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The correlation between the sea and the ship with scientific and technological progress and human needs in the field of trade and transportation, and the existence of inspection and observatory control in territories and their safety has caused the attention of organizations and countries to its effectiveness. On the other hand, it caused promoted productivity through the use of skilled manpower on the ship. Undoubtedly, creating universal and acceptable regulations is important so that they can be turned into law. Definitely, in this law, attention should be paid to the evaluation of the prospect of sea events and it can be predicted. Factors such as affreightment, collisions at sea, ship damage, and maritime rescue can be among these rules and clarify the purposes of a safe sea. On the other hand, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) works very actively and effectively in the direction of the compilation of these regulations and laws. It should be noted that with the progress of the shipping industry and the expansion of the sea boundaries, it is better that these laws become updated and more preventive and practical. Therefore, new standards in the maritime transport industry must be pursued by the World Maritime Organization and with a survey of the member countries, more attention should be paid to the security, speed, and services of the ports and sailing of the countries. Although one of the appreciable achievements of the World Maritime Organization has been the transformation of unsafe traditional ports into safe modern ports. But it seems that the diversity of sea transportation with regard to commodity exchanges requires the implementation of a more legal and regulatory strategy. In this article certainly, attention has been paid to the importance and fundamental role of the World Maritime Organization, because the most important basis of maritime transport is the ship. It should be noted that the ship has an independent identity and personality. On the other hand, the diversity in the utilization of ships in the aspects of commerce, public services, military, and the diversity of ship types requires special standardization and proficient implementation.

As one of the most popular means of trade in the world, shipping by sea has always been subject to maritime hazards. Thus, the implicit commitment of a ship lease contract is that the transport operator provides a seaworthy ship. There is, however, no specific definition of the legal nature of this obligation in most conventions or international laws, and it is only in this regard that the statement of seaworthiness is cited as an implied obligation. Having been written in the descriptive-analytical method, this study attempts to explain the legal nature of this obligation, its position among absolutes or relatives, primaries or subsidiaries, implicit fundamentals or customs, its compliance with the conditions of article 234, the burden of proving seaworthiness, and the lack of performance guarantees caused by its absence. According to the results of the study, a transport operator is under a relative obligation to provide a seaworthy vessel. The existence of this obligation can be mentioned both as a main condition and a secondary condition, and if there is no specification in the contract, it is referred to as a customary implied obligation. Additionally, the condition of seaworthiness would be close to the verb condition in accordance with Article 234 of the Civil Code of Iran. For a claimant (the owner of the goods) to prove a lack of seaworthiness, they only need to provide evidence that the loss has occurred. For the sea transport operator to be relieved of responsibility, s/he must prove that s/he took the necessary precautions at the start of the voyage. The owner, otherwise, is responsible for compensating the victim for the damages caused by the violation of unseaworthiness by restoring the previous situation by providing the property and if an excuse is provided, by supplying a substitute.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. Martin Luther King, Jr. Abstract The following paper will present the theory and possibilities of implication of the phenomenon of civil disobedience understood as one of the most powerful and most effective tools of democratic society when it comes to implementing the necessary and indispensable changes required for the improvement of the political domain and the social public sphere.   In the first part I will present the narrow but orthodox and widely discussed definition of civil disobedience presented by John Rawls in his Theory of Justice (1971). Given such a definition, as well as the major conditions under which the actions undertaken in the name of civil disobedience can be justified, I will focus my analysis on two major aspects of the discussed notion.   Firstly, I will discuss civil disobedience, which is in its essense an unlawful act, paradoxically expresses the highest respect for the positive law by the person performing the civilly disobedient act through one’s submission to the judgment of the law which is an object of one’s protest. This way, civil disobedience presents itself as the phenomenon which, not having a legal recognition (not being legalized), holds super-legal force required to impose the changes on the unjust legal system or on the particular unjust regulation.   Secondly, I will point out that civil disobedience, as a public act performed by the people (the subjects of the particular law), expresses the will of the people and, therefore, it can not be used (by themselves) in the ways contradictory to their best self-interest but always supported by the “the commonly shared sense of justice” (Rawls). From this premise I conclude that the universal human rights, as thier supporters claim, are one of the main ends of the political activism in the recent decade and should be advocated in the civilly disobedient manner.   In the last part I will contrast the Rawlsean definition with a much broader and more relevant understanding of civil disobedience when it concerns today’s globalizing world. In this world, the nation-states cease to be the only political actors when confronted with the transnational public sphere, and, therefore, the understanding of civil disobedience as a transversal arena of public dissent presented by Roland Bleiker (2000) is more appropriate. In this definition civil disobedience becomes, not only a political instrument of particular subjects of a particular society, but it also becomes a tool for the international mobilization of means and of people in the name of presenting and imposing the respect for the universal human rights despite the national borders and societal paradigms. 

