A Human Rights Handbook for Judges and Lawyers

Judges and lawyers face many challenges in working for just, peaceful and inclusive societies worldwide. This Handbook offers foundational insights from the international human rights community as practical tools to meet them. It recalls that the international community has elevated some international human rights norms to peremptory norms of international law, among which the absolute prohibition of slavery and of torture. The selection of human rights norms that have now attained the status of customary international law is one of the Handbook’s pioneering features. Clear, expert analysis of concepts and principles is supplied; solemn declarations on the rule of law adopted by the UN, such as on the independence of the judiciary and on principles of remedies and reparations, are also listed.

Authoritative, concise and easily accessible, the Handbook reflects its author’s decades of expertise serving and writing on the causes of peace and human rights. It is an essential tool for judges and lawyers, as well as for all human rights defenders.

Professor Bertrand G. Ramcharan, a Barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, London, holds degrees in philosophy, history and law. He has been Chief Speechwriter for the UN Secretary-General, Director of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, Director in the UN Political Department, Deputy and then Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Professor of International Law at the University of Ottawa, Visiting Professor at Columbia University and at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of numerous works on human rights and international law.