Human Rights On Trial

The first contemporary overview of the critiques of human rights in Western political thought, from the French Revolution to the present day.

Rainforest Warriors is a historical, ethnographic, and documentary account of a people, their threatened rainforest, and their successful attempt to harness international human rights law in their fight to protect their way of life—part of a larger story of tribal and indigenous peoples that is unfolding all over the globe. The Republic of Suriname, in northeastern South America, contains the highest proportion of rainforest within its national territory, and the most forest per person, of any country in the world. During the 1990s, its government began awarding extensive logging and mining concessions to multinational companies from China, Indonesia, Canada, and elsewhere. Saramaka Maroons, the descendants of self-liberated African slaves who had lived in that rainforest for more than 300 years, resisted, bringing their complaints to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In 2008, when the Inter-American Court of Human Rights delivered its landmark judgment in their favor, their efforts to protect their threatened rainforest were thrust into the international spotlight. Two leaders of the struggle to protect their way of life, Saramaka Headcaptain Wazen Eduards and Saramaka law student Hugo Jabini, were awarded the Goldman Prize for the Environment (often referred to as the environmental Nobel Prize), under the banner of "A New Precedent for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples." Anthropologist Richard Price, who has worked with Saramakas for more than forty years and who participated actively in this struggle, tells the gripping story of how Saramakas harnessed international human rights law to win control of their own piece of the Amazonian forest and guarantee their cultural survival.

The Right to a Fair Trial in International Lawbrings together the diverse sources of international law that define the right to a fair trial in the context of criminal (as opposed to civil, administrative or other) proceedings. The book provides a comprehensive explanation of what the right to a fair trial means in practice under international law and focuses on factual scenarios that practitioners and judges may face in court. Each of the book's fourteen chapters examines a component of the right to a fair trial as defined in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and reviews the case law of regional human rights courts, international criminal courts as well as UN human rights bodies. Highlighting both consensus and divisions in the international jurisprudence in this area, this book provides an invaluable resource to practitioners and scholars dealing with breaches of one of the most fundamental human rights.

Revised papers from a conference organised by the United Kingdom National Commission on Comparative Law at Manchester 1978.

"Analyzes how activists, legal strategies, and judicial receptivity to human rights claims are constructing new accountability outcomes for human rights violations in Chile and El Salvador"--Provided by publisher.

Every year, the European Court of Human Rights delivers a large number of judgments, adding to its already extensive case-law. This makes it difficult for people outside the Court to know which cases are the most relevant and break new ground for fair trial issues. This book seeks to respond to that need by focusing on the most important cases and aims to make the content of Article 6 accessible in order to best serve readers? every-day practical legal needs.0The cases are selected following the Court?s Jurisconsult?s opinion of their jurisprudential interest. In addition, the book includes a number of other cases that raise issues of general interest, establish new principles, or develop or clarify the Court?s existing case-law. The case summaries draw the readers? attention to the essential points, allowing them to focus on the jurisprudential significance of a particular case. A clear structure utilising detailed heading helps the reader to quickly find the relevant case-law.