186 Access to Redress for Stateless Persons Under International Law chological, or emotional harm.37 The term victim in this context refers to the individual who experienced said harm.38 This harm can be temporary or can have lifelong effects and can sometimes result in death.39 As it was previously mentioned, under international law, any harm caused as a result from a violation of an international norm gives rise to an obligation to redress said harm. However, due to the previously mentioned vulnerability experienced by some stateless persons, some are fearful of coming forth to state authorities or seek legal assistance from international organisations and NGOs when they are harmed. This can hinder access to redress, since accessing redress often requires making themselves visible to state authorities or other entities that can assist them in the process.40 The next paragraph will elaborate on how redress is understood for the purposes of this article. Redress refers to the act of repairing a harm; redress is obtained through remedies, which refers to the measures through which redress is obtained. According to Shelton, the concept of remedies refers to two concepts, the first a procedural concept and the second a substantive concept.41 As a procedural concept, remedies refer to the processes through which claims of human rights violations are heard before a competent authority and decided upon.42 As a substantive concept, remedies refer to the outcome of the aforementioned processes, the concrete relief afforded43 to the successful claimant. The concept of remedies is deeply linked to the concept of access to justice, since the obligation to afford any form of remedy for any form of violation requires ‘the existence of remedial institutions and procedures to which victims may have access’.44 As previously mentioned, the right of victims of internationally wrongful acts to seek and obtain redress for the harm they experienced finds its legal basis under various international legal instruments at both international45 and regional levels.46 The term “reparations” is normally used in international legal documents instead of the term “remedies”.47 “Reparations” refers to the concrete measures through which an entity—typically a state—can repair consequences of a violation of international norms.48 The main goal of reparations is to ‘eliminate, as far as possible, the consequences of the illegal act and to restore the situation that would have existed if the act had not been committed’,49 which can be done through reparatory measures including restitution, compen37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 In some situations—like that of the Rohingya—the harm they experience can potentially even amount to genocide. See for instance Al-Jazeera, ‘UN investigator says Myanmar genocide against Rohingya ‘ongoing’ (2019) <https://www.aljazeera.com/ news/2018/10/investigator-myanmar-genocide-rohingya-ongoing-181025035804009.html> accessed 15th March 2019. The term ‘victim’ often has a negative connotation, being associated with a sense of weakness and powerlessness. However, the word ‘victim’ is used widely by the international mechanisms explored in this article, to refer to the person who was harmed; it denotes a status, particularly in mechanisms where multiple parties are involved. JPJ Dussich, ‘the challenges of victimology: past, present and future’ (2010) The 144th International Senior Seminar: Visiting Experts Papers. Normally, redress is available through legal channels which require filing a complaint before local or international entities with the power to grant them redress after a typically long juridical process. D Shelton, Remedies in International Human Rights Law (2nd, Oxford University Press, 2005), at 7. Ibid, at 7. Ibid, at 7. Ibid, at 8. Human rights instruments such as article 8 UDHR, article 2 ICCPR, article 6 ICERD, article 14 CAT, article 39 CRC, and International Humanitarian Law instruments such as article 3 of the Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 18 October 1907 (Hague Convention IV), article 91 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) of 8 June 1977, and articles 68 and 75 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Such as: article 7 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, article 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights, and article 13 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This is due to the fact that ‘remedies’ does not have an equivalent in other official UN languages, which makes the translation of international treaties that contain mentions to remedies challenging. For standardization purposes, the term ‘reparations’ is widely used. See D Shelton, Remedies in International Human Rights Law (2nd, Oxford University Press, 2005), at 7. D Shelton, Remedies in International Human Rights Law (2nd, Oxford University Press, 2005), at 7. In order to facilitate the decisionmaking process for establishing suitable reparatory measures, the UN General Assembly adopted the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines, also known as the van Boven/Bassiouni principles, a soft-law document which contains the basis for reparations for victims of (gross) violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, available at <https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/remedyandreparation. aspx> accessed 15th March 2019. EC Gillard, ‘Reparation for violations of International Humanitarian Law’ (2003) 85(851) International Review of the Red Cross 529. Gillard also points out that ‘violations of all rules of international humanitarian law give rise to an obligation to make reparation, and not only violations of the grave breaches provisions for which there is individual criminal responsibility’ and that the obligation to make reparations for any wrongful acts arises automatically after the unlawful act is committed and there is no need for said obligation to be spelled out in treaties and other legal documents.