Hälso- och sjukvårdspersonalens rättsliga möjligheter att agera i enlighet med sin religion eller tro i arbetslivet har på senare år blivit föremål för såväl rättslig som politisk debatt. En särskilt debatterad fråga är huruvida hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal bör ges tillfälle att av religiösa skäl avstå från att medverka vid viss vård. I denna artikel behandlas s.k. samvetsklausuler, dvs. regler som ger hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal en rätt att befrias från att medverka vid eller utföra viss vård på grund av samvetsbetänkligheter. Fokus ligger på situationen när personal uttryckligen vägrar att medverka i abort­verksamhet, då abort många gånger beskrivs som en moraliskt känslig vårdåtgärd som kan ge upphov till samvetsbetänkligheter i större utsträckning än andra vårdåtgärder. Dessutom har flera europeiska länder infört samvets­klausuler i förhållande till just abort. Som exempel har både Norge och Danmark infört samvetsklausuler, vilket kortfattat behandlas. Därutöver redogörs för två aktuella fall vid svensk domstol om abortvägran och Europadomstolens inställning till samvetsklausuler.

I detta kapitel presenteras centrala resultat från ett forskningsprojekt om rätten till sjukvård för underåriga unionsmedborgare som lever i ekonomisk utsatthet i Sverige. Trots att det finns ett folkrättsligt uttryckt ansvar – inte minst genom FN:s konvention om barnets rättigheter – för Sverige som stat att förverkliga barns till hälsa, kan det konstateras att rättigheten i realiteten är begränsad för just denna grupp av barn. Barn i denna situation har till skillnad från andra barn som regel inte rätt till subventionerad fullständig sjukvård när de befinner sig i Sverige, utan enbart rätt till akut vård mot en osubventionerad kostnad. Dessa barn kan till följd av nuvarande reglering ha svårt att få den vård som de är i behov av och har rätt till, vilket utgör en negativ särbehandling i förhållande till andra barn i Sverige. Syftet med detta kapitel är att diskutera vilka konsekvenser ett sådant missgynnande kan få i förhållande till Sveriges internationella åtaganden avseende barns rätt till bästa möjliga hälsa. Detta är en grundläggande mänsklig rättighet som bland annat förpliktigar stater att tillhandahålla hälso- och sjukvård till alla barn på lika villkor.

The recent years of economic crisis and unemployment within the European Union has lead to an increased mobility among EU citizens seeking work outside the country of origin. From 2012 to 2015 the number of EU citizens coming to Sweden to make their living by begging on the streets and without a right of residence in Sweden rose sharply. This group is sometimes referred to as “vulnerable” EU citizens as many of them are homeless and has far less chance of gaining access to welfare. Some of them have brought their children with them in the hope of a better future. These children live with their families in poverty without stable housing and access to school and are many times exposed to unhealthy and unsafe situations. In addition to this, most of these children coming to Sweden together with their families to support themselves in street environments are not covered by a European Health Insurance. Vulnerable EU citizen children therefore belong to an already vulnerable group and it is essential to investigate their possibilities of gaining access to healthcare, as a vital part of their welfare.

The aim of this article is therefore to give an overview of vulnerable EU citizen children’s right to healthcare in Sweden. The purpose is to describe and discuss the relevant national regulation and map out areas of concern. 

Den offentliga debatten i Sverige om religions roll och betydelse har framförallt varit fokuserad på den enskildes rätt att få ha och utöva en religion, den s.k. positiva religionsfriheten. I denna artikel av forskaren Kavot Zillén, behandlas den motsatta situationen, dvs. den enskildes rätt att inte behöva ha någon religiös övertygelse och att slippa utsättas för oönskad religiös påverkan eller religionsutövning, s.k. negativ religionsfrihet.

