The ACT Human Rights Act and the Protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project
This ARC Linkage project, which is close to completion, has been conducted by the Centre for International Governance and Justice at the Regulatory Institutions Network at the ANU (Professor Hilary Charlesworth, Ms Renuka Thilagaratnam and Dr Katie Young) and the Australian Human Rights Centre (Andrew Byrnes), in collaboration with the ACT Department of Justice and Community Safety. The Final Report of the Australian Capital Territory Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project (September 2010), was tabled in the ACT Legislative Assembly on 9 December 2010 by the Attorney-General, Mr Simon Corbell, MLA, see ACT Legislative Assembly, Hansard, 9 December 2010, pp 6126-6129. The Attorney-General  congratulate[d] the project team on a comprehensive analysis of the scope of economic, social and cultural rights and options for incorporating economic, social and cultural rights into ACT statute law”, noting that the report would “form an excellent basis for community consultations to be undertaken next year to inform the government’s decision on whether to expand rights protected under the Human Rights Act 2004 to include economic, social and cultural rights.” (media release)

The report was the subject of a public forum addressed by the ACT Attorney-General, Mr Simon Corbell MLA, organised by the ANU’s Centre for International Governance and Justice on Monday, 25 July 2011.

For more details on the project and its output, see http://acthra.anu.edu.au/PESCR/index.html 
Contact: Andrew Byrnes

Business and human rights
Project Director, Justine Nolan recently presented a paper on ‘Promises and Pitfalls: the irrelevance of human rights to the marketplace’ at the ANZSIL (Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law) conference at the ANU in July. Justine will be a keynote speaker at  Amnesty International’s conference on 6 to 8 October 2011 in Brisbane. She is currently finalising a new international human rights text (co-authored with Adam McBeth and Simon Rice) which will be published by Oxford University Press in late 2011.
Contact: Justine Nolan

Disability

AHRCentre staff and Associates are involved in research on issues of disability and human rights. These include a focus on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and its international and domestic implementation.
Contacts:
Andrew Byrnes
Rosemary Kayess

Gender, Development and Human Rights
AHRCentre Board members Louise Chappell and Andrew Byrnes and Associates Christine Forster, Beth Goldblatt and Gillian Moon work on a number of projects on gender rights and development in different contexts. In 2011 Louise has undertaken research at the University of Manchester as a Hallsworth Fellow, and also as the 2011 Australian European University Institute (EUI) Visiting Scholar in Florence. Andrew Byrnes has written a number of chapters on a comprehensive commentary on the CEDAW Convention to appear in 2011 and, together with Professor Marsha Freeman of the University of Minnesota, recently prepared a study for the World Bank on the impact of the CEDAW Convention at the national level.. Christine Forster is currently part of a team working on drafting a new progressive CEDAW-compliant Family Law Bill for the Cook Islands which incorporates extensive protection for victims of domestic violence as well as spousal benefits and parenting orders. She is also  working on articles on the role of gender equality laws in transitional states, monitoring and implementation mechanisms in gender equality laws, and recognising both culture and human rights in family law reform. Beth Goldblatt has co-edited a special issue of the South African Journal on Human Rights on Women and Social and Economic Rights and recently launched a co-edited book (with K McLean) on Women and Social and Economic Rights, published by Juta (Cape Town).; Gillian Moon works on the issues of equality and non-discrimination in the context of trade and development (see project below). Many of the Project members are on the organizing committee of a conference on the International Criminal Court (ICC) ‘Justice For All?’ to be held at UNSW in February 2012.
Contacts:
Andrew Byrnes
Louise Chappell
Christine Forster
Beth Goldblatt
Gillian Moon

Health and human rights
Andrea Durbach and Beth Goldblatt have been involved in a research project on transnational obligations to redress the impact of health professional migration on the right to health in developing countries. A paper on this topic was presented at the UNSW/Hong Kong University Symposium held at UNSW in December 2010.
Contacts:
Andrea Durbach
Beth Goldblatt

