D


Diversity

Iran


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52 Kamran Hashemi

Race, Religion, and Human Rights Struggle for Protection of

Vulnerable PeopleF


Diversity

Iran

53 Kamran Hashemi

Human Rights, Cultural Diversity and the Muslim World E


Diversity

Iran

54 Kamran Hashemi

Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Clearing the Ground E


Diversity

Iran

55Katayoon Hussein Nejad

Reporting on Humanitarian Education Programme of the ICRC relating to the Educational System

of Iranian Schools

C International

Committee of the Red Cross

Iran

56Mohammad Jafar Jahromi

Ghanbari

Economic Sanctions and Human Rights B Shahid Beheshti

University Iran

57

Mohammad-Javad Javid

& Esmat Shahmoradi

Access to Justice in the National Courts, with a View to International

InstrumentsF

Tehran University &

Allameh Tabataba’i University

Iran

58

Sukhdave Singh

Juganda Singh

Implementation of EHL in Asia: Focus on NAM member countries C

International Committee of the Red Cross,

Beijing)

Malaysia

59 David KeaneRegional Human Rights Systems

of the Future: Likelihoods and Challenges

A Middlesex University Ireland

60 Darko Jordanov

Mini EHL, A Tool for Humanitarian Education C


Red Cross, GenevaMacedonia

61 Anne-Marie Colandrea,

Briefing on the Council of Human Rights session E OIDEL N/A

62 Masoumeh Khosravi

Human Rights situation in China: Organ Harvesting and People’s

BeliefsF Semnan

University Iran

63 Su-ming Khoo

Cooperating for imperfect justice: the beautiful risk of education for

human rightsC

National Univer-sity of Ireland,

GalwayMalaysia

64 Fahimeh Kashkooli

Challenges around Protection of Humanitarian Aid in Armed

ConflictF Justice

Department Iran


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65 Seyed Ali Mahmoudi

Utilitarian- Deontological Morality and the Real Politic D University

Lecturer Iran

66 Seyed Ali Mahmoodi Liberty, Critique, and Hate Speech F University

Lecturer Iran

67 S. M. Masum Billah Human Rights Education in

Bangladesh: A Pro-poor ApproachF

Jagannath University

Dhaka

Bangladesh

68Mohammad

Mahdi Meghdadi

Reviewing the Role of Legal Clinics in Human Rights Education C Mofid University Iran

69Ahmad

Moballaghi Protection of Medical Units during War Time from a Perspective of

Islamic Jurisprudence

F

The Judicial Research Centre

of the Islamic Assembly and Qom Hawzeh

Iran

70Javad Mobini

& Sodaif Ataei

Intercultural Dialogue in the Framework of Human Rights F


Relations Iran

71Abul Bashar Mohammad Abu Noman

A Human Right-based Approach for Combating Trafficking in

Women and Children: Bangladesh Perspective

F University of Chittagong

Bangladesh

72

Abul Bashar Mohammad Abu Noman

National Human Rights Protecting Mechanisms in Pakistan: A Critical

Analysis F University of Chittagong

Bangladesh

73 Ghassem Mohammadi

The Transformation of Values in the Process of Development B Shahid Beheshti

University Iran

74 Mohsen Mohebby

Multinantional Companies (MNCs) and Human Rights B Iranian Chamber

of Commerce Iran

75 Nasrin Mossafa

Cultural Diversity and Human Rights Education

for the Target Groups; Needs and Challenges.

C Tehran

University Iran

76 Nasrin Mosaffa

Cultural Diversity and Human Rights of Women D Tehran

University Iran

77 Nasrin Mosaffa Kefalat in the CRC F Tehran

University Iran


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78 Mostafa Mousavi

A Survey on Islamic Human Rights Basics and Study in the Practical Behavior of the Prophet of Islam

and His Household

F Iranian Foreign Ministry Iran

79 Reza Mousazadeh Human Rights and Moral Values D


Relations Iran

80 Hooman Movassagh

Sanctions, HR and the Freedom of Scientific Researchers B Shahid Beheshti

University Iran

81 Zahra Noparast Right of People to Peace F University

Lecturer Iran

82 Irene Pietropaoli

ASEAN Regional Human Rights Protection: Lessons from the African and Inter American

