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Human Rights and Tobacco Control (Elgar Studies in Health and the Law)
by Brigit Toebes Marie E. GispenLarge-scale adverse health and developmental outcomes related to tobacco affect millions of people across the world, raising serious questions from a human rights perspective. In response to this crisis, this timely book provides a comprehensive analysis of the promotion and enforcement of human rights protection in tobacco control law and policy at international, regional, and domestic levels. This thought-provoking book offers significant new insights to the topic, laying the foundations for a human rights based approach to tobacco control. Addressing the function of law as a tool to help combat one of the major public health challenges facing society, contributions by global scholars rebut human rights claims presented by the tobacco industry. Emphasis is instead placed upon the human rights of vulnerable individuals, children in particular, as a result of smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke. Illustrating ways in which the right to health can be advanced with regards to tobacco control, smoking and the use of e-cigarettes, this important book will be a vital resource for human rights and health law scholars and practitioners as well as policy makers in public health law.
Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Chile (Memory Politics and Transitional Justice)
by Hugo Rojas Miriam ShaftoeThis book offers a synthesis of the main achievements and pending challenges during the thirty years of transitional justice in Chile after Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The Chilean experience provides useful comparative perspectives for researchers, students and human rights activists engaged in transitional justice processes around the world. The first chapter explains the theoretical foundations of human rights and transitional justice. The second chapter discusses the main historical milestones in Chile’s recent history which have defined the course of the process of transitional justice. The following chapters provide an overview of the key elements of transitional justice in Chile: truth, reparations, memory, justice, and guarantees of non-repetition.
Human Rights and World Public Order: The Basic Policies of an International Law of Human Dignity
by Harold D. Lasswell Myres S. McDougal Lung-chu ChenIn 1980, Professors McDougal, Lasswell, and Chen published the original edition of Human Rights and World Public Order to present a "comprehensive framework of inquiry" from which to approach international human rights law, and international law, and inadequacies therein in the discourse of that time by combining theme, structure, method, and process. As a classic text of the New Haven School of International Law, this book explores human rights and international law in the broadest sense, taking into account social sciences research while embracing all values secured, or consequently fulfilled, or needed to thus be achieved. The book endured as a lasting contribution that reframed human rights within the New Haven School tradition, and as a magnificent work of scholarship freed from the confines of positivism and the static concerns of any one political or historical period. Co-author Lung-chu Chen spearheaded the re-issuance of this venerable title, complete with a contemporary, fresh Introduction to unveil this work to a new generation of scholars, students, and practitioners of international law and human rights. This Introduction surveys the major developments in human rights since 1980, including many doctrines and concepts that have emerged since. It covers contemporary events to provide today's readers with the opportunity to contextualize the chapters and to apply the book's framework to future endeavors.
Human Rights and World Public Order: The Basic Policies of an International Law of Human Dignity
by Myres S. McDougal Harold D. Lasswell Lung-chu ChenIn 1980, Professors McDougal, Lasswell, and Chen published the original edition of Human Rights and World Public Order to present a "comprehensive framework of inquiry" from which to approach international human rights law, and international law, and inadequacies therein in the discourse of that time by combining theme, structure, method, and process. As a classic text of the New Haven School of International Law, this book explores human rights and international law in the broadest sense, taking into account social sciences research while embracing all values secured, or consequently fulfilled, or needed to thus be achieved. The book endured as a lasting contribution that reframed human rights within the New Haven School tradition, and as a magnificent work of scholarship freed from the confines of positivism and the static concerns of any one political or historical period. Co-author Lung-chu Chen spearheaded the re-issuance of this venerable title, complete with a contemporary, fresh Introduction to unveil this work to a new generation of scholars, students, and practitioners of international law and human rights. This Introduction surveys the major developments in human rights since 1980, including many doctrines and concepts that have emerged since. It covers contemporary events to provide today's readers with the opportunity to contextualize the chapters and to apply the book's framework to future endeavors.
