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In the broadest sense, social sciences encompass society, human behavior, and its influence on the world. Social sciences help understand how society works, ranging from the causes of unemployment, economic growth, what makes people happy, and so on. The information it provides is vital for governments and policymakers, non-governmental organizations, and local authorities.
Social Sciences and Law
Abstract
The peaceful settlement of disputes is one of the principles enumerated in the Charter of the United Nations, and the Security Council is entrusted with significant powers to achieve this goal. In today's world, accusations of human rights violations have become one of the primary challenges among nations in terms of upholding sovereignty. In accordance with the United Nations Charter, the Security Council may be called upon by the parties to a dispute, the General Assembly, or the Secretary-General, or it can act ex officio to seek a peaceful resolution or adjust a situation through peaceful means. If the Security Council determines that the situation or dispute in question may constitute a threat to international peace and security, it may invoke its powers under Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent of the Security Council's competence and the powers it possesses when carrying out its conciliatory role in cases involving human rights violations by a Member State and conflicts that may arise regarding the interpretation and application of the United Nations Charter.
Abstract
Article 6(2) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child places an obligation on countries to ensure the survival and development of the child. The right underlines the importance of ensuring that children's rights to health, an adequate standard of living, access to basic services and education are respected in all circumstances. In addition, it requires effective national and international implementation.
These provisions are included in section 4 of the Child's Right Act to ensure optimum protection for children in Nigeria. Nonetheless, children's rights have been drastically affected by the Boko-Haram insurgency. This has resulted in death, abduction, displacement of, and violence against children. Moreover, the prevalence of malnutrition, food scarcity, diseases, and lack of access to water, sanitation, health care, and education remains a challenge.
Accordingly, this paper seeks to examine the efficacy of the laws and policies in place to protect children's right to survival and development in Nigeria. It argues that despite the existing legal and policy framework for protecting children's rights, there has been little focus on the best interest standard in the attainment of the rights of the child. The paper recommends a child-centric approach to adequately provide protection for children in conflict-plagued zones in Nigeria.
Abstract
New technologies based on digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence have fundamentally transformed our lives and society as a whole, in just a few decades. These technologies support human well-being and prosperity by enhancing progress and innovation, however, they also have the potential to negatively impact human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Discrimination, the violation of privacy, increasing surveillance, the weakening of personal autonomy, disinformation and electoral interference are but a few of the many concerns. This paper examines the specific human rights implications of AI-driven systems through the lens of the most important international instruments adopted by the UN and regional human rights mechanisms. The paper shows how AI can affect the exercise of all human rights, not only a most obvious few. In line with major international organizations, the author calls on decision-makers to take a precautionary approach by adopting AI regulations that are consistent with the standards of fundamental human rights, and that balance the realization of the opportunities with the potential risks which AI presents.
Abstract
It is an obvious statement that children are disproportionately affected by changes in their environment, due to their incomplete maturity, evolving capacities, vulnerabilities derived from their age and special developmental needs. Changes in temperature, air and water quality, and access to proper nutrition are likely to have more severe and long-term impacts on children's health, development and well-being, since they basically determine the enjoyment of the right of the child to a healthy environment. The impacts of climate change clearly undermine the effective enjoyment of the rights enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereinafter: UN CRC) and its Optional Protocols, including the rights to life, survival and development (art. 6), to family relations and the right not to be separated from one's parents against one's will (arts. 9–10), the highest attainable standard of health (art. 24), an adequate standard of living (art. 27), education (art. 28), freedom from any form of violence or exploitation (arts. 19, 32 and 34–36), the right to recreation and play (art. 31) and the enjoyment of one's culture (art. 30). The climate crisis has been declared as child rights crisis, although children bear the least responsibility for it.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has clearly identified climate change as one of the biggest threats to children's health and has urged States Parties to put children's health concerns at the centre of their climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. 1 Despite data and research explicitly linking environmental harm to child rights violations, increasing knowledge of environmental crises and existing numerous international agreements, the common understanding of the clear relationship between children's rights and the environment is still questionable and obscure. 2 In this paper we have gathered the binding international documents which clearly show the close link between children's rights and climate change, and we also analyze the measures taken by the relevant treaty-monitoring body within the field of children's rights. The main outcome of this paper is to give an introduction and an extended overview of the relevant international norms adopted by the environmental ‘crossroads’ of children's rights.