There is an urgent need for methods by which people and communities of faith peacebuilding and human rights development. This paper argues for a holistic understanding of peacebuilding that includes security of life, a guarantee of subsistence, and the pursuit of other fundamental human rights. This need is especially acute in countries of rising instability or post-conflict rebuilding. More and more countries face a downward spiral of instability even though many leaders and bodies seek to reverse this trend. Sadly, even among those countries that emerge from conflict, one-half revert to conflict within five years. Hence the question this paper addresses is, “How shall people and communities of religious conviction be effectively engaged in a peacebuilding and human rights process?” <br />This people factor is too little understood, even though the role of citizens in transitional states has long been acknowledged as essential for just and sustainable change. For peace accords and international conventions, in and of themselves, do not make peace or deliver human rights. Neither does the arrival of international peacekeepers nor the speeches of clerics and political leaders. While these developments are helpful stimuli, real human peace and security derives from community-based initiatives that create a “positive deviance” for peaceable, rights-oriented living vis-à-vis governments and other forces.  <br />Thus this paper will hypothesize a methodology whereby citizens engage religious institutions, governments (local and national), and international change agents to transform conflict into promising peace and rights. It will identify common peacebuilding principles operating across sectors of human development, security, and rights-oriented work. These sectors may include at least the following: health, conservation, education, security, labor, spirituality, and corporate social responsibility. <br />This paper also seeks to hone a typology of human rights and peacebuilding challenges facing countries of instability and post-conflict rebuilding. Categories may include at least the following: stages and types of conflict, fragile and failed states, overlooked populations, ethnic and racial discrimination, transnational politics and justice, natural resource and wealth distribution, and social capital.

The emerging right to democracy (e.g. Franck, T) within international law favors a liberal, democratic packaging. Yet as Abedolkarim Sourash argues, there has been a conflation of liberalism and democracy, which must be decoupled.  It is from this point of departure that this paper will examine the international legality of militant democracy and interrogate when and how a constitutional democracy can legally act in an anti-democratic manner to combat threats to its democratic existence.  Militant democracy was a term introduced in 1937 by Karl Lowenstein. It refers to a form of constitutional democracy authorized to protect civil and political freedom by pre-emptively restricting its exercise. Lowenstein’s writings, at the time, were concerned with the limitations of democratic institutions in containing fascism. Militant democracies stand in contrast with the principles of legal pluralism, but the extent to which international law authorizes transformative political agendas that seek to implement forms of religious, cultural, or national autonomy is unclear.

Environmental risks and conflicts in the framework of the relations between countries and subsequently their role-playing in interaction and collaboration or conflicts and struggles between political actors especially in the level of states have reproduced serious discussions and disputes on the environment, security, and power which are interpreted as environmental geopolitics or ecopolitics by modern political geography. Geographically, the Persian Gulf is a semi-enclosed sea that has a very low capacity of self-dredging in comparison to that of high seas; hence, it retains the pollutants for longer periods of time. Some of its environmental problems arise from the various activities of the people residing along the northern and southern shores. If the situation is exacerbated by the factors such as oil and its subsequent pollutions, militarism and its subsequent destruction, desalination of seawater, and the construction of artificial islands, one can conclude that regional convergence between the countries neighboring this body of water in the process of bioregionalism would be of an essential necessity. According to the research findings, states acting in the geopolitical region of the Persian Gulf to produce power, security and to sustain them, from one hand, and to protect this shared aquatic ecosystem in the event of sustainable development, from the other hand, should mobilize all collective cooperations and operationalize the bioregionalism in regional and supranational scales.

