While the UK may not have a single, codified constitution or Bill of Rights instrument, it nevertheless has a long history of rights protection under the common law and through various legislative enactments including, most notably, the Human Rights Act 1998 which gives effect in domestic law to the core rights enshrined in the ECHR. In this chapter, we examine how rights are protected (including their enforcement) in domestic law in the UK, paying particular attention to the principle of legality and the powers conferred on the courts under the Human Rights Act 1998. Common law rights continue to develop and evolve alongside the Human Rights Act and they still act as a vehicle to protect rights and fundamental values.

To link the economic sphere of international relations to the security sphere of international politics in this chapter, we treat economics as a function of politics and security. While controversial in some circles, this need not be so. Economists, historians, and political scientists have distinct answers to questions concerning the economy. That they differ in scope, interest, and focus should be viewed as alternatives for assessing the empirical world, not mutually exclusive representations of it. This is fundamental to the interdisciplinary approach of International Security. It should be no surprise that the vastness and complexity of the global economic system intersect with realms outside the purview of economics. Security is an arena in which the politics of economic decision-making are felt most intensely.

This chapter considers the nature of human rights and its critiques. The language of human rights has become the common lexicon of social justice and the critical standard for assessing political institutions. Yet, whilst human rights law occupies a central place in our moral and legal discourse, there are many aspects of the human rights project which are contested. This chapter introduces the key debates as to the origins of human rights rights and the justifications advanced for the existence of human rights. This includes examining institutional critiques which focus on how rights should be enforced; as well as ideological critiques, which argue that the gaps in what is protected and who is protected mean that human rights law is itself part of the problem.

Freedom to protest is important for similar reasons to freedom of expression, it is, after all, a core form of political expression. Yet while protest is important, protests can also be disruptive, annoying, offensive, harmful and violent. In a rights-based system we thus have to consider where lines should be drawn between competing rights and interests and by whom. This chapter examines how the domestic and ECtHR case law reflects these tensions, with some cases leaning towards a more deferential approach and others establishing a more robust role for the courts. This chapter primarily examines Article 11 the right to freedom of association and assembly, but it also highlights the ways in which many of the other Convention rights safeguard the freedom to protest. In respect of domestic law, this chapter observes that the post-HRA period has also seen the enactment of far wider legislative restrictions than existed previously. There are also concerns about the growing use of surveillance, police brutality and increased restrictions on access to land.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce accessibility, democracy, and the need to confront ableism. It begins with the story of Alice Wong, an Asian American disabled activist and bestselling author who wrote about the barriers to vote faced by People with Dis/abilities like her during the COVID-19 pandemic. The story of Alice illustrates the challenges with voting in the US, a country that is now considered a flawed democracy and facing many institutional barriers, including voter suppression laws. Informed by dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit), this chapter examines who are People with Dis/abilities, some popular myths about them, and how they are treated in the US when it comes to voting. Ableism, a system that treasures able-bodiedness and imposes it as the norm in society, is discussed as harmful to US democracy. To confront ableism and improve democracy we need accessibility, satisfying needs to allow full participation in a space or action. The chapter includes a Food for Thought section on interdependence and solidarity, from San Francisco to Gaza. It ends with a discussion of Alice Wong and the disability justice movement.

This chapter examines the role of human rights law in tackling modern slavery and human trafficking. It begins with Article 4 ECHR, which expressly prohibits slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. It considers how each of those concepts has been defined by the ECtHR, how the ECtHR expanded Article 4 ECHR to include human trafficking, and why this was contested. Having examined the conceptual ambit of Article 4 ECHR it then considers the obligations associated with that right. Finally, it looks at how the UK seeks to satisfy its obligations through the NRM and the MSA. In this regard we will see that amendments made by the NBA and the IMA have starkly exposed growing tensions over, and resistance to, human rights law where it gives rise to obligations to those that have crossed a State’s border. Overall, this chapter thus highlights fundamental differences between the direction of travel in domestic law as compared with the direction of travel on the international plane.

