Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1924951
Paul J. Govind
ABSTRACT This article addresses extinction and the need for ethical change within our legal system. The article evaluates this issue in the context of law that mediates humanity's use and management of land and by extension the more-than-human species that we share the land with. Humanity frames its relationship with land through property. Whilst land, and the different species, ecosystems and formations that inhabit it represents a physical and material state of being, property exists in a dephysicalised state. Dephysicalisation does not allow humanity to recognise the ontological vulnerability that it is experiencing in concert with the more-than-human species that share the planet and is blinding our legal regimes to the reality of the extinction crisis that is upon us. This is an ethical challenge. I argue that decelerating the extinction crisis in the Anthropocene requires that the exercise of rights is tempered by responsibility. I explain the relationship between dephysical property rights, responsibility and extinction on the backdrop of the Anthropocene using the related concepts of space and place. In contrast to rights that have an abstract and disembodied quality, an ethic of responsibility necessitates that humanity adopt a position where place is mutually constructed by humanity and more-than-human species.
{"title":"Extinction in the anthropocene and moving toward an ethic of responsibility","authors":"Paul J. Govind","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1924951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1924951","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article addresses extinction and the need for ethical change within our legal system. The article evaluates this issue in the context of law that mediates humanity's use and management of land and by extension the more-than-human species that we share the land with. Humanity frames its relationship with land through property. Whilst land, and the different species, ecosystems and formations that inhabit it represents a physical and material state of being, property exists in a dephysicalised state. Dephysicalisation does not allow humanity to recognise the ontological vulnerability that it is experiencing in concert with the more-than-human species that share the planet and is blinding our legal regimes to the reality of the extinction crisis that is upon us. This is an ethical challenge. I argue that decelerating the extinction crisis in the Anthropocene requires that the exercise of rights is tempered by responsibility. I explain the relationship between dephysical property rights, responsibility and extinction on the backdrop of the Anthropocene using the related concepts of space and place. In contrast to rights that have an abstract and disembodied quality, an ethic of responsibility necessitates that humanity adopt a position where place is mutually constructed by humanity and more-than-human species.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"534 - 560"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1924951","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45956410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1925204
E. Turnhout, A. Purvis
ABSTRACT After the launch of the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in May 2019, the message that 1 million species are threatened with extinction made headlines in news and social media across the world. These headlines also resulted in critical responses that questioned the credibility of this number and – by extension – the Global Assessment report and the institution of IPBES. In this article, we – as two authors of the Global Assessment – draw lessons from the GA about how to represent biodiversity in assessments and how biodiversity knowledge can inform effective and legitimate actions that contribute to conservation as well as equity, justice, and human well-being. Specifically, we highlight the inherent multiplicity of meanings and definitions of biodiversity to reflect on the limitations of using species richness and extinction as proxies for biodiversity and biodiversity loss. It is crucial to communicate clearly and in a balanced way that biodiversity loss is broader than species extinction, and how this broader loss of biodiversity jeopardises human wellbeing irrespective of whether species die out. Consequently, the post-2020 biodiversity framework will require multiple targets around not only species extinction but also broader biodiversity loss and human well-being.
{"title":"Biodiversity and species extinction: categorisation, calculation, and communication","authors":"E. Turnhout, A. Purvis","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1925204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1925204","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT After the launch of the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in May 2019, the message that 1 million species are threatened with extinction made headlines in news and social media across the world. These headlines also resulted in critical responses that questioned the credibility of this number and – by extension – the Global Assessment report and the institution of IPBES. In this article, we – as two authors of the Global Assessment – draw lessons from the GA about how to represent biodiversity in assessments and how biodiversity knowledge can inform effective and legitimate actions that contribute to conservation as well as equity, justice, and human well-being. Specifically, we highlight the inherent multiplicity of meanings and definitions of biodiversity to reflect on the limitations of using species richness and extinction as proxies for biodiversity and biodiversity loss. It is crucial to communicate clearly and in a balanced way that biodiversity loss is broader than species extinction, and how this broader loss of biodiversity jeopardises human wellbeing irrespective of whether species die out. Consequently, the post-2020 biodiversity framework will require multiple targets around not only species extinction but also broader biodiversity loss and human well-being.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"669 - 685"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1925204","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41801571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1940569
Afshin Akhtar-Khavari, M. Lim, K. Woolaston
ABSTRACT The extinction of species and ecological systems is occurring more quickly than any other time in human history. Our social and cultural institutions and the concepts and framings that underpin them are key contributors to modern extinctions. In this paper we ask how engaging explicitly with extinction enables a critical and hopeful rethinking of environmental law. We explore the potential of this question by summarising and categorising the literature that discusses how extinction provides a useful frame and moral compass for interrogating environmental law rules, systems and ambitions. Through an evaluation of biodiversity-related multilateral environmental agreements we illustrate the potential of our approach. We demonstrate that if law is to effectively address mass extinction then we need to also interrogate the values and worldviews perpetuated by existing and potential future legal instruments. Drawing on the papers from this special issue we argue that there is much scope for scholarship to develop critical and hopeful approaches for environmental law to address the ecological, social and ethical challenges of extinction.