The southern part of the China Sea has been the site of one of the most important maritime disputes in five decades. Tensions are so high that some predict World War III will break out in the region. The Philippines's referral for arbitration in respect of some of its disputes with China resulted in the issuing of a 2016 arbitration award. The legal and political significance of this Award has caused debates among scholars. The legality of the Award and the validity of the court's arguments in various positions are among the topics of these discussions.  In this study, our main question is how much this award has contributed to resolving and clarifying the legal aspects of the maritime disputes between the parties. Our secondary question is the impact of this Award on regional and international peace. The findings of this study indicate that the arbitral tribunal's approach has a significant impact on understanding the concept of "historical rights" as well as the explanation and interpretation of marine environmental protection provisions in the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea. In the tribunal's view, by joining the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the rules concerning maritime zones, except in rare cases, override the historical rights of States. It also played an important role in defining and explaining various maritime features; including islands, rocks, and low-tide elevations. However, the effect of the award on reducing tensions in the southern part of the China Sea, Chinese government policies, and Regional peace is in doubt.

The concerns of the international community regarding the potential environmental crisis for future generations have being increased arising out of the intensification of the challenges and threats to the marine environment as well as diminution of the biological resources as a result of the aggregation of harmful human activities over the maritime zones. At the same time, conservation, sustainable use and governance of the oceans through the application of the rule of law is one of the most important issues that have been at the forefront of the international community's endeavor dealing with law of the sea and ocean affairs. The United Nations General Assembly in order to resolve the challenges of the existing legal framework governing marine biodiversity has established a legally binding instrument for conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction known as the BBNJ process within the framework of the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The present paper, while considering the basic foundations of the existing international legal framework applicable to marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, describes the strengths and weaknesses of the current legal framework in order to improve the ongoing international legally binding instrument concerning BBNJ and will pursue the monitoring of the ongoing process from international law perspectives.

The “Black Lives Matter” civil rights movement has left profound effects on the international approach of the US government toward human rights. This movement reached its peak in 2020 and profoundly affected culture, politics, and policy making in the US. The two major parties reacted differently – the Democrats showed support but Republicans opposed it. These reactions help us analyze the US international policy toward human rights. US human rights policy has been embedded in the theory of “American exceptionalism”, which considered US the best incarnation of human rights and its interests as a superpower equal to its protection. But the Black Lives Matter movement challenges this narrative and claims that human rights violations are an untold part of this story. The Democrats have adopted a new approach to American exceptionalism in response which considers The US to have an exceptional potential to embody human rights values but this potential is yet to be realized. Joe Biden has also prioritized human rights more than his predecessors since 1980s by criticizing the US and also adopting harsher policies toward US allies that violate human rights. It can be predicted that the Democrats will adopt a more normative approach toward human rights in the future.

During its historical life, the Caspian Sea has always been a safe place for many races, people, and governments. Unfortunately, humanity does not appreciate this valuable water zone and steps away consciously or unknowingly on the path to its destruction and demolition. Taking the path in this way is equal to obliterating the roots of the present generation and future generations. With the aim of evaluating the environmental security structure of the Caspian Sea, this research examines a new legal framework for this water zone. Moreover, the research also argued that the Caspian requires effective political and legal decision-making to achieve its ideal state both environmentally and economically or socially. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Caspian Sea was dominated by the two governments of Iran and the Soviet Union. The intense asymmetry between power and resources between the two countries led to the unofficial and actual control of the region in the hands of the Soviet Union.

In recent years, we witnessed the use of laser weapons in naval conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman. Conflicts that are not armed and under the laws of hostilities and the rights of war are not considered, and the use of laser weapons in them violates the principles of proportionality and necessity in international humanitarian law. Based on the Fourth Protocol of 1995 of the 1980 on Conventional Weapons and Article 86 of International Customary Humanitarian Law, the use of blinding and permanently blinding laser weapons is prohibited. Based on Article 36 of the 1st Additional Protocol of 1977, the governments in the production and use of new weapons should ensure that they are not prohibited from the point of view of international rules.the use of laser weapons in the aforementioned maritime conflicts is a violation of international obligations and has a criminal nature, and according to Article 2 of the 2001 international responsibility plan of governments, it causes the international responsibility of the governments that use it. The main goal of this research is to analyze the international responsibility of governments in using laser weapons in maritime conflicts in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Therefore, by using an applied research with a descriptive-analytical method to collect the data obtained through library studies and field investigation, we have sought to realize this goal. The result of the research showed that laser weapons are a violation of international obligations in the field of intimidation, unnecessary pain and suffering, use by terrorist groups, intelligent murder,violation of the right to life and the right to reproduction. humanitarian rights, human rights and mandatory rules and universal obligations are international and are considered an international violation and cause the international responsibility of governments.