In The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Time, Jared Genser and Irwin Cotler provide a comprehensive overview on how this contemporary principle of international law has developed and analyze how best to apply it to current and future humanitarian crises. The "responsibility to protect" is a doctrine unanimously adopted by the UN World Summit in 2005, which says that all states have an obligation to protect their own citizens from mass atrocities, which includes genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Its adoption and application has generated a passionate debate in law schools, professional organizations, media and within the U.N. system. To present a full picture of where the doctrine now stands and where it could go in the future, editors Jared Genser and Irwin Cotler have assembled a global team of authors with diverse backgrounds and differing viewpoints, including Edward Luck, the UN Secretary-General's Special Advisor on the Responsibility to Protect. Genser and Cotler balance the pro-RtoP chapters with more skeptical arguments from agency staff and scholars with long experience in addressing mass atrocities. Framed by a Preface from Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel and a Conclusion from Gareth Evans, these in-depth and authoritative analyses move beyond theory to demonstrate how RtoP has worked on the ground and should work if applied to other crises. The global focus of this book, as well as its detailed application of the principle in case studies make it uniquely useful to staff at international organizations and NGOs considering use of the principle in a given circumstance, to scholars providing advice to governments, and to students seeking guidance on this still-expanding subject.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is the first comprehensive review of the contributions of this important institution to understanding arbitrary detention today. The Working Group is a body of five independent human rights experts that considers individual complaints of arbitrary detention, adopting legal opinions as to whether a detention is compatible with states' obligations under international law. Since its establishment in 1991, it has adopted more than 1,200 case opinions and conducted more than fifty country missions. But much more than a jurisprudential review, these cases are presented in the book in the style of a treatise, where the widest array of issues on arbitrary detention are placed in the context of the requirements of multilateral treaties and other relevant international standards. Written for both practitioners and serious scholars alike, this book includes five case studies and a foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is the first comprehensive review of the contributions of this important institution to understanding arbitrary detention today. The Working Group is a body of five independent human rights experts that considers individual complaints of arbitrary detention, adopting legal opinions as to whether a detention is compatible with states' obligations under international law. Since its establishment in 1991, it has adopted more than 1,200 case opinions and conducted more than fifty country missions. But much more than a jurisprudential review, these cases are presented in the book in the style of a treatise, where the widest array of issues on arbitrary detention are placed in the context of the requirements of multilateral treaties and other relevant international standards. Written for both practitioners and serious scholars alike, this book includes five case studies and a foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu.

The United Nations Security Council in the Age of Human Rights is the first comprehensive look at the human-rights dimensions of the work of the only body within the United Nations system capable of compelling action by its member states. Known popularly for its failure to prevent mass atrocities in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Syria, the breadth and depth of the Security Council's work on human rights in recent decades is much broader. This book examines questions such as: How is the Security Council dealing with human rights concerns? What does it see as the place of human rights in conflict prevention, peacemaking, and peacekeeping? And how does it address the quest for justice in the face of gross violations of human rights? Written by leading practitioners, scholars, and experts, this book provides a broad perspective that describes, explains, and evaluates the contribution of the Security Council to the promotion of human rights and how it might achieve the goals it has articulated more effectively.

This is the first comprehensive look at the human rights dimensions of the work of the only body within the United Nations system capable of compelling action by its member states. Known popularly for its failure to prevent mass atrocities in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Syria, the breadth and depth of the Security Council's work on human rights in recent decades is much broader. This book examines questions including: how is the Security Council dealing with human rights concerns? What does it see as the place of human rights in conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacekeeping? And how does it address the quest for justice in the face of gross violations of human rights? Written by leading practitioners, scholars and experts, this book provides a broad perspective that describes, explains and evaluates the contribution of the Security Council to the promotion of human rights and how it might more effectively achieve its goals.