International Law and Human Rights Standards
In the context of international law, states have an obligation to safeguard its nationals against any atrocities based on the international human right standards that are conferred upon the state to comply with the “Responsibility to Protect” obligation. The human rights advocacy has not only affirmed that states must observe human rights standards but have also assured that in the event of failure on part of state governments, the international community shall also collectively undertake actions to ensure compliance with such obligations. It is a well-known fact that armed conflict is an area, which influences human rights violations significantly. Subsequently, over the past decades, the experts have been concentrating on the development of instruments that aims at eliminating the human sufferings during conflict and war (Solis 2016).
This research proposal shall also discuss about the national as well as international interventions in attempting to deter armed conflicts that is resulting in human rights violation. Although several nations experience human rights violation in some form or the other, this proposal shall focus on the human rights violations due to armed conflicts in Ireland (Vincent 2017). This is because human rights, human rights abuses have been a fundamental part of the Northern Ireland agenda as the communities are continued to be deprived of human rights for decades striving to attain equality on all sides.
Over the past few decades, rebels, diplomats, journalists and demonstrators refer to human rights law in the event of armed conflicts. The international legal framework for human rights includes UN Security Council Resolutions, General Assembly, the Commission on Human Rights and Human Rights Council. More recently, these Human Rights framework have considered that in armed conflicts, parties to such conflicts usually have obligations with respect to the rights of persons that are affected by the conflict and such obligations have a legal binding on such state parties (Kaczorowska 2015).
Armed conflict has scarred million lives as it resulted in war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. International human rights law has been developed with an objective to preserve humanity and dignity of all (Scherrer 2017).
The thesis statement of this research paper relates to the violation of human rights laws due to armed conflict in Ireland. The violence in Northern Ireland has been influenced by conflict over the political status of the region (Buchanan 2016). The conflict was a third year bout of political violence and low intensity armed conflict, which formed part of the Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The conflict involved multiple armed and political actors (Ferguson, Burgess and Hollywood 2015).
Armed Conflict and its Impact on Human Rights
The aims and objectives of this research proposal are as follows:
- To understand how armed conflict violate human rights;
- To evaluate the methods in which human rights law protect the war victims;
- To understand the national and international interventions in case of armed conflict in Ireland
The research question for this assignment is as follows:
- How armed conflict infringes human rights?
- What are the ways human rights law safeguard the war victims?
- How national and international interventions have assisted Ireland while armed conflict violates human rights?
The research talks about the victims of the political conflict in Northern Ireland prior to 1998, which led to an environment wherein civil oppression, state human right abuses and paramilitary violence were on the rise and tolerated (Forsythe 2017). However, a legal intervention has been made in the form of Good Friday Agreement that guaranteed minimal human right protections and constitutional frameworks in Northern Netherland. The research will talk about the armed conflicts and the impact of such human rights violations on the country. It shall also discuss about the efficacy of the legal framework in implementing such legal guarantees (O’Leary and McGarry 2016).
Armed conflicts are circumstances where human rights are subjected to several contraventions because of which experts have focused on the development of instruments that purports to eliminate human sufferings during the conflict and war (Hull 2015). Recently, humanitarian intervention, maintenance of protection and peace of collective security along with the protection of cultural property have been given priority with respect to human rights law.
Political violence: Overview
The political violence in Northern Ireland was a complex conflict that involved multiple political and armed actors. It also included an armed insurgency against the state comprising the nationalist or Catholic population along with other republican parties purporting to establish a united independent Ireland.
Good Friday Agreement 1998
This agreement was established which included formal guarantees and constitutional framework that would provide human rights protection in Ireland. However, while the agreement concentrates on human rights, it has not proved to be effective enough to deliver true sovereignty and extend human rights protections to the people.
Armed Conflict causing human right violation
Armed conflict results in deaths and allow offenders unpunished under the guise of national security interest. In Northern Ireland’s case, inefficacy of legislations would permit deaths at the hand of the state to remain uninvestigated (Oberleitner 2015). The government denied accountability for the loss of the lives resulting in injustice. Consequently, such injustice might take an enormous psychological toll on the families of the aggrieved who have been subjected to human right abuses (Leavitt and Fox 2014). The inefficacy in the legal framework has attributed to the prevailing of issues and adverse consequences in the form of human right violations.
