Preventive Human Rights Strategies

The prevention of violations of human rights must become the dominant protection strategy of the twenty-first century, nationally, regionally, and globally. This book clearly identifies the need for preventive human rights strategies, maps what exists by way of such strategies at the present time, and offers policy options to deal with the world of the future.

Written by a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the book suggests the future lies in strong national protection systems backed up by regional and international organs and an international criminal justice system. The book explores the future of preventive human rights through a wide range of contemporary issues, including:

• climate change
• pandemics
• mass migration
• global poverty and pervasive inequality
• inter-state conflicts
• terrorism, including WMD terrorism
• gross violations of human rights
• the financial and economic crisis

We are already in a quite different world in the 21st century, and human rights thinking will need to evolve to meet its needs. This important and contemporary volume calls for the modification of current preventive human rights strategies, and is essential reading for all those concerned with the future of international relations and human rights.

Bertrand G. Ramcharan is a Barrister-at-Law of Lincoln’s Inn and Senior Fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, CUNY, USA. His publications include Contemporary Human Rights Ideas (2008)