The development of human rights norms is one of the most significant achievements in international relations and law since 1945, but the continuing influence of human rights is increasingly being questioned by authoritarian governments, nationalists, and pundits. Unfortunately, the proliferation of new rights, linking rights to other issues such as international crimes or the activities of business, and attempting to address every social problem from a human rights perspective risk undermi...

Ethnic conflict is the major form of mass political violence in the world today, and it has been since World War II. Dramatic acts of terrorism and calculated responses to them may distract the attention of policymakers and the public, but ethnic and nationalist conflict continues to pose the greatest challenge to peace and security across the globe. Causes of such conflict and ideas about how to address it are hotly debated in the literature that has emerged over the past fifteen years.

The Universal Declaration for Human Rights was approved in 1948 and yet more than fifty years later some human rights-especially the rights of groups such as women, minorities, and indigenous peoples-continue to be at risk. This book examines recent humanitarian catastrophes involving such groups and suggests how the society of states may develop a collective capacity for human rights enforcement. Above all, it emphasizes the long term efforts to stabilize weak or failing societies and to ...

Living in the age of American "hyperpower" the relevance of both international law and conflict resolution have been called into question. Hannum and Babbitt, highly respected practitioners in these respective fields, have collected a series of experts to examine the relationship between these two disciplines. Focusing on self-determination, a particularly thorny issue of international law, Negotiating Self-Determination takes an in-depth look at what an understanding of conflict ...