Abstract
Within a framework of rights that protects children's interests and seek to balance their developing interests in welfare and agency, I consider how contexts of war impact children's lives to argue that such contexts provide opportunities to advance or set back both the development of moral powers, namely capacities for a sense of justice and a conception of the good, and capacities for autonomy. Besides an interest in satisfying their basic needs and protection, children have an interest in developing their moral powers and growing into autonomous agents. Evidence shows great variation in children's responses to traumatic circumstances, from severe psychological disorders to enhanced resiliency and moral reasoning. As moral powers and autonomy ground the permissibility for paternalistic treatment and the exclusion of children from certain rights, I argue that once the war is over children are entitled to an adequate assessment of how their interests and capacities have changed. For children whose development was set back, states should grant opportunities for recovery and further development, which suggests strengthening welfare and protection rights; while for children whose development was advanced, states should recognize such advancement and grant opportunities for the exercise of their newfound capacities, which suggests granting certain agency rights alongside welfare and protection.
Abstract
This essay aims to compare the constitutional interpretation techniques used by the Italian Constitutional Court and the Hungarian one, facing the advancing of populist claims in Europe. After introducing the differences between the exercise of sovereignty in constitutional legal systems towards populistic regimes, the authors analyse some paradigmatic cases in which Constitutional Courts reacted to populistic waves. Through comparing the different legal instruments adopted to interpret the Constitution, this paper will therefore test the Italian and Hungarian legal system's concrete democratic evolution.
Abstract
In the 21st century, the two administrative instruments that have the greatest impact on the legal situation of members of society, administrative enforcement and administrative legislation, have been and are being confronted with a number of social challenges (global economic crisis, refugee crisis, epidemics and pandemics). The challenges of the 21st century require public intervention to provide a rapid, accurate and effective response to the problems that arise, while ensuring legality and the protection of the rights of the citizens. The first responses to social problems are provided by sectoral regulations, which may conflict with general rules of administrative procedure. The study analyses administrative decisions of general scope in the light of special sectoral regulation and review the points of conflict with general rules of administrative procedure. The study concludes with a proposal.
Abstract
This paper aims to show the importance of a correct understanding of formally undefined EU labour law norms for the successful European integration of Ukraine. The analysis focuses on legal acts of the European Union. The drawbacks of the inequality of approaches to determining the content of norms with evaluative concepts are highlighted, as is the need to use doctrinal recommendations for the application of evaluative provisions with the purpose of preventing the misconception that evaluative concepts can be interpreted as, and to whom, it pleases. This article thus demonstrates the necessity of the analysis of the case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU, which is rich in the interpretation of evaluative concepts and is considered to help clarify the meaning of many terms of labour law, which, due to their undefined formulation, may cause difficulties in implementing them in the legal system of Ukraine.
Abstract
While the complexity of the methodological and legislative-technical apparatus of conflict of laws has, in the eyes of its critics, created an aura of impermeability, they are, in fact, instruments through which a relationship to the foreign is conveyed and articulated. However, conflict of laws is not an immutable system of rules but rather a technique that undergoes varying degrees of development depending on the changing premises on which it is built. These are notably defined by different approaches to the values that frame the conflicts resolution. Depending on these values, the available instruments of conflict of laws are used to achieve different objectives. This results not only in a confluence of different methods but also in changes within a particular method. Against the backdrop of the value transformations of conflict of laws, this paper seeks to demonstrate that the abandonment of methodological purism of conflict of laws necessarily entails the abandonment of relational purism towards the foreign. By contrast, insofar as transformations within the dominant multilateral method are concerned, it is argued that the changes in value orientation have not led to a fundamental change in the nature of the relationship to the foreign.