{"title":"Environmental law’s extinction problem","authors":"Afshin Akhtar-Khavari, M. Lim, K. Woolaston","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1940569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1940569","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The extinction of species and ecological systems is occurring more quickly than any other time in human history. Our social and cultural institutions and the concepts and framings that underpin them are key contributors to modern extinctions. In this paper we ask how engaging explicitly with extinction enables a critical and hopeful rethinking of environmental law. We explore the potential of this question by summarising and categorising the literature that discusses how extinction provides a useful frame and moral compass for interrogating environmental law rules, systems and ambitions. Through an evaluation of biodiversity-related multilateral environmental agreements we illustrate the potential of our approach. We demonstrate that if law is to effectively address mass extinction then we need to also interrogate the values and worldviews perpetuated by existing and potential future legal instruments. Drawing on the papers from this special issue we argue that there is much scope for scholarship to develop critical and hopeful approaches for environmental law to address the ecological, social and ethical challenges of extinction.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"493 - 512"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1940569","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47036937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1881304
E. O’Donnell
ABSTRACT Since 2017, some of the most beloved and iconic rivers in the world have been recognised in law as legal persons and/or living entities, with a range of legal rights and protections. These profound legal changes can transform the relationship between people and rivers, and are the result of ongoing leadership from Indigenous peoples and environmental advocates. This paper uses a comparative analysis of the legal and/or living personhood of rivers and lakes in Aotearoa New Zealand, India, Bangladesh, Colombia to identify the legal status of specific rivers, and highlight the disturbing trend of recognising rivers as legal persons and/or living entities whilst also denying rivers the right to flow. Rather than empowering rivers in law to resist existential threats, the new legal status of rivers may thus make it even more difficult to manage rivers to prevent their degradation and loss. This paper highlights an ‘extinction problem’ for rivers that environmental law has exacerbated, by recognising new non-human living beings whilst simultaneously denying them some of the specific legal rights they need to remain in existence. The paper also shows how a pluralist analysis of the status of rivers can help to identify some potential ways to address this problem.
{"title":"Rivers as living beings: rights in law, but no rights to water?","authors":"E. O’Donnell","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1881304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1881304","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since 2017, some of the most beloved and iconic rivers in the world have been recognised in law as legal persons and/or living entities, with a range of legal rights and protections. These profound legal changes can transform the relationship between people and rivers, and are the result of ongoing leadership from Indigenous peoples and environmental advocates. This paper uses a comparative analysis of the legal and/or living personhood of rivers and lakes in Aotearoa New Zealand, India, Bangladesh, Colombia to identify the legal status of specific rivers, and highlight the disturbing trend of recognising rivers as legal persons and/or living entities whilst also denying rivers the right to flow. Rather than empowering rivers in law to resist existential threats, the new legal status of rivers may thus make it even more difficult to manage rivers to prevent their degradation and loss. This paper highlights an ‘extinction problem’ for rivers that environmental law has exacerbated, by recognising new non-human living beings whilst simultaneously denying them some of the specific legal rights they need to remain in existence. The paper also shows how a pluralist analysis of the status of rivers can help to identify some potential ways to address this problem.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"643 - 668"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1881304","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45724749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1878596
G. Albrecht
ABSTRACT The need to move away from the grip of the Anthropocene in all of its manifestations is now urgent. As Einstein might have said, ‘you can't solve the problems of the Anthropocene by using the same anthropocentric thinking that created those problems in the first place’. In addition to scientific and technological change, there must be, in lock step, cultural, ethical and legal change. Radical change is needed in all of these domains as many of our older practices and concepts have, sadly, become redundant for all cultures (old and new) on the planet. The Anthropocene is a powerful colonising agent and it ultimately desolates all that it touches. The antidote to the dysbiosis of the Anthropocene is the Symbiocene. Here, a powerful new meme based on the mutualistic features of grand-scale symbiosis in life can inform every aspect of humanity. Rights, it is argued, have crucially served to entrench separation between human and non- human beings in a competitive and adversarial legal and political system. I offer ‘ghehds’, as a concept befitting the Symbiocene, a more life-inclusive, descriptive ethical approach to all interspecies relationships. Ghehds (from the root ghehd, to unite, with etymological connections to modern words such as: to gather, together and good) will help bring about the extinction of rights and its applications to nature. Instead of a hierarchy of competing rights, assuming autonomous individuals or entities in a contested domain, ghehds respect entitlements of coalescence, vagility, passage, movement and flow within organically and symbiotically unified wholes. Rights assume division, competition and exclusion; ghehds assume unity, cooperation and inclusion. The concept of ghehds is offered as a way of avoiding biological and other forms of extinction.
