Much has been written about the issue of religious freedom and church-state relations. The contributors to this book, however, take up another side of the question: what has been the impact of religion on human rights. Representatives from various religious traditions address a broad range of topics, from environmental rights to the basic validation of human rights, to the rights of women in India and Iran and within Orthodox Judaism, to the global imposition of criminal justice, to pressu...

Leading specialists and activists from Russia and the USA join, in this volume, to offer a searching assessment of human rights in their own countries and in the world at large. They reflect on past history, present problems associated with system breakdown and decline, and the obstacles and opportunities on the way to the realisation of human rights in this uncertain post-Cold War era and the millennium that is now dawning. The participants in the discussions detailed here include Yelena ...