Human Rights Approaches to Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities (Routledge Research in International Environmental Law)
by Sumudu AtapattuDespite the clear link between climate change and human rights with the potential for virtually all protected rights to be undermined as a result of climate change, its catastrophic impact on human beings was not really understood as a human rights issue until recently. This book examines the link between climate change and human rights in a comprehensive manner. It looks at human rights approaches to climate change, including the jurisprudential bases for human rights and the environment, the theoretical framework governing human rights and the environment, and the different approaches to this including benchmarks. In addition to a discussion of human rights implications of international environmental law principles in the climate change regime, the book explores how the human rights framework can be used in relation to mitigation, adaption, and adjudication. Other chapters examine how vulnerable groups –women, indigenous peoples and climate "refugees" – would be disproportionately affected by climate change. The book then goes on to discuss a new category of people created by climate change, those who will be rendered stateless as a result of states disappearing and displaced by climate change, and whether human rights law can adequately address these emerging issues.
Human Rights Approaches to Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities (Routledge Research in International Environmental Law)
by Sumudu AtapattuDespite the clear link between climate change and human rights with the potential for virtually all protected rights to be undermined as a result of climate change, its catastrophic impact on human beings was not really understood as a human rights issue until recently. This book examines the link between climate change and human rights in a comprehensive manner. It looks at human rights approaches to climate change, including the jurisprudential bases for human rights and the environment, the theoretical framework governing human rights and the environment, and the different approaches to this including benchmarks. In addition to a discussion of human rights implications of international environmental law principles in the climate change regime, the book explores how the human rights framework can be used in relation to mitigation, adaption, and adjudication. Other chapters examine how vulnerable groups –women, indigenous peoples and climate "refugees" – would be disproportionately affected by climate change. The book then goes on to discuss a new category of people created by climate change, those who will be rendered stateless as a result of states disappearing and displaced by climate change, and whether human rights law can adequately address these emerging issues.
Human Rights as Battlefields: Changing Practices and Contestations (Human Rights Interventions)
by Gabriel Blouin-Genest Marie-Christine Doran Sylvie PaquerotThis book examines human rights as political battlefields, spaces that are undergoing constant changes in which political conflicts are expressed by a translation process within networks of interactions. This translation, in turn, contributes to modifying the scope and understanding of human rights. Ultimately, these battlefields express the legitimacy encounter of different versions of human rights in contemporary political practices. The volume thus challenges both the tendency to minimize the changing nature of human rights as well as the struggles emerging from the use of human rights discourses as a legitimization tool. By shifting the focus on what stakeholders do instead of solely on the origin, nature or foundations of human rights, the authors reveal that human rights are not static objects: they are constantly transformed and, as such, affect the horizon of universal rights.
Human Rights as Political Imaginary
by José Julián LópezIn this book, López proposes the ‘political imaginary’ model as a tool to better understand what human rights are in practice, and what they might, or might not, be able to achieve. Human rights are conceptualised as assemblages of relatively stable, but not unchanging, historically situated, and socially embedded practices. Drawing on an emerging iconoclastic historiography of human rights, the author provides a sympathetic yet critical overview of the field of the sociology of human rights. The book addresses debates regarding sociology’s relationships to human rights, the strengths and limits of the notion of practice, human rights’ affinity to postnational citizenship and cosmopolitism, and human rights’ curious, yet fateful, entanglement with the law. Human Rights as Political Imaginary will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, politics, international relations and criminology.
Human Rights as Political Imaginary
by José Julián LópezIn this book, López proposes the ‘political imaginary’ model as a tool to better understand what human rights are in practice, and what they might, or might not, be able to achieve. Human rights are conceptualised as assemblages of relatively stable, but not unchanging, historically situated, and socially embedded practices. Drawing on an emerging iconoclastic historiography of human rights, the author provides a sympathetic yet critical overview of the field of the sociology of human rights. The book addresses debates regarding sociology’s relationships to human rights, the strengths and limits of the notion of practice, human rights’ affinity to postnational citizenship and cosmopolitism, and human rights’ curious, yet fateful, entanglement with the law. Human Rights as Political Imaginary will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, politics, international relations and criminology.