{"title":"The extinction of rights and the extantion of ghehds","authors":"G. Albrecht","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1878596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1878596","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The need to move away from the grip of the Anthropocene in all of its manifestations is now urgent. As Einstein might have said, ‘you can't solve the problems of the Anthropocene by using the same anthropocentric thinking that created those problems in the first place’. In addition to scientific and technological change, there must be, in lock step, cultural, ethical and legal change. Radical change is needed in all of these domains as many of our older practices and concepts have, sadly, become redundant for all cultures (old and new) on the planet. The Anthropocene is a powerful colonising agent and it ultimately desolates all that it touches. The antidote to the dysbiosis of the Anthropocene is the Symbiocene. Here, a powerful new meme based on the mutualistic features of grand-scale symbiosis in life can inform every aspect of humanity. Rights, it is argued, have crucially served to entrench separation between human and non- human beings in a competitive and adversarial legal and political system. I offer ‘ghehds’, as a concept befitting the Symbiocene, a more life-inclusive, descriptive ethical approach to all interspecies relationships. Ghehds (from the root ghehd, to unite, with etymological connections to modern words such as: to gather, together and good) will help bring about the extinction of rights and its applications to nature. Instead of a hierarchy of competing rights, assuming autonomous individuals or entities in a contested domain, ghehds respect entitlements of coalescence, vagility, passage, movement and flow within organically and symbiotically unified wholes. Rights assume division, competition and exclusion; ghehds assume unity, cooperation and inclusion. The concept of ghehds is offered as a way of avoiding biological and other forms of extinction.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"513 - 533"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1878596","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49099216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1940570
M. Lim
ABSTRACT Extinction. It is almost as though we dare not speak its name. Instead, words such as ‘threatened’ and ‘endangered’ are entrenched in conservation law and management as markers of risk. These terms are so entrenched that the nature of the risk is easily forgotten. On reflection, classifications of conservation status denote, of course, how close species are from disappearing forever. However, our familiarity with categories of biodiversity decline, the lack of explicit objectives to prevent avoidable extinctions within law and the failure of laws to directly tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss mean that the reality of extinction is ultimately buried in plain sight of the law. We need to change how extinction is seen and more importantly how it is felt within environmental law. An endling is the last of a kind. The final remaining individual of a plant or animal species. The paper explores the power and potential of endlings to illuminate the reality of extinction and our responsibilities to the more-than-human. Through stories of endlings past, recent and yet to come, the paper urges humans, and the legal instruments that encapsulate human values, to see and feel extinction and ultimately shift current extinction trajectories.