Regional Systems

A Middlesex University Italy

83 Mohsen Qasemi

Oversea Military Bases: What role can Human Rights play? F Payame Noor

University Iran

84Mohammad

Hossein Ramazani

Sustainable Development and HR B Shahid Beheshti University Iran

85 Supriya Rao

Protecting the Right to Education: The Need for New Norms to

Protect Educational Institutions and Personnel from Attack

F

International Committee of the Red Cross ,New

Delhi

India

86 Stefanie Rinaldi

Sen’s capability approach and human rights education: the special

case of refugee camp situationsC

UN Relief and Works Agency

for Palestine Refugees in the

Near East in Amman

Swiss

87Francisco

Rivera Juaristi

Lessons learned from the Inter-American System: A comparative approach on the issue of access to

regional human rights mechanisms

A

International Human Rights Clinic at Santa

Clara University School of Law,

California

Puerto Rico

88 Fereshteh Rouhafza

Women Human Rights Situation in the West F University

Lecturer Iran

89 Susan Safaverdi

Head scarf, a symbol of Islamic culture and banning laws against

it in some European countries, Violation of Human rights?

F

Center for Women and

Family Affairs of Presidency

Iran


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90 Mahya Saffarneya

Family Law System in Modern World: A Multicultural Approach D Imam Sadeq

Universiy Iran

91 Mahya Saffarneya

Humanity in Family; Morality or Law? F Imam Sadeq

University Iran

92

Seyed Mohammad

Kazem Sajjadpour

Human Rights and Developing Countries

DSchool of

International Relations

Iran

93 Angelika Schopp Dialogue between Islam and

International Humanitarian Law D

International Committee of the Red Cross,Iran.

German

94 Angelika Schopp

The ICRC>s Global Dialogue on Islam and IHL F

International Committee of the Red Cross,Iran.

German

95 Irene Schneider Gender and Honour in the Iranian

Penal Code of 1997F University of

Goettingen German

96 Toh Wah Seng

Introduction to Exploring Humanitarian Law : goals, content

and methodology C

Batu Lintang Teacher Training

InstituteMalaysia

97 K.C. Sowmya Principle of Distinction in Law of Armed Conflict and the Role of

PMSCs: A Critical AppraisalF

International Committee of the Red Cross, New

Delhi

India

98Hossein

Sharifi Taraz Kohi

Fundamental Human Essentials in Process of General Human

Rights Education: Emphasizing on Cultural Diversity

C University Lec-turer Iran

99

Soumitra Subinaya & Mahdi Yousefi

International Humanitarian Law from the Perspective of the

Lanjia Saoras, A Primitive Indian Tribe Untouched by Millennia of

Civilizational Progress

F

National Law University, Odisha &

University of Tehran

India &Iran

100 Zakieh Taghizadeh

The Legacy of Using Force against Somali Pirates, Human Rights and

Existing ObstaclesF Independent

Researcher Iran

101 Javad Tahmasebi

Evaluation of the New Criminal Procedure Bill F Iranian Judiciary Iran


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102 Silvia Tellenbach

Changes in the Conception of Family as Reflected in German

Criminal LawF

Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International

Criminal Law, Freiburg.

German

103 Maryam Torabi

Smart Sanctions as a Threat to Human Security F Tarbiat Modarres

University Iran

104 Michel Veuthey Introduction to International

Humanitarian LawE Collège

Universitaire Henry Dunant

Swiss

105 Michel Veuthey

Practical case study on International Humanitarian Law E

Collège Universitaire

Henry DunantSwiss

106 Sangeetha Yogendran

Right to Reparations for Women in the Prosecution of Gender-

Related Crimes under International Criminal Law

FNational

University of Singapore

Singapore

107 Pierre Yves Fux

The international system of human rights E Swiss Ministry of

Foreign Affairs Swiss


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The Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity would like to thank the members of the administration team for their support over the past year:

Ms. Zahra Alvandi

Ms. Nooshin Teymourpour

Mr. Mohsen Farahbar

Mr. Jafar Yaghoobi

Acknowledgments

NAMCHRCD,NewOffice,Neyavaran-Tehran


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Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity

(NAMCHRCD)

Phone: (+98) 9363237365Fax: (+9821) 66703177Website: www.namchrcd.com E-mail: [email protected] Address: Shahid Aghaei St., Neyavaran Avenue, Tehran, Iran.Postal Address: P.O.Box:11365-631, Tehran, Iran.

NAMCHRCD 2012 Annual Report

nam center for human rights and cultural diversity 2012 annual

Documents