Synopses & Reviews
From the controversial incarceration of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, to the brutal ethnic cleansing being practiced in Darfur, to the widespread denial of equal rights to women in many areas of the world, human rights violations are a constant presence in the news and in our lives. Taking an international perspective, and focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, health, and discrimination, this Very Short Introduction will help readers to understand for themselves the controversies and complexities behind this vitally relevant issue. Looking at the philosophical justification for rights, the historical origins of human rights and how they are formed in law, Andrew Clapham explains what our human rights actually are, what they might be, and where the human rights movement is heading.
About the Author
Andrew Clapham is Director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and Professor of Public International Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. He was the first Executive Director of the Academy of European Law at the European University
Institute in Florence. He then worked as the Representative of Amnesty International at the United Nations in New York from 1991 to 1997, and has since taught human rights at the Graduate Institute of International Studies. He is an academic associate member of Matrix Chambers in London.
Previous publications include: Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors (Oxford University Press, 2006); International Human Rights Lexicon with Susan Marks (Oxford University Press, 2005); and European Union - The Human Rights Challenge Vols I-III (Nomos, 1991, jointly
edited).