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69 Sask. L. Rev. 39 (2006)
Human Rights and the Avoidance of Domestic Implementation: The Phenomenon of Non-Justiciable Constitutional Guarantees

handle is hein.journals/sasklr69 and id is 45 raw text is: SASKATCHEWAN LAW REVIEW Human Rights and the Avoidance of Domestic Implementation: The Phenomenon of Non-Justiciable Constitutional Guarantees 'Dejo Olowu* [Tihe struggle for human rights will be won or lost at the national level. Unless we begin to study such struggles, we will neither understand the most important issues nor be able to make the most effective possible contribution to the realization of internationally recognized human rights.1 I. INTRODUCTION Human rights discourses commonly conceptualize states as the primary duty-bearers of the normative obligations they engender. This is quite understandable. After all, the classical origins of human rights and the philosophical explanations for their validity present them as norms that were originally designed to serve as vertical buffer between the ruler and the ruled.2 It would appear that the international legal order therefore hoists human rights as norms that are primarily the responsibility of each state. Since the emergence of The International LL.B. (Hons.), LL.M., Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria; LL.M. Human Rights & Democratization, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa; PG Dip. Int'l Hum. Rts., Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland; JSD Cum Laude, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA; Barrister & Solicitor (Nigeria); Member of the Bar of Vanuatu; Lecturer, School of Law, University of the South Pacific, Emalus Campus, Port Vila, Vanuatu; Articles Editor, Journal of South Pacific Law. Email: olowuo@vanuatu.usp.ac.fj. This article is a version of a presentation at the Conference Reflections on Rights Enforcement: Comparative Perspectives, September 22-24, 2005, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The author is grateful to Professors Penelope Andrews and Ken Cooper-Stephenson for their amazing encouragement throughout the Conference. Jack Donnelly, Post-Cold War Reflections on the Study of International Human Rights in Joel H. Rosenthal, ed., Ethics & International Affairs, vol. 8 (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994) 236 at 252. 2 See generally Prakash Shah, International Human Rights: A Perspective from India (1997) 21 Fordham Int'l L.J. 24 at 26-28, which refers to the historical and philosophical foundations of human rights in Western political thought.