I Norge har det sedan länge funnits en rätt för hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal att av moraliska eller religiösa skäl vägra att utföra viss vård (vårdvägran) och möjligheterna att eventuellt utvidga denna rätt har vid ett flertal tillfällen diskuterats. Nyligen har debatten kretsat kring frågan om norska allmänpraktiserande husläkare bör ges en rätt att vägra kvinnor spiralinsättning. Trots att det i Sverige inte finns någon motsvarande rätt till vårdvägran har frågan på senare tid aktualiserats efter det att flera svenska barnmorskor vägrat medverka vid abort av religiösa skäl. I denna framställning diskuteras rätten till vårdvägran i Norge, den senaste utvecklingen på området och dess eventuella påverkan på svensk rätt.

The Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe commissioned this study to identify potential areas of heightened concern for the rights of children that may be unfavorably affected by scientific advances and uncertainties in biomedicine. This report is the result of that study. It provides substantive illustrations of the diversity of problems generated by biomedical developments, including the expanded use of certain biomedical procedures, emerging technologies, and innovative therapies. It also addresses uncertain risks to children through the continuation of longstanding biomedical practices that lack sufficient scientific support. Because considerable legal protections have been developed for biomedical research and continue to be debated in great depth, this report focuses more broadly on biomedicine as a whole. The specific concern addressed here is not about the research process and regulation as such, but rather on how scientific advances and risk-laden practices reach children in biomedicine – whether through health care practices or in other biomedical settings. Mapping out the areas of concern for this report required not only identifying the technological advances and scientific challenges at stake but contemplating these challenges first and foremost from the perspective of the rights of children as class – formally collectively defined as persons from birth to age 18, unless they have attained majority status. Because a subsequent report will analyze the potential legal frameworks protecting children from the scientific risks and uncertainties identified here, this report identifies the challenges in protecting children relative to those rights that are commonly described in international human rights discourse, with only summary references to specific legal instruments in the report’s conclusions. The aim of the report is to demonstrate how the scientific risks and uncertainties illustrated here may affect the rights of children from birth through adolescence, in a variety of ways. Chapter 2 surveys differences in childhood development to illustrate why the lack of protection from scientific risks and uncertainty persists, in part because of limited understanding of the developmental differences and vulnerabilities of children at different phases of life. The report then expands on how many interventions may reach children at the earliest stages of their development, such as through assisted reproduction and other interventions in utero (Chapter 3) as well as in the field of genetics (Chapter 4). The report then addresses children who have been subjected to high-risk and controversial clinical practices, many of which lack sufficient scientific support regarding their safety. Among those children at risk are sexual or gender minority children (Chapter 5) and children diagnosed with serious physical and mental health needs (Chapter 6). The next chapters address two areas affecting critically ill children where considerable policy debate has taken place, but without sufficient regard to scientific advances and uncertainties, specifically in transplantation (Chapter 7) and end-of-life decisions (Chapter 8). In the final chapter, the report sets forth numerous rights of children in biomedicine that are currently at stake from scientific advances and uncertainties – not only the right to the highest attainable standard of health but rights protecting their physical and psychological integrity and their privacy and identity, as well as freedom from discrimination. The landscape of these rights is as vast and potentially complex as biomedicine. The report thus concludes that the biomedical controversies surveyed here signal a need for systemic, continuous and multidisciplinary oversight of these issues, as well as for many biomedical interventions that could not be covered here in depth. These matters cannot be left to biomedical expertise alone, but instead require vigilant oversight from human rights authorities and scholars with an understanding of these issues.

Området för medicin och hälsa skapar dagligen nyhetsuppslag rörande dess kvalitet, tillgång, ansvar och konsekvenser för människors liv. De frågor som behandlas inom den medicinska rätten ligger i gränslandet mellan medicin och juridik, där även etiska, sociala och policydimensioner spelar in. De medicinrättsliga reglerna berör och påverkar flera aktörer på området för hälsa och medicin, såsom hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal, vårdgivare, patienter, forskare och olika beslutsfattare på myndigheter.

Medicinsk rätt behandlar vissa kärnområden inom den medicinskarätten, bl.a. följande:

• Hälso- och sjukvårdens rättsliga ansvar och patientens ställning.

• Hälso- och sjukvårdssekretess.

• Psykiatrisk tvångsvård.

• Smittskydd.

• Läkemedelsrätt, det rättsliga området för genetiska ingrepp och klinisk forskning.