Human Rights at the Crossroads
by Mark GoodaleSince the end of the Cold War, there has been a dramatic expansion in both the international human rights system and the transnational networks of activists, development organizations, and monitoring agencies that partially reinforce it. Yet despite or perhaps because of this explosive growth, the multiple statuses of human rights remain as unsettled as ever. Human Rights at the Crossroads brings together preeminent and emerging voices within human rights studies to think creatively about problems beyond their own disciplines, and to critically respond to what appear to be intractable problems within human rights theory and practice. It includes essays that rethink the ideas surrounding human rights and dignity, human rights and state interests in citizenship and torture, the practice of human rights in politics, genocide, and historical re-writing, and the anthropological and medical approaches to human rights. Human Rights at the Crossroads provides an integrative and interdisciplinary answer to the existing academic status quo, with broad implications for future theory and practice in all fields dealing with the problems of human rights theory and practice.
Human Rights at Work: Reimagining Employment Law
by Professor Alan Bogg Professor Hugh Collins Professor ACL Davies Virginia MantouvalouShould workers ever lose their job because of their political views or affiliations? Should female employees be entitled to wear a headscarf in the workplace for religious reasons? Can it ever be right for an employer to dismiss someone for personal activities undertaken in their leisure time? What restrictions, if any, should be placed on the right to strike ?Engagingly written, this innovative new textbook provides an entry point for exploring these and other topical issues, enabling students to analyse the applicability of human rights to disputes between employers and workers in the UK. It offers an original perspective on the traditional topics of employment law as well as looking in greater depth at new issues, such as employees' use of social media or the enforcement of human rights in the gig economy.Uniquely, the book considers the most important international Conventions that are relevant for the law in the UK, especially the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, Conventions of the International Labour Organisation, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.A central question that each of the chapters addresses is whether UK employment law is compatible with human rights law. Each chapter discusses all the key cases drawn from various jurisdictions, including the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights.Written by a stellar team of authors, this textbook is an invaluable teaching aid for both postgraduate and undergraduate students studying employment law, human rights, human resource management, and industrial relations.
Human Rights at Work: Reimagining Employment Law
by Professor Alan Bogg Professor Hugh Collins Professor ACL Davies Virginia MantouvalouShould workers ever lose their job because of their political views or affiliations? Should female employees be entitled to wear a headscarf in the workplace for religious reasons? Can it ever be right for an employer to dismiss someone for personal activities undertaken in their leisure time? What restrictions, if any, should be placed on the right to strike ?Engagingly written, this innovative new textbook provides an entry point for exploring these and other topical issues, enabling students to analyse the applicability of human rights to disputes between employers and workers in the UK. It offers an original perspective on the traditional topics of employment law as well as looking in greater depth at new issues, such as employees' use of social media or the enforcement of human rights in the gig economy.Uniquely, the book considers the most important international Conventions that are relevant for the law in the UK, especially the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, Conventions of the International Labour Organisation, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.A central question that each of the chapters addresses is whether UK employment law is compatible with human rights law. Each chapter discusses all the key cases drawn from various jurisdictions, including the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights.Written by a stellar team of authors, this textbook is an invaluable teaching aid for both postgraduate and undergraduate students studying employment law, human rights, human resource management, and industrial relations.
Human Rights at Work: Perspectives on Law and Regulation (Oñati International Series in Law and Society)
by Colin Fenwick Tonia NovitzConcerns associated with globalisation of markets, exacerbated by the 'credit crunch', have placed pressure on many nation states to make their labour markets more 'flexible'. In so doing, many states have sought to reduce labour standards and to diminish the influence of trade unions as the advocates of such standards. One response to this development, both nationally and internationally, has been to emphasise that workers' rights are fundamental human rights. This collection of essays examines whether this is an appropriate or effective strategy. The book begins by considering the translation of human rights discourse into labour standards, namely how theory might be put into practice. The remainder of the book tests hypotheses posited in the first chapter and is divided into three parts. The first part investigates, through a number of national case studies, how, in practice, workers' rights are treated as human rights in the domestic legal context. These ten chapters cover African, American, Asian, European, and Pacific countries. The second part consists of essays which analyse the operation of regional or international systems for human rights promotion, and their particular relevance to the treatment of workers' rights as human rights. The final part consists of chapters which explore regulatory alternatives to the traditional use of human rights law. The book concludes by considering the merits of various regulatory approaches.
