Changing Perceptions of Sovereignty and Human Rights: Essays in Honour of Cees Flinterman

by Boerefijn, Ineke; Goldschmidt, Jenny

• ISBN13: 9789050957595
• ISBN10: 9050957595
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-31
• Publisher: Intersentia

Summary

The concept of State sovereignty is a fundamental rule of public international law and is firmly laid down in Article 2(1) of the United Nations Charter. The nature of the traditional concept of State sovereignty is changing. Sovereignty is no longer considered to be absolute, in the sense that the State has unlimited power to govern people and territory. This is an on-going process, with multi-faceted human rights dimensions.

Author Biography

Ineke Boerefijn (LL.M. and PhD in International law of human rights, 1985 at the University of Utrecht) was associate professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Utrecht University (1986-2012). She was a visiting research fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of New South Wales and the Australian Human Rights Centre. She has held the ‘Opzij Chair’ at the Centre for Gender and Diversity, Maastricht University, where she focused on the human rights aspects of violence against women. From 2012 till 2013 she was advisor at the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission in Utrecht. At the moment she is coordinating Policy advisor at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (since 2013).

Jenny Goldschmidt is now emeritus professor in human rights at Utrecht University. She has been working in the field of (comparative) constitutional and administrative law at Leyden University (where she got her PhD in 1981: “National and Indigenous Constitutional law in Ghana”). She specialised in human rights and in particular gender and law. She held Chairs in gender and law at both Utrecht and Leyden University and served in many committees and boards in this field, both in the Netherlands and in the EU and UN. In 1994 she became President of the Equal treatment Commission in the Netherlands, where she served the maximum of two terms, until 2003. In 2004 she became professor in Human rights Law and later Director of the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) at Utrecht University until her retirement in 2014. She is member of the International Commission of Jurists (Geneva) and of several Boards of organisations working in the field of human rights, disability rights etcetera. She published many articles and books.