Accessing human rights and justice mechanisms is a pressing issue in global politics. Although an understanding of justice is inherent in broad human rights discourses, there is no clear consensus on how to develop adequate means of accessing them in order to make a difference to people's lives. Further, expansions of the boundaries of both human rights and justice make any clear and settled understanding of the relation difficult to ascertain. This volume tackles these issues by focusing on the dilemmas of accessing and implementing human rights and justice across a range of empirical contexts while also investigating a range of conceptual approaches to, and understandings of, justice, including issues of equality, retribution, and restoration, as well as justice as a transnational professional project. The contributors, representing a range of disciplinary backgrounds and diverse voices, offer empirical examples from Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Tunisia, and Uganda to explore the issues of accessing and implementing human rights and justice in conflict, post-conflict, and transitional settings. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, human rights, international criminal justice, and conflict response.

The relationship between human rights and justice is significant, deep, and ultimately contested. The two terms themselves - human rights and justice - have experienced both conceptual and operational pushback from many quarters in recent years. Although an understanding of justice is inherent in broad human rights discourses, there is no clear consensus on how to integrate and reconcile these concepts - both as a means of advancing knowledge and as a mechanism for the development of sound and effective policy at the global, regional, and national levels. Further, expansions of the boundaries of both human rights and justice make any clear and settled understanding of the relation difficult to ascertain. This volume tackles these issues in a coherent and complementary manner. It examines a range of philosophical, economic, and social perspectives that are key to understanding the nature of the linkages between human rights and justice, written by scholars who are at varying stages of their careers, and whose ongoing work has sparked dialogue and exchange within and across these fields. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights, international relations and ethics.

The relationship between human rights and justice is significant, deep, and ultimately contested. The two terms themselves - human rights and justice - have experienced both conceptual and operational pushback from many quarters in recent years. Although an understanding of justice is inherent in broad human rights discourses, there is no clear consensus on how to integrate and reconcile these concepts - both as a means of advancing knowledge and as a mechanism for the development of sound and effective policy at the global, regional, and national levels. Further, expansions of the boundaries of both human rights and justice make any clear and settled understanding of the relation difficult to ascertain. This volume tackles these issues in a coherent and complementary manner. It examines a range of philosophical, economic, and social perspectives that are key to understanding the nature of the linkages between human rights and justice, written by scholars who are at varying stages of their careers, and whose ongoing work has sparked dialogue and exchange within and across these fields. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights, international relations and ethics.

Accessing human rights and justice mechanisms is a pressing issue in global politics. Although an understanding of justice is inherent in broad human rights discourses, there is no clear consensus on how to develop adequate means of accessing them in order to make a difference to people's lives. Further, expansions of the boundaries of both human rights and justice make any clear and settled understanding of the relation difficult to ascertain. This volume tackles these issues by focusing on the dilemmas of accessing and implementing human rights and justice across a range of empirical contexts while also investigating a range of conceptual approaches to, and understandings of, justice, including issues of equality, retribution, and restoration, as well as justice as a transnational professional project. The contributors, representing a range of disciplinary backgrounds and diverse voices, offer empirical examples from Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Tunisia, and Uganda to explore the issues of accessing and implementing human rights and justice in conflict, post-conflict, and transitional settings. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, human rights, international criminal justice, and conflict response.

Since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes-mass atrocities-have been explicitly illegal. When such crimes are committed, the international community has an obligation to respond: the human rights of the victims outweigh the sovereignty claims of states that engage in or allow such human rights violations. This obligation has come to be known as the responsibility to protect. Yet, parallel to this responsibility, two other related responsibilities have developed: to prosecute those responsible for the crimes, and to provide humanitarian relief to the victims-what the author calls the responsibility to palliate. Even though this rhetoric of protecting those in need is well used by the international community, its application in practice has been erratic at best. In International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa, Kurt Mills develops a typology of responses to mass atrocities, investigates the limitations of these responses, and calls for such responses to be implemented in a more timely and thoughtful manner. Mills considers four cases of international responses to mass atrocities-in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Darfur-putting the cases into historical context and analyzing them according to the typology, showing how the responses interact. Although all are intended to address human suffering, they are very different types of actions and accomplish different things, over different timescales, on different orders of magnitude, and by very different types of actors. But the critical question is whether they accomplish their objectives in a mutually supportive way-and what the trade-offs in using one or more of these responses may be. By expanding the understanding of international responsibilities, Mills provides critical analysis of the possibilities for the international community to respond to humanitarian crises.