Research has the potential to be a powerful tool for the realisation of the rights of disabled people. However, antiquated research practices continue to marginalise disabled people by excluding them from research; inadequately remunerating them for participation in research; undertaking research that assumes difference; and not including their voice in the leadership design or implementation of research. This article builds on emancipatory, participatory and inclusive research methodologies to introduce a new human rights-based disability research methodology that presents a roadmap to overcome these problems and transform research into a means of rights realisation. It presents a protocol for the methodology that was created by the international Disability Human Rights Research Network. Finally, it explores many challenges that researchers may face when endeavouring to implement the methodology.

LGBT rightsdiscriminationsexual orientationsocial change movementsAfrica

Recent literature and United Nations documents advocate that most armed non-state actors (ANSAs) should be bound by human rights law. This article takes a more critical stance on this issue. It argues that only a limited number of ANSAs should potentially become human rights duty-bearers: those that exercise de facto (human rights) jurisdiction and thus have considerable institutional and military capacities, as well as particular normative characteristics. It specifies these capacities and characteristics with an analysis of ANSAs’ practice that tentatively indicates that some of these entities may indeed exercise de facto jurisdiction. The argument is justified by highlighting the broader consequences that recognising ANSAs as human rights duty-bearers will entail. It will also endow them with privileges that will legitimise their authority over time. This is grounded in the normative logic of human rights law that emphasises the interrelationship between human rights, equality and democracy that also permeates the notion of jurisdiction and is further supported by a political understanding of the right to self-determination. The article closes with a brief sketch of two complementary ways to develop international law binding ANSAs to be further explored in future research: the so-called ‘responsibilities for human rights’ and an adapted law of occupation.

The ‘living instrument’ doctrine has emerged as a key vehicle for evolution and innovation within the International Convention on the Elimination of  All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Originating in the case law of the European Court of   Human Rights, the doctrine has been adopted by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and, it is argued, all the United Nations treaty bodies. Yet its origins and meaning under ICERD have not been explored. This article investigates its first invocation in an individual communication, Hagan v Australia. It contrasts regional case law, where individual judgments set key interpretive standards, with an international individual communications system that has evolved asymmetrically across the United Nations treaties and does not perform the same standard-setting role. The significance of concluding observations and general recommendations in understanding ICERD as a living instrument is detailed. The living instrument approach in recent inter-State complaints before the International Court of Justice and the Committee is discussed. In conclusion, the need to map ICERD as a living instrument across the multiplicity of its supervisory mechanisms is emphasised.