Medicinsk rätt är en lärobok som riktar sig till juriststudenter och studenter inom området för medicin, vård och omsorg samt verksamma inom samma områden. Det är även en värdefull bok för andra som behöver en fördjupad kunskap om de rättsliga ramarna för svenskhälso- och sjukvård och annan medicinsk verksamhet.

I denna andra upplaga av boken har grundkapitlen reviderats och fyra nya kapitel tillkommit som alla berör olika relevanta och aktuella delar av den medicinska rätten.

Bokens författare har särskilda sakkunskaper inom området för medicinsk rätt, där många har gedigen forskningserfarenhet och/eller stor erfarenhet av juridiskt och praktiskt arbete inom området.

Currently, Quebec is the only province in Canada, which has taken a decision on legalizing euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. In Quebec euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are labelled as medical aid in dying and perceived as a part of healthcare. However, in Canada, at the federal level, euthanasia and physician assisted suicide remain punishable under the Canadian Criminal Code.

This article examines Quebec’s legal approach to medical aid in dying, highlights some of the legal challenges, and discusses the need to handle them. The authors first provide a brief background of the euthanasia and assisted dying debate in Canada and particularly in Quebec. Further, they explain the concept of medical aid in dying and analyse the criteria for accessing it. Then they move on to analysing the constitutional legality of the Bill 52, an Act respecting end-of-life care allowing for medical aid in dying and possible legal consequences a physician might face if medical aid in dying is provided. 

Huvudsyftet med denna uppsats har varit att synliggöra brister i sexualbrottslagstiftningen och tillämpningen av denna. Det primära materialet i studien har därför varit två propositioner som behandlar våldtäktsbestämmelsen, den ena från år 2005 och den andra från 2013, tre olika rättsfall samt det nya förslaget till en samtyckeslag. Utifrån genusvetenskapliga teorier om makt, kön och sexualitet har jag använt diskursanalysen som metod för att analysera materialet för att se hur regeringen förhåller sig till dessa typer av frågor när de resonerar kring en ny våldtäktslag. Jag har också försökt undersöka varför det är så få våldtäktsfall som får fällande domar genom att analysera de olika fallen för att se hur domarna resonerar kring kvinnan och hennes ansvar under händelserna. Ett annat syfte har varit att undersöka hur det nya samtyckesförslaget skulle kunna förändra kvinnans situation i rättsfall. Mina slutsatser är att det finns brister i de sätt som våldtäktsbestämmelsen är uppbyggd på och att en ny samtyckeslag förmodligen inte har någon större inverkan på kvinnans situation förutom att den kan ha en normativ effekt. Studien har också visat att regeringen inte tar hänsyn till frågor som manlig dominans, kön och sexualitet i argumenten för en ny lag, vilket leder till att kvinnornas situation undergrävs. Studien har också visat att domarna i våldtäktsmål ställer ansvar på kvinnorna, medan den åtalade frikänns p.g.a. dennes bristande förståelse för kvinnornas motstånd.

This thesis is about the right to language (RtL), particularly about Sámi children’s right to learn their language in school in Russia. The thesis consists of overarching research questions, methodology, and six studies. 

This is interdisciplinary research within the field of the Sámi studies. The research combines approaches of law, sociology of law, and language sociology. In the thesis, I describe the overall methodology that obliged me to use several data gathering methods, as well as different analytical approaches. In the studies, I employed the legal method, interviews, thematic interview analysis, and document analysis according to themes. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on two theoretical pillars: Pound’s ‘Law in Books’ and Ehrlich’s ‘Living Law’.

One of the key findings of the research is five core elements of the RtL that were deduced as a result of the analysis of international law. These elements are: Legal recognition, Non-discrimination, Participation, Appropriate education, and High-quality education. The analysis of the Russian law demonstrates that these five elements are present in the Russian legal provisions. However, the contents of some of these elements in the Russian legislation vary from the contents of the respective elements found in the relevant international and regional legal acts.

Another key finding of this research indicates that the extent, the content, and the organisation of the current Sámi extracurricular language activity refer to a marginalized form of language education of the Sámi learners in Russia. The potential power of the legal framework of the RtL is not utilized for strengthening teaching and learning opportunities of the Sámi language in school. 

