The discussion of group rights, while always a part of the human rights discourse, has been gaining importance in the past decade. This discussion, which remains fundamental to a full realisation by the international community of its international human rights goals, requires careful analysis and empirical research. The present volume offers a great deal of material for both. It makes a strong case in favour of a multidisciplinary approach to human rights and explores the origins and social, anthropological and legal/political dimensions of human rights and internationally recognised group rights. It explores legal issues such as the reservations to international treaties and methodological questions, including the question of deliberative processes which allow seemingly absolute requirements of human rights to be reconciled with culturally sensitive norms prevailing within various groups. The discussion continues by looking at specific contexts, including the situations of women, school communities, ethnic and linguistic minorities, migrant communities and impoverished groups. The final part of the volume examines the 'state of play' of human rights and group rights in international law, in international relations and in the context of internationally sponsored development policies. Here the authors offer a meticulous and critical presentation of the legal regulation of human rights and group rights and point to numerous weaknesses which continue to exist and which call for additional work by legal thinkers and practitioners.
Koen De Feyter is professor of international law at the law faculty of the University of Antwerp. He is the author of World development law (Antwerp, Intersentia, 2001) and Human rights. Social justice in the age of the market (London, Zed Books, 2005). He previously held positions at the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (Venice), at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Maastricht and at the Institute for Development Policy and Management (Antwerp).
Koen de Feyter is a lawyer who has taught and researched in academic settings on human rights and development issues for twenty years. He has been engaged in field work on behalf of both non-governmental and governmental actors in such diverse areas as Central Africa, the Philippines, Brazil and Northern Ireland. He is currently Senior Lecturer in International Law at the Institute of Development Policy and Management at the University of Antwerp and the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Maastricht.
Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, UK.
George Pavlakos is Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, UK.