The Human Rights-Based Approach to Higher Education: Why Human Rights Norms Should Guide Higher Education Law and Policy
by Jane KotzmannA human right to higher education was included in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which came into force in 1976. Yet the world has changed significantly since the ICESCR was drafted. State legislation and policies have generally followed a neoliberal trajectory, shifting the perception of higher education from being a public good to being a commodity able to be bought and sold. This model has been criticized, particularly because it generally reinforces social inequality. At the same time, attaining higher education has become more important than ever before. Higher education is a prerequisite for many jobs and those who have attained higher education enjoy improved life circumstances. This book seeks to determine: Is there still a place for the human right to higher education in the current international context? In seeking to answer this question, this book compares and contrasts two general theoretical models that are used to frame higher education policy: the market-based approach and the human rights-based approach. In the process, it contributes to an understanding of the likely effectiveness of market-based versus human rights-based approaches to higher education provision in terms of teaching and learning. This understanding should enable the development of more improved, sophisticated, and ultimately successful higher education policies. This book contends that a human rights-based approach to higher education policy is more likely to enable the achievement of higher education purposes than a market-based approach. In reaching this conclusion, the book identifies and addresses some strategic considerations of relevance for advocates of a human rights-based approach in this context.
The Human Rights-Based Approach to Higher Education: Why Human Rights Norms Should Guide Higher Education Law and Policy
by Jane KotzmannA human right to higher education was included in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which came into force in 1976. Yet the world has changed significantly since the ICESCR was drafted. State legislation and policies have generally followed a neoliberal trajectory, shifting the perception of higher education from being a public good to being a commodity able to be bought and sold. This model has been criticized, particularly because it generally reinforces social inequality. At the same time, attaining higher education has become more important than ever before. Higher education is a prerequisite for many jobs and those who have attained higher education enjoy improved life circumstances. This book seeks to determine: Is there still a place for the human right to higher education in the current international context? In seeking to answer this question, this book compares and contrasts two general theoretical models that are used to frame higher education policy: the market-based approach and the human rights-based approach. In the process, it contributes to an understanding of the likely effectiveness of market-based versus human rights-based approaches to higher education provision in terms of teaching and learning. This understanding should enable the development of more improved, sophisticated, and ultimately successful higher education policies. This book contends that a human rights-based approach to higher education policy is more likely to enable the achievement of higher education purposes than a market-based approach. In reaching this conclusion, the book identifies and addresses some strategic considerations of relevance for advocates of a human rights-based approach in this context.
Human Rights-Based Approach to Short-Term Study Abroad (SpringerBriefs in Rights-Based Approaches to Social Work)
by Karen Rice Heather GirvinShort-term study abroad experiences are on the rise across social work programs. This increase is fueled by the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) that social work programs graduate students who are ready to engage diversity and function ethically as global citizens who understand mechanisms of oppression. With the increasing number of short-term study abroad trips, this brief offers a framework that provides strategies for empowering the populations and communities in which these trips occur. Developing short-term study abroad trips from a human rights-based framework rather than a needs-based approach is urgent and necessary, as the community in which the visit will occur is placed at the center of planning efforts and its members become equal and active participants. The brief is accessible and relevant to both instructors and students, with thoughtful emphasis placed in each chapter to align with the needs of each group more distinctly. It is conceived with both travel-based (field education) and classroom learning (pre-trip preparation) in mind. Though developed with more depth, theory, and evidence than a "how-to manual," the brief serves as an exemplary "guide" that prepares those engaging in short-term study abroad trips with information and strategies that are derived from the key concepts of a rights-based approach to field education. Human Rights-Based Approach to Short-Term Study Abroad is essential reading that engages students and faculty with case examples to illuminate the complex concepts that are taught by faculty as well as specific exercises and assignments to guide both faculty and student through the process of developing and implementing short-term study abroad trips. This brief is of immediate relevance for undergraduate and graduate coursework in field education, international social work, human rights, global social work, and macro social work, as well as useful for any practitioner seeking CSWE accreditation.