International human rights and humanitarian law
AHRCentre Chair and International Law Professor, Andrew Byrnes has been awarded an ARC Discovery Grant to undertake a project entitled: Whose law is it, anyway? Citizens' and peoples' challenges to state dominance in the making and application of international law  (DP110101594).This new project will run from 2011 until 2013. It will explore the role of citizens’ and peoples’ tribunals operating outside formal international institutional structures, yet deploying international law norms and procedures, as a form of accountability mechanism. The topic will be the subject of a new postgraduate course in Session 2, 2011.
Project co-director, Dr Sarah Williams, is currently completing a book to be published by Hart Publishing on Internationalized criminal courts and tribunals. Sarah was  the Dorset Fellow in Public International Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (from 2008 - 2010), a Senior Legal Researcher at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (from 2006 - 2007) and a Lecturer at Durham Law School, University of Durham (from 2003 - 2008). She has acted as a consultant to the European Commission, the British Red Cross, the International Federation of the Red Cross and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. Sarah is currently the co-editor of the PIL Current Developments section of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly.
Contacts:
Andrew Byrnes
Sarah Williams

International Co-operation, Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism
Analysing recent developments in public policy and in international and domestic jurisprudence, this project directed by Chris Michaelsen addresses a range of pressing international law and human rights questions in the area of international co-operation on counter-terrorism. It explores the relationship between the quasi-permanent threat of international terrorism and the option for States to ‘derogate‘ from international human rights obligations in times of public emergency. It also examines the legality of relying on so-called diplomatic assurances on the non-use of torture when deporting and extraditing individuals suspected of terrorism. A major sub-project focuses on the Security Council’s Al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctions regime established by Security Council Resolution 1267. The 1267 regime’s listing and de-listing mechanism, in particular, raises a number of human rights concerns and challenges.
Contact: Christopher Michaelsen

Migrant and Refugee Rights in Asia Program 
Led by Bassina Farbenblum, the Migrant and Refugee Rights Project engages in research, advocacy, litigation and law reform to advance the human rights of migrants and refugees in Asia and Australia. It is affiliated with UNSW’s Human Rights Clinic, in which students gain practical experience in multifaceted approaches to human rights litigation and advocacy in both domestic and international settings, in collaboration with regional partner organisations.
Contact: Bassina Farbenblum

National Human Rights Institutions in the Asia Pacific Region

Since 2008, the Australian Human Rights Centre (Andrew Byrnes, Andrea Durbach, Catherine Renshaw), have been researching the role of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (APF), in establishing and strengthening national human rights institutions (NHRIs) in the Asia Pacific region.  The research is part of a 3-year project jointly funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant and the APF (LPO776639).  In 2011 the project will draw to a close with the publication of the final results of its research. List of the publications of the project can be found at http://www.ahrcentre.org/APFproject.html.
Contacts:
Andrew Byrnes
Andrea Durbach

New Media and Human Rights

Daniel Joyce joined the UNSW Faculty of Law this year and his project combines his post-doctoral research in international law with his research and teaching interests in media law and human rights law. A particular focus of this project will be the connection between new and social media and the human rights methodology of witnessing.
Contact: Daniel Joyce

Trade, development and human rights
The intersections between international economic law, international human rights law and trade, commerce and investment are the focus of this project, led by Gillian Moon. During 2011 Gillian Moon has been on study leave in Oxford and, for part of that time, researching in liaison with the Global Economic Governance Project (GEG) at University College, Oxford, under the Directorship of Professor Ngaire Woods. While on leave, Gillian has completed new research on two aspects of the relationship between WTO law and human rights. The first, to be published in the next volume of the African Journal of International and Comparative Law, probes the adequacy of the WTO law provisions which might permit non-compliant domestic human rights measures. The second explores the likelihood that some WTO law-mandated domestic measures may be unlawfully discriminatory in their impacts. The research paper advances evidence that agricultural tariff reduction measures in some developing countries are likely to have disparately adverse effects on racial or ethnic minorities and women. The research was presented at a joint GEG/Global Trade Ethics Projects seminar, “Negotiating the Non-negotiable: Protecting Human Rights in Trade Agreements,” held at Oxford University’s European Studies Centre in March 2011. The other speaker at the seminar was Professor Frank Garcia, who will be visiting UNSW Law School in August.
Contact: Gillian Moon