There are 47 groups of indigenous peoples in Russia. Many languages of indigenous peoples are at the edge of extinction. From 1995 to 2010 the proportion of indigenous pupils among all indigenous peoples learning their mother tongue decreased by almost half. This article examines the legal regulation of the Russian system of school education and defines what place indigenous languages have in this system. The author comes to the conclusion that realising the right of indigenous children to learn their mother tongue in Russia is complicated by many factors of both legal and non-legal character.

This paper is about Sámi children’s right to learn their language in school in Russia (henceforth referred to as RtL). First, the core elements of this right are deduced from the international and regional instruments. These elements are legal recognition, nondiscrimination, participation, appropriate education, and high-quality education. Then, the Russian legal acts are analysed to identify to what extent these elements are present in the Russian legal acts. The paper demonstrates that the five deduced elements of the RtL are found in the relevant Russian legal acts. However, the contents of some of these elements in the Russian legal acts are different from the contents of the corresponding elements deduced from the international and regional legal instruments. The paper also identifies challenges in the Russian legal acts that hinder the realisation of the RtL.

In this article, we showcase the study in which we analyzed the lived experiences of the right to language in the Sámi context in Russia. In this study, we demonstrated how the social agents involved in Sámi education experienced the connection between the right to language and the current practices of Sámi language teaching in the school context. Furthermore, we investigated how social agents’ voiced experiences and views on the right to language were impacted by the local Sámi context in Russia.

Labour in Russia remains highly segregated by gender, both across occupational spheres and within the employment hierarchy. Certain spheres that are female-dominated, such as education, healthcare and accounting, also have the lowest wage levels. Within each profession, women are concentrated at lower levels of the hierarchy, which is reflected in lower salaries. Additionally, large numbers of women, especially young women without educational qualifications, are employed in the informal sector, which leaves them at risk of violations of their labour rights.

During the past few years, reproductive technology and surrogacy have emerged in a number of European countries as issues of debate. There has been a steady increase in the use of reproductive technology in the Nordic countries, as well as an increase in the use of cross-border medical treatment in order to achieve pregnancy. At the same time, a number of ethical issues have been raised concerning the rights of the participants, including the children. In the fall of 2013, the Nordic Committee on Bioethics organised a conference in Reykjavik that focused on the current situation in the Nordic countries and on the global aspects of reproductive technology and surrogacy, including the market that is emerging in this field. This conference summary highlights the main ethical issues facing researchers, policymakers and practitioners who deal with these issues.

A proper assessment of maritime security risks at the national level is crucial to a national maritime security plan (NMSP) in order to secure the concerned country’s ports, vessels and territorial sea. Thus, the importance of implementing a national maritime security assessment (NMSA) to counter security threats and ensure the continuity of national and international trade. The most important set of international regulations concerning maritime security is the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code, which includes revision, approval and control of compliance of the Port Facility Security Plan (PFSP), which shall be based upon the Port Facility Security Assessment (PFSA). This paper proposes a mathematical dynamic model that calculates in real time the residual risk for the whole country and each of its ports by adapting and expanding the formula and procedures established in the Code, which since it has already been implemented around the world, gives the opportunity to take advantage of this quantitative solution to administrate maritime security risks on a nation-wide basis and create an effective national maritime security plan, which would allow the concerned authorities to improve situational awareness and adapt to security changes through a better planning of human, economic and material resources to deter security threats. The model was tested with the use of five encoded categories as countries, each of them with three ports, which encompassed three port facilities. The results indicate that this methodology is easy to implement and widespread use of that model could strength robustness in national security.

