This book deals with the gross human rights violations that characterized the military repression in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay from the 1960s to the 1980s. Dr Wolfgang Heinz, the author of three of the four case studies is a German scholar. The second author, Dr Hugo Frühling, is a Chilean researcher. Both are renowned human rights specialists who have done in-depth research on the causes of gross human rights violations in these countries. They have interviewed generals and officers directly involved in the repression. They have unearthed secret documents and, building on existing scholarship, they have managed to draw a unique picture of the mechanisms of repressive domestic social control. They have investigated international factors as well as the dynamics of the interaction between guerrilleros and urban terrorists on the one hand, and the military, the police forces and the death squads on the other. The result is a comprehensive volume, broad and comparative in scope, and written with clinical detachment but also with humanitarian sympathy for the victims of repression.

Are human rights gaining or losing ground? This question has become relevant after two decades of unprecedented progress in developing human rights standards and institutions. The political climate during the Cold War created many obstacles, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its aftermath during the following decade created a sense of promise and progress among human rights scholars and actors. Yet, today, actions, statements and initiatives questioning the legitimacy and validity of human rights, or even threatening their very existence, have become a regular part of current political realities, even in states traditionally dedicated to the rule of law. This would have been inconceivable ten or twenty years ago. At the political level human rights are gaining as well as losing ground. The question of the adequacy, legitimacy and scope of human rights is still a live one. And weaknesses in supra-national human rights protection systems have emerged over the last twenty years. It is now clear that human rights mechanisms are not well adapted to the handling of the ever-increasing number of complaints or to the effective implementation of human rights. This thought-provoking collection of essays by leading scholars and practitioners in the field of human rights explores the ways in which human rights are currently being challenged and weakened, but also strengthened in important and groundbreaking ways in different areas and settings. They explore the many current debates which centre on human rights concerns: debates about secularism and religious norms, about minimum social standards and social security, about the future regulation of citizenship, about prison reform and theuse of less inhumane methods of detention; as well as the reform of the UN system and the challenges facing the now overburdened European Court of Human Rights.

This original study examines the extent to which international labour issues have become issue of concern within the European Union, the ILO, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and the WTO (World Trade Organization).

Corporate Accountability in the Context of Transitional Justice explores how corporations can be held accountable for their role in past human rights violations when a country is making a transition from conflict or repression to peace and democracy. It breaks new ground in theorizing the linkages between the areas of transitional justice and corporate accountability and analyzing problems frequently arising where the two fields meet in practice, for example where the role of corporations in past human rights violations is examined by truth and reconciliation commissions or in the course of litigation. The book provides an overview of the current trends in law and in legal and political discussion relating to both areas, as well as in-depth analysis of how tools of corporate accountability and transitional justice can complement each other in order to achieve the best outcomes for bringing justice to victims and lasting peace to societies. The authors bring extensive experience from diverse professional backgrounds and jurisdictions to provide the first sustained attempt to address this link. The book will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, policymakers and activists working in the areas of transitional justice; corporate accountability; and business and human rights.

This volume maps out the response of states to human rights violations. It covers the period 1946-1999 and offers a complete and unmatched record for this period. Its starting point is that such responses are not established and accepted state practice. Traditional, if unwritten, norms of states' behaviour developed through centuries of silence and inaction; the prevalent reaction to human rights violations by another state remains the absence of any response. Furthermore, this book probes into evidence of active and passive complicity by reviewing aid to countries in which violations have been taking place and diplomatic initiatives undertaken to shield violators from public opprobrium. Since international law is generated through state practice, the book highlights the ongoing tussle between the pre-1946 heritage of silence and inaction and the 1946-1999 haphazard pattern of responses to violations.

Following the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the events of 11 September 2001, awareness of international crimes has come to the forefront of public consciousness. The very public responses seen in the establishment by the Security Council of the ad hoc tribunals and the international community coming together to create the International Criminal Court have done much to promote the idea that there should be no impunity for international criminals. Nevertheless, while those are incredibly significant steps in the attempt to combat international crime, there is no way due to their jurisdictional competence that such bodies could ever hope to address all the various crimes that are committed that are not confined to a single domestic jurisdiction either by reason of their nature or trans-border factors. As such, the response of the international community to international crime depends as much on extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction, mutual legal assistance agreements, extradition and other means of lawful rendition. Furthermore, given the fundamental rule that a person is innocent until proven guilty and that everyone within the jurisdiction of a State is owed certain basic minimum human rights guarantees, responses to international crime cannot be without limitation. Respect for the alleged transnational fugitive offender is as important a factor in responding to international crime as preventing impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and gross human rights violations.