The data collection method that shall be used in this research proposal is secondary data collection method where the researcher shall use secondary resources to retrieve information for this research. Secondary sources include books, articles, peer-reviewed journals, magazines, legal sites, legislations, legal documents, case laws etc.
Focus on Northern Ireland and Political Violence
During this phase, the researcher will carry out research on the given topic of this research paper. The research shall include information related to the concept of armed conflict and the manner in which armed conflicts violates human rights. Since the research focuses on Ireland, the research will emphasize on armed conflicts carried out in Ireland and the human right violation that resulted from such armed conflicts.
Step 1
The main activities in this step shall involve reviewing of literature that is related to armed conflict and its impact of human rights violation to recognize the gaps in the information that has been retrieved from the articles, journals, books and understand what the other experts, authors, or researchers have stated about the given topic. Moreover, this phase would help me to ensure that my aims and objectives for the research focus on the subject matter of the research.
During this phase, research questions must be analyzed in more detail to determine their effectiveness in attaining the goals of the study. Besides, the budget for the proposal shall also be prepared while determining the coverage scope.
Step 2
Thereafter, I will decide the relevant articles, books, media articles, online journals, online books or articles, case laws, legislations that would assist in completing the research paper. I will obtain necessary permission from the graduate school for my relevant proposal. For obtaining approval for proposal, I will present the proposal to school committees.
Step 3
The other activities will be to determine the overall effectiveness of the research study using the information gathered from the literature review and outline the expected outcome of the study.
During this phase, I will focus on several real-life case scenarios/studies/laws related to armed conflicts and how it has attributed to the violation of human rights. Here, several legislations that are relevant to the topic shall be analyzed and their effectiveness shall be determined to assist the researcher in answering the research questions.
The case studies/case laws will assist in explaining the adverse consequences that result from armed conflicts and the extent to which it affects the security of the nation and safety of the nationals. The legislations shall provide an outline of the legal framework that is present to prevent armed conflict that is prevalent in Ireland since decades and the interventions that have been made to resolve the issue.
The collected data shall be analyzed based on the research questions along with the recommendations and discussions that shall be provided in the research paper. This analysis purports to recognize the data collected and apply it to answer the research questions while considering the aims and objectives of the research.
The researcher will use thematic analysis method to deal with the aims and objectives of the research paper. The researcher shall use thematic analysis to evaluate the information that is retrieved using secondary sources. This kind of analysis shall include various themes relevant to the research topic which shall be explained in details in the research paper.
Buchanan, S., 2016. Transforming conflict through social and economic development: practice and policy lessons from Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. Oxford University Press.
Cummings, E.M., Merrilees, C.E., Taylor, L.K. and Mondi, C.F., 2017. Developmental and social–ecological perspectives on children, political violence, and armed conflict. Development and psychopathology, 29(1), pp.1-10.
Ferguson, N., Burgess, M. and Hollywood, I., 2015. Leaving violence behind: Disengaging from politically motivated violence in Northern Ireland. Political Psychology, 36(2), pp.199-214.
Forsythe, D.P., 2017. Human rights in international relations. Cambridge University Press.
Hull, R.H., 2015. The Irish Triangle: Conflict in Northern Ireland. Princeton University Press.
Kaczorowska, A., 2015. Public international law. Routledge.
Leavitt, L.A. and Fox, N.A. eds., 2014. The psychological effects of war and violence on children. Psychology Press.
Oberleitner, G., 2015. Human Rights in Armed Conflict. Cambridge University Press.
O’Leary, B. and McGarry, J., 2016. The politics of antagonism: understanding Northern Ireland. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Scherrer, C.P., 2017. Ethnicity, nationalism and violence: Conflict management, human rights, and multilateral regimes. Routledge.
Solis, G.D., 2016. The law of armed conflict: international humanitarian law in war. Cambridge University Press.
Vincent, J., 2017. Ethnicity and the state in Northern Ireland. In Ethnicity and the state (pp. 123-146). Routledge.
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