Human Rights-Based Approaches to Clinical Social Work (SpringerBriefs in Rights-Based Approaches to Social Work)
by S. Megan BertholdThis groundbreaking Brief brings a rights-based perspective to social work as opposed to the charity- and needs-based formats traditional to the field. Core principles for effective practice are discussed in the context of global human rights advocacy, from addressing individuals' immediate issues to challenging the structures that allow continued injustices to marginalized populations. Focusing specifically on interventions with survivors (and some perpetrators) of torture, human trafficking, and domestic violence, coverage explores and explodes myths about these issues--some of which survivors themselves may believe--and illustrates the immediate application and long-term benefits of rights-based therapy. Case examples, discussion questions, resource links, and a clinician self-care section reinforce the salience of this approach, modeling practice that is ethical in its outlook and empowering in its healing. Clinician skills emphasized in Human Rights-Based Approaches to Clinical Social Work: Reframing client needs as human rights.Cultural humility versus cultural competence.Building the therapeutic relationship and reconstructing safety.Developing trauma-informed practice and avoiding re-traumatization.Forensic and activist roles for social workers.Burnout prevention for practitioners.
Human Rights-Based Change: The Institutionalisation of Economic and Social Rights
by Maija Mustaniemi-Laakso and Hans-Otto SanoThis book provides different analytical perspectives into how human rights-based approaches to development (HRBADs) contribute to change. Based on the understanding that HRBADs are increasingly integrated into development and governance discourse and processes in many societies and organisations, it explores how the reinforcement of human rights principles and norms has impacted the practices and processes of development policy implementation. To reflect on the nature of the change that such efforts may imply, the chapters examine critically traditional and innovative ways of mainstreaming and institutionalising human right in judicial, bureaucratic and organisational processes in development work. Attention is also paid to the results assessment and causal debates in the human rights field. The articles discuss important questions concerning the legitimacy of and preconditions for change. What is the change that development efforts should seek to contribute to and who should have the power to define such change? What is required of institutional structures and processes within development organisations and agencies in order for human rights integration and institutionalisation to have transformative potential? This book was previously published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.
Human Rights-Based Change: The Institutionalisation of Economic and Social Rights
by Maija Mustaniemi-Laakso Hans-Otto SanoThis book provides different analytical perspectives into how human rights-based approaches to development (HRBADs) contribute to change. Based on the understanding that HRBADs are increasingly integrated into development and governance discourse and processes in many societies and organisations, it explores how the reinforcement of human rights principles and norms has impacted the practices and processes of development policy implementation. To reflect on the nature of the change that such efforts may imply, the chapters examine critically traditional and innovative ways of mainstreaming and institutionalising human right in judicial, bureaucratic and organisational processes in development work. Attention is also paid to the results assessment and causal debates in the human rights field. The articles discuss important questions concerning the legitimacy of and preconditions for change. What is the change that development efforts should seek to contribute to and who should have the power to define such change? What is required of institutional structures and processes within development organisations and agencies in order for human rights integration and institutionalisation to have transformative potential? This book was previously published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.
Human Rights-Based Community Practice in the United States (SpringerBriefs in Rights-Based Approaches to Social Work)
by Kathryn R. Libal Scott HardingA transformative model for community social work rooted in basic social and economic rights is the basis of this timely Brief. With specific chapters spotlighting the rights to health care, nutritious food, and adequate and affordable housing, the book describes in depth the role of community practice in securing rights for underserved and vulnerable groups and models key aspects of rights-based work such as empowerment, participation, and collaboration. Case examples relate local struggles to larger regional and statewide campaigns, illustrating ways the book's framework can inform policymakers and improve social structures in the larger community. This rights-based perspective contrasts sharply with the deficits-based approach commonly employed in community social work, and has the potential to inspire new strategies for addressing systemic social inequality.Features of Human Rights-Based Community Practice in the United States:A conceptual basis for a rights-based approach to community practice.Detailed analysis of legal and social barriers to health care, housing, and food.Examples of effective and emerging rights-based community interventions.Methods for assessing the state of human rights at the community level.Documents, discussion questions, resource lists, and other valuable tools.
Human Rights Behind Bars: Tracing Vulnerability in Prison Populations Across Continents from a Multidisciplinary Perspective (Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice #103)
by Clara Burbano Herrera Yves HaeckThis book brings together leading authorities from the fields of international human rights law, criminology, legal medicine, and political science with international human rights judges and UN experts to analyze the current situation of detainees in Europe, the Americas and Africa.This comprehensive volume offers a platform for reflecting on the complexity of the prison problem from a multidisciplinary perspective. The authors address detention-related issues with the aim of generating new ideas that contribute to both academic discussion and critical analysis. Academic dialogue across the globe provides insights into various national and international carceral systems and how they deal with human rights behind bars. At the same time, the critical comparison helps to identify basic needs and practices that can work in multiple settings. The contributors are respected experts and leading scholars in their fields, and each has pursued prison and human rights research over the last decades. However, this is the first time that they have come together in a multidisciplinary academic project. This book aims to stimulate diverse actors to imagine alternative ways of engaging with persons deprived of their liberty, in academia and in practice.
