Human Rights Defenders and the Law

This book presents a comprehensive examination of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and provides an analysis of the level of its reflection in regional human rights systems.

The work explores the development of the role of the individual in human rights protection since the 1998 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. It locates the nature, activities and need for protection of human rights defenders within the current international legal framework and outlines the place and scope for a specific right to promote and protect human rights. It traces the origins of the right and the main international instruments that define it, both at national and international level. Finally, it considers the impact that the right to defend human rights can have on constitutional and international law.

The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law.

1. Human rights defenders and the UN legal framework: synergies on multilevel and global constitutionalism 2. The UN Special Procedure on the situation of human rights defenders: a multilevel and global framework and the paradigm on human condition 3. Human rights defenders and the right to promote and protect human rights 4. Human rights defenders: concept, subject, limits, and challenges 5. Human rights defenders: the intellectual dimension of individuals and collectives 6. The right to promote and protect human rights 7. Instrumental rights for the promotion and protection of human rights 8. Human rights defenders, the UN, and the COE legal framework 9. Human rights defenders and the European Union