{"title":"Extinction: hidden in plain sight – can stories of ‘the last’ unearth environmental law’s unspeakable truth?","authors":"M. Lim","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1940570","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1940570","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Extinction. It is almost as though we dare not speak its name. Instead, words such as ‘threatened’ and ‘endangered’ are entrenched in conservation law and management as markers of risk. These terms are so entrenched that the nature of the risk is easily forgotten. On reflection, classifications of conservation status denote, of course, how close species are from disappearing forever. However, our familiarity with categories of biodiversity decline, the lack of explicit objectives to prevent avoidable extinctions within law and the failure of laws to directly tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss mean that the reality of extinction is ultimately buried in plain sight of the law. We need to change how extinction is seen and more importantly how it is felt within environmental law. An endling is the last of a kind. The final remaining individual of a plant or animal species. The paper explores the power and potential of endlings to illuminate the reality of extinction and our responsibilities to the more-than-human. Through stories of endlings past, recent and yet to come, the paper urges humans, and the legal instruments that encapsulate human values, to see and feel extinction and ultimately shift current extinction trajectories.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"611 - 642"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1940570","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46171308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1878595
J. Bendik-Keymer
ABSTRACT The drivers of mass extinction today are societal processes (including economic and legal systems) inherited from European imperialism and embedded in the international state system. Their path dependencies demand that we engage in decolonial work. This work centrally involves countering land abstraction – the rendering instrumental of lands, waters, and skies for the sake of national territory, capitalist profit, or industrial resource use. Much Indigenous law is centred on moral relations with lands, internalising ‘ecological reflexivity’ within Indigenous society in highly articulated ways not present in the social memory of nation states. Prudential reasons thus support decolonising Indigenous lands, making room for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of Indigenous law. Such reasons are not exclusive but rather add to already evident reasons of justice in support of Indigenous decolonisation which have for some time been urgent calls for concern. This paper provides new reasoning for decolonisation concerning the practical relations between the disestablishment of our inherited colonial order and the curtailment of now alarming rates of extinction threatening the current order of life on this Earth.
{"title":"Facing mass extinction, it is prudent to decolonise lands & laws: a philosophical essay on respecting jurisdiction","authors":"J. Bendik-Keymer","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1878595","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1878595","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The drivers of mass extinction today are societal processes (including economic and legal systems) inherited from European imperialism and embedded in the international state system. Their path dependencies demand that we engage in decolonial work. This work centrally involves countering land abstraction – the rendering instrumental of lands, waters, and skies for the sake of national territory, capitalist profit, or industrial resource use. Much Indigenous law is centred on moral relations with lands, internalising ‘ecological reflexivity’ within Indigenous society in highly articulated ways not present in the social memory of nation states. Prudential reasons thus support decolonising Indigenous lands, making room for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of Indigenous law. Such reasons are not exclusive but rather add to already evident reasons of justice in support of Indigenous decolonisation which have for some time been urgent calls for concern. This paper provides new reasoning for decolonisation concerning the practical relations between the disestablishment of our inherited colonial order and the curtailment of now alarming rates of extinction threatening the current order of life on this Earth.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"561 - 584"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1878595","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43345846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1938798
K. Woolaston, Afshin Akhtar-Khavari
ABSTRACT The extinction of a species can provoke deep feelings of sadness, injustice, compassion and empathy for the individuals lost. In this paper we argue that law, as a governance institution, does not allow decision-makers the use of emotions such as compassion or empathy, when making decisions relevant to the possible extinction of species, despite evidence to suggest that such emotions elevate the importance of moral concerns, and so may be utilised to halt the extinction process. Further, we argue that law can impact our ability to feel compassion and empathy for species heading towards extinction, as it creates a narrative of apathy. This is particularly exacerbated when it comes to the potential extinction of invertebrates, whose needs and interests are often already subject to people’s negative emotional pre-dispositions. By analysing the recent legal decisions surrounding the approval of the Yeelirrie Uranium mine in Western Australia, we highlight the nature of this problem and what it means for the conservation of invertebrate species, and argue that environmental law’s commitment to utilitarian and rational traditions will continue to challenge how we react to, and allow, the extinction of invertebrate.
