Human Rights Review Editor-in-Chief Steven D. Roper is pleased to announce
the first recipient of the “Human Rights Review Gary Herbert Award” for
the best article published in the preceding year (2012).

William H. Meyer, Professor of Political Science and International
Relations at the University of Delaware, was chosen by the Award Committee
based on the topic, scholarship and contribution to the field of human
rights for his article “Indigenous Rights, Global Governance, and State
Sovereignty” published in Volume 13, Issue 4. The commendation noted that
the article “nicely links disparate developments regarding indigenous
rights to the broader notion of global governance. Meyer analyzes such
matters as the 2007 UN General Assembly Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, certain cases in the OAS Inter-American Court of Human
Rights and activities by the Inuit Circumpolar Council. From these and
other developments he concludes that ‘sovereign’ states can be made to pay
attention to indigenous human rights and the other claims based on these
fundamental entitlements. The structure of the article is very clear, with
details adding up to a general overview about the international management
of ‘the problem’ of indigenous peoples who now find themselves inside
territorial states within the context of the global state system. The
research is broad; the writing is clear, and the subject matter is
important. The views presented are worth reading and reflection.”

The Award Committee was composed of David P. Forsythe, Charles J. Mach
Distinguished Professor at the University of Nebraska (Chair), Patrick
Hayden, Professor of Political Theory and International Relations at the
University of St Andrews and Lilian Barria, Professor of Political Science
at Eastern Illinois University.

This Award is named after Gary Herbert, who served as the journal’s
Editor-in-Chief from 2003 to 2011. This Award was made possible with the
generous support of Springer and Neil Olivier, who serves as Senior
Publishing Editor.

For more information about Human Rights Review, please visit
http://www.springer.com/law/journal/12142

Last week some of us from the Office of the Ombudsman attended a workshop on Climate Change and the Law. Climate change is an issue that has a specific and worrying relevance here in the Pacific, where populations live on small islands, some of which are low-lying, and all of which are subject to the extreme weather events of climate change. Only recently in December 2012, Samoa was hit by Cyclone Evan, which devastated large areas of the islands. There are many human rights that are affected by climate change, such as the right to life, the right to take part in cultural life, the right to use and enjoy property, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to food, the right to water, the right to sanitation, the right to development, the right to adequate housing, and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Other areas of rights that come into play are gender rights, education, and trade. This has been highlighted in such international documents as the Male’ Declaration on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change (November 2007), and several Human Rights Council Resolutions: 7/23 (2008); 10/4 (2009); 18/22 (2011).

Presenters and attendees of the 2013 UNESCO/DLA Piper Climate Change and the Law Workshop in Apia, Samoa

‘Letters from Samoa’ will be a new series of posts on Invisible College. I am currently working as a Human Rights Legal Officer at the Office of the Ombudsman in Samoa, which is now tasked with the role of being Samoa’s National Human Rights Institute. I am in the role through Australian Volunteers for International Development, an Australian Government AusAID initiative. I will be posting on NHRI happenings, and human rights and criminal law related events and developments in Samoa.
See my first post on the opening of Samoa’s new Narcotics Lab.
You can also see an article about the first movements of the NHRI in the Samoa Observer.
I hope that our readers will find the posts interesting!