This chapter argues that enforceable decisions by treaty bodies are central to ensuring that international human rights laws are respected domestically. Taking the UK as an example, this chapter compares the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The chapter demonstrates that the ECHR has been used increasingly by the UK’s courts to protect individuals’ rights, and that the courts have often engaged directly with European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decisions. By contrast, although the courts sometimes make limited use of the ICCPR, their approach and its outcome are inconsistent. A similar pattern is observed when the UK’s compliance with both instruments is assessed. Although this may stem from a range of factors, the importance of binding judgments of the ECtHR should not be underestimated: they allow domestic courts to engage directly with a treaty body, and also create a pressure to act. Looking beyond the UK, the chapter concludes that enforceable decisions by treaty bodies have a vital role in ensuring that international human rights laws are respected, and individuals’ rights are protected.

Chapter 2 focuses on the text of ECHR Article 9 and other international provisions protecting the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion including Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and Article 1 of the Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief (1981 Declaration). It also explores the drafting history of these Articles through an examination of the relevant travaux préparatoires. By analysing this material, and drawing upon a recent, deeply valuable contribution to the understanding of ICCPR Article 18, Chapter 2 seeks to demonstrate that it is more faithful to these text of the ECHR Article 9 and the relevant travaux préparatoires to understand the forum internum and forum externum aspects of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion in terms of a relationship rather than in terms of a binary and hierarchical distinction.

International human rights law (‘IHRL’) provides minimum standards which states must observe in their treatment of individuals under their jurisdiction. In this respect, it differs from many other areas of international law which focus on regulating international relations between states. The human rights recognised in international instruments are considered to be fundamental rights which all human beings are entitled to enjoy, regardless of their personal circumstances or the state in which they reside.

This chapter considers dignity as a constitutional value in Hong Kong. The courts have invoked dignity in a small number of cases involving a limited assortment of rights. Overall this use of dignity has been uneven: while it has helped expand the scope of constitutional rights in some circumstances, dignity has functioned more restrictively in others. An examination of this jurisprudence allows for a reflection on debates about the role of dignity in comparative constitutional law more generally. Commentators have queried whether such a vague and imprecise term has any substantive meaning and whether it should be abandoned altogether. The chapter concludes that attention to context can mitigate these concerns about dignity’s indeterminacy and contribute to its development as a holistic constitutional value. The relevant context is both universal and local. It includes dignity’s position as a broad-based foundational principle in international human rights law across civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. It also depends on domestic factors such as a jurisdiction’s constitutional framework and empirical realities that impact the realization of dignity.

The Hong Kong S.A.R. enjoys delegated treaty powers and relations and has in this sense ‘its own’ treaty regime; it retains on top of that certain colonial treaty features which were present before the handover, such as the continued application of the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or ‘ICCPR’ notwithstanding that the PRC is not party to the ICCPR; finally, certain PRC treaties nonetheless apply to Hong Kong while Hong Kong is at the same time exempt or excluded from other PRC treaties. That at least was what the PRC and the UK agreed. Insofar as the application of PRC multilateral treaties to Hong Kong is concerned, these have been notified to third countries through a letter by the PRC to the United Nations Secretary–General as treaty depository.

Chapter 5 reveals how Hong Kong’s freedom of expression was defined and confined by changes in the China strategies of Britain and other world powers. The diplomat Murray MacLehose assumed Hong Kong’s governorship in 1971 with an express mandate from London to build civic pride and raise living standards in Hong Kong to maximise the British bargaining position in negotiations over Hong Kong’s future with a post-Mao regime. In addition to the well-known expansion of social services and efforts to combat crime and corruption, MacLehose’s governorship also featured a hitherto understudied loosening of media control. Yet behind the overt building of a free city were the covert surveillance of political activists and unchanged draconian laws of political censorship that were used to crack down on anti-government dissent whenever it overstepped the government’s political red lines.

Chapter Five charts human dignity in its second constitutive stage, characterized by the rise of international human rights law. Its first expressions in the 1920s (which echoed developments in connection with slave trade and slavery in the nineteenth century) and later in 1944 (with the Philadelphia Declaration), must be considered in the light of the decisive adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, in 1948, and the adoption of the Convention against Genocide later that year. But it is difficult to consider these entry points, however important, as sufficient for the consolidation of human dignity in the form of human ‘rights’. In earnest, the consolidation process was not completed until the adoption of the two human rights Covenants in 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

The Government of Japan has an obligation to enact anti-hate speech laws based on Article 20 ICCPR (prohibiting the advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred) and Article 4(c) ICERD (preventing public authorities or public institutions, national or local, from promoting or inciting racial discrimination), although it has reserved Article 4(a) and (b) ICERD. If we interpret the Constitution of Japan in conformity with international human rights treaties, article 13, in conjunction with article 21, of the Constitution guarantees freedom from infringements of human dignity resulting from hate speech, incitement with clear and present danger, and intimidation or threat of illegal violence. Criminal penalties are already permitted in these cases. It is, however, also important to provide in law for administrative measures to prevent hate speech and to regulate against ethnic harassment in workplaces and universities. This chapter analyses hate speech regulations in countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Canada and the United States, and discusses the challenges and prospects of regulations in Japan.

Outlines the supranational framework of treaties, conventions, protocols, etc. relating to religion and explains the limited remit of the accompanying judicial and regulatory bodies. Considers the importance of the freedoms of religion, expression and association, their tendency to become entangled and their significance for the state–church relationship. Explains that a broadly similar platform of human rights and equality provisions now exists in all modern developed nations. Discusses the levelling effect of such national provisions when applied in tandem with international convention requirements. Focuses on the related case law generated by issues arising on the church–state interface, identifying governing principles from judgments delivered by the ECJ and the ECtHR, and drawing attention in particular to principles such as "proportionality" and "necessary in a democratic society". It notes those judicial rulings that specifically uphold the state’s duty of neutrality and impartiality when dealing with religious matters and the state’s right to protect its traditional primary religion and cultural identity. It identifies and discusses problematic aspects of the role of the state as it intersects with religion, such as the funding of faith schools, and considers their destabilising consequences for civil society.

When Charles de Gaulle learned that France’s former colonies in Africa had chosen independence, the General shrugged dismissively: ‘[t]hey are the dust of empire’. This disdain toward the non-Euro others characterised as Eurocentrism is typical of, and almost defines approaches to, the post-Westphalian order. This disdain is naturalised in the early era of what I have elsewhere called ‘conquest colonisation’, where resources, territories, nations and even people are plundered and looted, and governance by predation and the politics of discrimination prevail. Paradigmatically, conquest globalisation engages in ruthless subjugation of peoples marked by the altogether resolute denial of their humanity and confiscation of their natural habitat, social relations and human resources. At times, it even entails the total physical destruction of peoples, or cultural destruction, as the histories of indigenous peoples everywhere testify. Conquest globalisation founds itself on, and takes pride in, reiterating and calibrating various forms of production of human rightlessness of the subjugated peoples.