This chapter focuses on the core concepts of optimization theory and its application in data science and AI. It begins with a review of differentiable functions of several variables, including the gradient and Hessian matrices, and key results like the Chain Rule and the Mean Value Theorem. The chapter then introduces optimality conditions for unconstrained optimization, explaining first-order and second-order conditions, and the role of convexity in ensuring global optimality. A detailed discussion of the gradient descent algorithm is provided, including its convergence analysis under different assumptions. The chapter concludes with an application to logistic regression, demonstrating how gradient descent is used to optimize the cross-entropy loss function in a supervised learning context. Practical Python examples are integrated throughout to illustrate the theoretical concepts.

“Alignment” is an umbrella term to describe a relationship between two or more states that involves mutual expectations of some degree of policy coordination on security issues under certain conditions in the future. The types of alignment explored in this chapter are alliances, thin and thick security institutions, coalitions, and strategic partnerships. The distinguishing features of these alignments are their differing levels of formality and the reason for their creation, or their objectives. Strategic alignments remain one of the dominant means that sovereign states possess to cooperate and coordinate their actions around common threats and political interests. States are either pulled into distrustful relations through security dilemmas or they are obliged to work together to solve common problems. Alliances, security institutions, coalitions, and strategic partnerships offer a variety of ways that states may seek to address security issues, threats, or challenges to their territories or interests.

Global public health is now seen as a security issue by many nations across the globe. Aside from naturally occurring outbreaks of infectious disease, deliberate attacks involving biological agents have emerged as a major security concern and a source of public anxiety in recent decades. Though many public health and security experts now recognize that effective prevention and response to these threats depend on building resilient public health systems around the world and international cooperation in maintaining them, it is unclear that the kind of sustained political will and economic resources exist to address such a massive undertaking that would need to take a holistic approach to human security and incorporate measures addressing: poverty; food insecurity; environmental degradation; lack of access to basic health-care services; adequate education; housing; sanitation and clean water; as well as more conventional aspects of security.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce moral panic about sexual and gender minorities, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity. It begins with the story of Frank Kameny, a White Jew and US veteran who lost his job as an astronomer during the Lavender Scare, a moral panic about gay men and lesbians working in the US government that started in the 1950s and led to their mass firing. Informed by intersectionality, this chapter connects that panic to the current assault on the rights of sexual and gender minorities or LGBTQIA2S+ persons, and discusses who they are, some popular myths about them, and what is sexuality and gender. They are pathologized, criminalized, and erased by heteronormativity, the notion that heterosexuality is the “normal” form of sexual orientation, and assuming the gender binary of men versus women, and cisnormativity, a system that favors cisgender people who identify with their gender assigned at birth and restricts gender expression. The chapter includes a Food for Thought section on gender euphoria and trans joy, from affirmation to liberation. It ends with a discussion of Frank Kameny and how gay rights build on Black civil rights.

This chapter dissects the challenges posed by weapons of mass destruction. It starts by exploring the weapon that changed the fundamentals of security and warfare – the atomic bomb with a brief look at how nuclear weapons work. Then it examines three cases focused on nuclear weapons: nuclear weapons in the Cold War, nuclear-weapon states in the twenty-first century, and non-state actors and the nuclear dilemma. The chapter rounds out with a look at the role chemical and biological weapons play in the contemporary world, offering some concluding thoughts on weapons of mass destruction and contemporary international security.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce racial trauma, radical hope, healing, and Black reparations. It begins with the story of Laverne Cox, a Black transgender woman, actress, and trans civil rights activist who wrote an essay on the impact of White supremacy on multiple generations of her family. The story of Laverne illustrates racial trauma, the emotional responses rooted in structural racism that have an intergenerational impact on health. Informed by a reparatory justice approach, this chapter examines radical healing, hope, and reparations to deal with racial trauma and achieve justice. Radical does not mean violent or extremist but is the notion that complete change is necessary to address political problems. It discusses some features and popular myths about reparations, and examines five principles for reparations: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition. The chapter includes a Food for Thought section on how education may increase support for Black reparations. It ends with a discussion of Laverne Cox and finding hope in our ancestors.