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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.

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