Human Rights Law and Practice

International human rights law is a rapidly developing specialty area of public international law, which presents legal advocates with a very particular set of theoretical and practical challenges. Among them are issues associated with the origins of rights; the purported ‘universality’ of human rights; the treatment of marginalised groups (like refugees, women, children, the elderly, indigenous peoples, sexual minorities, and people with disabilities); the challenges associated with enforcing human rights at the international, regional and domestic level; the justiciability of economic and social rights; the balancing of conflicting rights and the application of human rights law during periods of armed conflict. There is also the vexed question of how to hold private actors, especially multi-national corporations, accountable for violations of human rights.