Human Rights Between Law and Politics: The Margin of Appreciation in Post-National Contexts (Modern Studies in European Law)
by Petr AghaThis book analyses human rights in post-national contexts and demonstrates, through the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, that the Margin of Appreciation doctrine is an essential part of human rights adjudication.Current approaches have tended to stress the instrumental value of the Margin of Appreciation, or to give it a complementary role within the principle of proportionality, while others have been wholly critical of it. In contradiction to these approaches this volume shows that the doctrine is a genuinely normative principle capable of balancing conflicting values. It explores to what extent the tension between human rights and politics, embodied in the doctrine, might be understood as a mutually reinforcing interplay of variables rather than an entrenched separation. By linking the interpretation of the Margin of Appreciation doctrine to a broader conception of human rights, understood as complex political and moral norms, this volume argues that the doctrine can assist in the formulation of the common good in light of the requirements of the Convention.
Human Rights Between Law and Politics: The Margin of Appreciation in Post-National Contexts (Modern Studies in European Law #76)
by Petr AghaThis book analyses human rights in post-national contexts and demonstrates, through the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, that the Margin of Appreciation doctrine is an essential part of human rights adjudication.Current approaches have tended to stress the instrumental value of the Margin of Appreciation, or to give it a complementary role within the principle of proportionality, while others have been wholly critical of it. In contradiction to these approaches this volume shows that the doctrine is a genuinely normative principle capable of balancing conflicting values. It explores to what extent the tension between human rights and politics, embodied in the doctrine, might be understood as a mutually reinforcing interplay of variables rather than an entrenched separation. By linking the interpretation of the Margin of Appreciation doctrine to a broader conception of human rights, understood as complex political and moral norms, this volume argues that the doctrine can assist in the formulation of the common good in light of the requirements of the Convention.
Human Rights Brought Home: Socio-Legal Perspectives of Human Rights in the National Context (Human Rights Law in Perspective)
by Simon Halliday Patrick SchmidtWhat practical impact does the incorporation of international human rights standards into domestic law have? This collection of essays explores human rights in domestic legal systems. The enactment of the Human Rights Act in 1998, ushering the European Convention on Human Rights fully into UK law, represented a landmark in the UK constitutional order. Other European states similarly have elevated the status of human rights in their domestic legal systems. However, whilst much has been written about doctrinal legal developments, little is yet known about the empirical effects of bringing rights home. This collection of essays, written by a range of distinguished socio-legal scholars, seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge. The essays, presenting new empirical research, begin their enquiry where many studies in human rights finish. The contributors do not stop at the recognition of international law and norms by states, but penetrate the internal workings of domestic legal systems to see the law in action - - as it is developed, contested, manipulated, or even ignored by actors such as judges, lawyers, civil servants, interest groups, and others. This distinctly socio-legal approach offers a unique contribution to the literature on human rights, exploring human rights law-in-action in developed countries. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of looking beyond grand generalities and the hopes of international human rights law in order to understand the impact of the global human rights movement.
The Human Rights Challenge to Immunity in International Law
by Selman ÖzdanThis book focuses on the tension between the protection of human rights recognised as jus cogens (peremptory) norms, on the one hand, and the bestowal of immunity on the state and its representatives, on the other, to ascertain how these immunities can be eroded, if not fully abolished, to maintain full protection of jus cogens human rights under international law. The book argues that immunity should not equate to impunity when violations of jus cogens human rights are committed by States, Heads of State, or diplomatic agents. To make the case, the organic structures of the concepts of sovereignty and fundamental human rights are examined. Then, the human rights-based challenge to immunity is presented with respect to State, Head of State and diplomatic immunity, and the transition from a state-centric system to a human-centric system is explored. Jus cogens norms are at the centre of the impunity versus immunity debate.