There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights movement focused on international law only began after World War II. In this book, the nineteenth century's absence is conspicuous - few have considered that era seriously, much less written books on it. But as this author shows, the foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade.

The Law and Slavery sets out the articles, book reviews and case notes by Professor Jean Allain which led to pioneering exploration of forced labour, servitudes, slavery, the slave trade, and trafficking in his 2013 Slavery in International Law: Of Human Exploitation and Trafficking (MNP). This collection brings together Professor Allain’s considerations of the evolution of legal abolition internationally, his critique of the then status quo in the area of slavery and the law, and goes on to develop the foundations of a legal understanding of various servitudes and slavery based on his archival research and legal analysis. Professor Allain’s research has transformed the landscape of how we understand contemporary slavery and those other servitudes which constitute human exploitation.

Business corporations can and do violate human rights all over the world, and they are often not held to account. Emblematic cases and situations such as the state of the Niger Delta and the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory are examples of corporate human rights abuses which are not adequately prevented and remedied. Business and human rights as a field seeks to enhance the accountability of business – companies and businesspeople – in the human rights area, or, to phrase it differently, to bridge the accountability gap. Bridging the accountability gap is to be understood as both setting standards and holding corporations and businesspeople to account if violations occur. Adopting a legal perspective, this book presents the ways in which this dual undertaking has been and could be further carried out in the future, and evaluates the extent to which the various initiatives in the field bridge the corporate accountability gap. It looks at the historical background of the field of business and human rights, and examines salient periods, events and cases. The book then goes on to explore the relevance of international human rights law and international criminal law for global business. International soft law and policy initiatives which have blossomed in recent years are evaluated along with private modes of regulation. The book also examines how domestic law, especially the domestic law of multinational companies’ home countries, can be used to prevent and redress corporate related human rights violations.

Slavery in International Law sets out the law related to slavery and lesser servitudes, including forced labour and debt bondage; thus developing an overall understanding of the term human ‘exploitation’, which is at the heart of the definition of trafficking.

Human Rights or Global Capitalism examines the application of neoliberal policies from a human rights perspective and asks whether states, by outsourcing to the private sector many services with a direct impact on human rights, abdicate their responsibilities to uphold human rights and violate international law.

Human rights are the only universally recognized system of contemporary values which, during the last 50 years, has been gradually developed and defined by all States in a comprehensive international legal framework. The international human rights regime is closely related to international peace and security, development and a global trend towards pluralist democracy, good governance and the rule of law. International humanitarian and criminal law can today be considered as specific aspects of international human rights law, which after the end of the Cold War has become increasingly complex and difficult to oversee. The present textbook attempts to provide a first and at the same time comprehensive introduction into the idea and significance of human rights, its philosophical and theoretical foundations, historical development, the main structures and procedures of international human rights protection by the United Nations and regional organizations (Council of Europe, Organization of American States, African Union, OSCE and others), and modern trends, such as preventive mechanisms, international criminal law, human rights as essential elements of peace-keeping and peace-building operations, humanitarian intervention or the relationship between human rights and terrorism. The book perceives human rights as an inter-disciplinary topic and illustrates the theory of human rights with a considerable number of practical case-studies, graphics, statistics, procedural charts and textboxes. It serves as a textbook for students of law, political science, international relations and other academic fields related to human rights, but may as well be used as a first introduction for those working in the field, for NGO activists, legal practitioners and others interested in the fascinating world of universal human rights.