BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 9 Public International Law and Human Rights Solved Question Papers with Answers 2017 to 2026 - Mumbai University | munotes

This is two subjects examined in one paper, and almost every paper divides itself down the middle. One half is public international law: the sources, treaties and reservations, recognition of states, acquisition of territory, the law of the sea, state responsibility and the peaceful settlement of disputes. The other half is human rights: the Universal Declaration and the two Covenants of 1966, CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the regional systems, the National Human Rights Commission and the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, and the Article 21 case law of our own Supreme Court. A candidate who prepares only the first half can lose the whole of the long answer section, because in most of these papers at least two of the essay questions are on the second.

Before you plan your revision from this folder, know what is actually in it. There are eight scans and nine distinct printed papers. The scan filed as 2017-18 holds two complete and different 100 mark papers, Q.P. Code 13242 of April 2017 and Q.P. Code 13241 of December 2017. The scan filed as 2018-19 holds two more, forms 81415 and 68964. And three of the papers are filed more than once: form 68964 appears in the scans labelled 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2022-23, and form 62103 appears in the scans labelled 2019-20 and 2022-23, in the reverse order. The barcodes and the questions are identical each time. So the eight years on the shelf are nine papers, and the year on the label is not a reliable guide to when a paper was set.

The sources of international law is the safest question in the subject. It is asked in eight of the nine papers, as a twelve mark essay in six of them, and in the ninth it appears as a multiple choice question about which of four options is a primary source. Nothing else is close, but three others come near. The Universal Declaration is in seven of nine, the National Human Rights Commission or the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 in seven of nine, and the role of non-governmental organisations in protecting human rights in five. If you learn Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice clause by clause, with a case against each, you have prepared a question that is almost certain to be on your paper.

The situational section is eight reported cases with the names taken out, and once you recognise them the section is the easiest on the paper. Two states referring an island dispute to a sole arbitrator on 23 January 1925 is the Island of Palmas award. A man kept in prison for over two years after his acquittal is Rudul Sah. A Russian tourist raped by hotel staff who has left the country is Chandrima Das. Gold seized by a republic that is then conquered and annexed is West Rand Central Gold Mining. Children employed on construction projects in Delhi, challenged by an NGO, is the Asiad workers case. A prisoner who writes a letter to the Supreme Court about conditions inside the jail is Sunil Batra. A mail steamer that collides on the high seas is the Lotus. And a foreign sovereign who contracts a marriage in England under a false name is Mighell v. Sultan of Johore. Each of them is answered in full in this folder.

The paper has shrunk and moved closer to home. Up to 2019-20 it was 100 marks in three hours, twenty-five questions, under Q.P. Codes 13242 and 13241 and then subject code 68004. The 2021-22 sitting was the online outlier, twenty multiple choice questions and ten descriptive ones with no marks and no duration printed anywhere on it. From 2024-25 it runs as 60 marks in two hours under codes 68014 and 75714, and those later papers ask far more about Indian law than the older ones did: the statutory definition of a human right, what may be complained of to the Commission, the National Commission for Minorities, migrant workers, and the Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles. The 2024-25 ATKT paper is different again, and worth reading even if you are not sitting an ATKT: all three of its problems are set outside India, on a journalist charged with sedition, an indigenous woman evicted in Brazil and a man facing the death penalty in Iran for his sexual orientation.

These are model answers prepared by munotes. They are a study aid and not official University answer keys, which the University of Mumbai does not publish.