This book explores the extent to which Responsibility to Protect shifts our understanding of both the potential and practice of international law.

Every year, millions of people worldwide are forced to leave their homes and become displaced due to a variety of causes. This book explores the role of international human rights law in protecting people against involuntary displacement. It does so with reference to the idea of a ‘human right not to be displaced’.

In 1994, the United Nations Development Programme coined the term ‘human security’. It approached ‘security’ from a holistic perspective. Human security discourses have continually emphasised the central role of States as providers of human security. This volume challenges this paradigm, and highlights the part played by non-state actors in both threatening human security and also in rescuing or providing relief to those whose human security i...

Many states view Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) as crucial to implement their security policy. However, reoccurring incidents of human rights violations have led the international community, private sector and civil society to acknowledge the need for more control. This book examines the promises and dangers of emerging non-binding PMSC regulation alongside more traditional forms of law-making such as plans for an internationa...

Over the past twenty years, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) have moved from the periphery to the centre of the human rights debate. The potential of NHRIs to transmit and implement international norms at the domestic level, and to transfer human rights expertise to regional and global human rights fora, is increasingly recognised. This book focuses on the functioning and role of NHRIs in Europe in a comparative, European and interna...

This book fills a gap in the literature on how the Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions positions itself within the bigger field of public international law. Several studies have been undertaken regarding the relationship of this Convention with the trade regime. However, the drafting process of the Convention brought many more than only trade issues to the forefront, such as heritage law, human ...

Increasing biodiversity loss makes the call for effective nature conservation sound louder and louder. Most remaining biodiversity-rich areas are inhabited or used by indigenous peoples and local communities. In recent years a new ‘paradigm’ of ‘nature conservation with respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities’ was put forward. This study investigates how nature conservation initiatives interact with the rights of ind...

The present book, with carefully selected contributions from many prominent scholars and practitioners, is the first to explore situations in which human rights are threatened or violated through the actions, operations or policies of international organizations in a comprehensive manner and to examine the accountability mechanisms that are available.

The how and why of connecting international human rights law and WTO law has been a hotly debated topic in international legal scholarship for quite some time. This book explores the extent to which these two sub-regimes of international law can be meaningfully linked as a matter of law and policy. WTO law on cultural and educational goods and services, thus far under-explored in this area of study, is taken as a case study.