Review by Choice Review
The 12 contributors to this outstanding UNESCO volume provide a wide-ranging survey. Human Rights is the last of three books (earlier ones examined "new dimensions and challenges" and "concepts and standards" in human rights). Part 1, the United Nations system, includes three chapters (the longest dealing with UN mechanisms, shorter ones with the ILO and UNESCO); part 2 focuses on regional systems of protection in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Arab states; part 3 considers how protection might be strengthened through national systems, criminal responsibility for human rights violations, sanctions, the use of indicators, and NGOs. All the authors are eminent, drawn from a dozen countries. They write with authority, often in a dry academic or legalistic fashion. Gaps exist. Since Asia has neither a regional nor a subregional system for monitoring human rights, this vast continent is largely overlooked. But the contributors concur that dramatic change has occurred in 60 years. Human rights standards have become widely codified; importance is attached to international monitoring through intergovernmental bodies, increasingly through direct communications to the UN and regional bodies, and recently in prevention of abuses. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. C. E. Welch University at Buffalo, SUNY
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