{"title":"Extinction, law and thinking emotionally about invertebrates","authors":"K. Woolaston, Afshin Akhtar-Khavari","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1938798","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1938798","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The extinction of a species can provoke deep feelings of sadness, injustice, compassion and empathy for the individuals lost. In this paper we argue that law, as a governance institution, does not allow decision-makers the use of emotions such as compassion or empathy, when making decisions relevant to the possible extinction of species, despite evidence to suggest that such emotions elevate the importance of moral concerns, and so may be utilised to halt the extinction process. Further, we argue that law can impact our ability to feel compassion and empathy for species heading towards extinction, as it creates a narrative of apathy. This is particularly exacerbated when it comes to the potential extinction of invertebrates, whose needs and interests are often already subject to people’s negative emotional pre-dispositions. By analysing the recent legal decisions surrounding the approval of the Yeelirrie Uranium mine in Western Australia, we highlight the nature of this problem and what it means for the conservation of invertebrate species, and argue that environmental law’s commitment to utilitarian and rational traditions will continue to challenge how we react to, and allow, the extinction of invertebrate.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"585 - 610"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1938798","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45262583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-02DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1853900
Ramona Vijeyarasa
ABSTRACT For decades, the world has seen legal, policy and practical interventions to advance women’s rights. Yet there is no country in the world where women and men are equal. In pursuit of such equality, this article promotes the relatively obvious and simple strategy of embedding international women’s rights norms into domestic legislation. While acknowledging the limitations of the binary approach to the rights of men and women as reinforced by the CEDAW Convention, the article draws from international law to offer standards for domestic legislation in three areas: reproductive health, labour law and taxation. Across those areas, concrete benchmarks for gender-responsive legislation are provided, as well as examples of what constitutes neutral, blind and regressive provisions. While acknowledging the limits of the law in disrupting the political and economic structures of society, this article offers a framework that can enable legislators and legal systems to utilise international law to deliver domestic laws that work for women.
{"title":"What is gender-responsive legislation? Using international law to establish benchmarks for labour, reproductive health and tax laws that work for women","authors":"Ramona Vijeyarasa","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1853900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1853900","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For decades, the world has seen legal, policy and practical interventions to advance women’s rights. Yet there is no country in the world where women and men are equal. In pursuit of such equality, this article promotes the relatively obvious and simple strategy of embedding international women’s rights norms into domestic legislation. While acknowledging the limitations of the binary approach to the rights of men and women as reinforced by the CEDAW Convention, the article draws from international law to offer standards for domestic legislation in three areas: reproductive health, labour law and taxation. Across those areas, concrete benchmarks for gender-responsive legislation are provided, as well as examples of what constitutes neutral, blind and regressive provisions. While acknowledging the limits of the law in disrupting the political and economic structures of society, this article offers a framework that can enable legislators and legal systems to utilise international law to deliver domestic laws that work for women.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"334 - 350"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1853900","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44216718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-02DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2020.1857493
Caitlin Biddolph
ABSTRACT The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or the Tribunal) completed its mandate in 2017, marking the end of its 24-year lifespan. While the ICTY has officially ceased operations, the implications of the Tribunal’s closure continue to manifest in contemporary settings of transitional justice. Embracing a queer approach to time, the ICTY can be better understood as temporally fluid, open, and contested, rather than confined to its establishment and closure. This is because as a site for the (re)production and (re)presentation of discourses, the ICTY transcends temporal boundaries, continuing to shape and constitute (post-)conflict and transitional contexts. In this paper, I deploy queer approaches to time to interrogate how discourses of gender, sexuality, and violence at the ICTY traverse legal-political temporalities. Using the Tribunal’s Srebrenica remembrance as a case study, I demonstrate how gendered and sexualised logics constituted at the ICTY exceed the Tribunal’s official temporal mandate. Adopting a queer approach to time, I argue that gendered memories of violence at the ICTY permeate temporalities of international justice and global politics.
{"title":"Queering temporalities of international criminal justice: Srebrenica remembrance and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)","authors":"Caitlin Biddolph","doi":"10.1080/10383441.2020.1857493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2020.1857493","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or the Tribunal) completed its mandate in 2017, marking the end of its 24-year lifespan. While the ICTY has officially ceased operations, the implications of the Tribunal’s closure continue to manifest in contemporary settings of transitional justice. Embracing a queer approach to time, the ICTY can be better understood as temporally fluid, open, and contested, rather than confined to its establishment and closure. This is because as a site for the (re)production and (re)presentation of discourses, the ICTY transcends temporal boundaries, continuing to shape and constitute (post-)conflict and transitional contexts. In this paper, I deploy queer approaches to time to interrogate how discourses of gender, sexuality, and violence at the ICTY traverse legal-political temporalities. Using the Tribunal’s Srebrenica remembrance as a case study, I demonstrate how gendered and sexualised logics constituted at the ICTY exceed the Tribunal’s official temporal mandate. Adopting a queer approach to time, I argue that gendered memories of violence at the ICTY permeate temporalities of international justice and global politics.","PeriodicalId":45376,"journal":{"name":"Griffith Law Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"401 - 424"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10383441.2020.1857493","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46299779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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