Thursday 9 December 2010

My New Book on Margins of Conflict and the ECHR

Dear readers, allow me to highlight a book edited by myself, which has just been published with Intersentia Publishers in their Transitional Justice Series: "Margins of Conflict. The ECHR and Transitions to and from Armed Conflict". The book is the result of a seminar organised at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights SIM of Utrecht University last year, in the context of its research focus on conflicts and human rights. I am very grateful for the collaboration of a number of leading ECHR experts in this book, both from Utrecht and from Leiden. The introduction was written by the Dutch judge at the European Court, Egbert Myjer. This is the abstract:

The European Convention on Human Rights was drafted in the wake of World War II. The dark shadows of war have never fully receded from Europe however. Armed conflict has resurged time and again, from Northern Ireland to Cyprus and Turkey, and from the former Yugoslavia to the Caucasus. This book focuses on the margins of conflict: human rights aspects of transitions from peace to armed conflict and vice versa. Firstly, it seeks to explore what limits human rights put on European societies which are on the brink of armed conflict. Secondly, it surveys the consequences of human rights violations committed during the armed conflict by looking at the aftermath of war. In a stimulating way, experts in their field offer food for thought on a broad range of material and especially procedural issues such as the territorial scope of the Convention, states of emergency, freedom of expression and conflict escalation, obligations relating to enforced disappearances, interim measures, and pilot judgments. Taken together, they reflect both the potential and limitations of human rights in the run-up to conflicts and their aftermath.
The table of contents can be found here. Recommended (how could I say otherwise)!