Syftet med denna undersökning var att granska regeringens motiveringar för den tillfälliga lagen om begränsade möjligheter att beviljas uppehållstillstånd i Sverige. Genom att applicera en version av Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys har undersökningen ämnat avslöja diskursiva praktiker som har lett till en begränsad rätt till familjeåterförening i Sverige. Hur kan regeringens motiveringar förstås som diskursiva befästningar av makt? På vilka sätt har regeringens diskurs relaterad till familjeåterförening förskjutits? Propositionen för lagen har utgjort undersökningens primärmaterial. De huvudsakliga fynden var regeringens sätt att påkalla en nödsituation i Sverige inom vilka begränsningarna av rätten till familjeliv tycks legitimeras, följt av en diskursiv förskjutning i regeringens diskurs som har skiftat från rättighetsbärarens perspektiv till ett perspektiv som grundas i Sveriges intresse av en reglerad invandring genom lagstiftning. Slutsatserna som har dragits är att regeringens diskursiva praktiker tydlig avviker från tidigare accepterad praktik inom diskursordningen samt att detta påvisar en oroväckande maktutövning.

Purpose: This thesis aim is to examine the employer’s responsibility regarding the psychosocial work environment and to investigate the shape of employee surveys as a tool for the employer to discover psychosocial risks in the work environment. The aim is also to investigate how international organizations pay attention to the issue.

Method: The legal dogmatic method is applied in the work to establish current law in the field of psychosocial work environment. Furthermore, the method of sociology of law is applied in order to study three different employee surveys as a result of established law. Results: The result shows several factors that the employer needs to take into account due to their responsibility when it comes to psychosocial work environment. An example of this is help and support units for employees that should be offered by the employer. The result of the employee surveys studied shows that they contain some disadvantages, such as that they tend to be too long. However, they pay attention to a lot of psychosocial risks. There also tends to be a clear correlation between regulations within the psychosocial work environment field and the formulated questions in the employee surveys.

Conclusion: The study finds that the employer has an extensive responsibility when it comes to the psychosocial work environment. It also shows that the employee surveys have improved over time and that they have the potential to be a functional tool to discover psychosocial risks at work. The study also finds that the different international organizations have quite different focus regarding psychosocial work environment. 

This chapter considers the interface of human rights and ‘urban law’,such as environmental nuisance and public order law. It revolves around a set of cases concerning a community of some two-hundred Romanian Roma ‘EU migrant’ squatters in Malmö, Sweden, and builds on our first hand experiences as members of a street-law collective, the Centre for Social Rights (henceforth, the Centre).1Between 2015 and 2017, we par-ticipated in organising efforts to promote the interests and social rights of the Roma community in question. We also represented them in a number of legal cases against the City of Malmö and the local police authorities. In this chapter, we focus on our efforts to prevent the squatter community from being evicted from an unauthorised settlement – the Sorgenfri Camp – without a viable resettlement plan. We account for our experiences of attempting to mobilise a human and minority rights dis- course and invoke the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and discuss why this approach was eventually unsuccess- ful. This book chapter is an attempt to summarise our experience and analyse it with the benefit of hindsight as well as a greater theoretical understanding of the processes that we were a part of in 2015.

Antibiotics are critical components of modern health care. Protecting their efficacy through managing the rise in antibiotic resistance is therefore a global concern. It is not known to what extent environmental pollution from antibiotics contributes to the development of resistance, but encountered concentrations are frequently above concentrations predicted to select for resistance. Hence, measures are needed to manage risks. Here, we analyse if the indirect health risks from antibiotics in the aquatic environment can be considered in the context of the EU Water Framework Directive and the setting of environmental quality standards (EQS). By scrutinising current legislation, we conclude that it is possible to take the indirect health risks from antimicrobial resistance into account when deriving EQS for substances with antibiotic activity. We base this on the following conclusions: (1) human health concerns can be the main driver when setting an EQS, (2) an EQS can be based on data not specified in the guidance document, and (3) there are no restrictions against establishing EQS using data on antimicrobial resistance properties. In addition, since antimicrobial resistance travel across borders, we see strong reasons to prioritise setting these EQS on the EU level over the national level. Even though there is no agreed-upon method for how to develop EQS protective against resistance selection, there are several suggestions available in the literature and a couple of examples of regulatory initiatives. Also, addressing antimicrobial resistance through the Water Framework Directive can act as a driving force for other applicable legislation where such risks are not considered. We end by providing a set of recommendations for the European Commission and the Members States' future work on addressing aquatic pollution and antimicrobial resistance.