International Human Rights

Abstract

International human rights law and institutions continue to be inadequate to prevent or redress many of the most serious human rights violations witnessed around the world. Signs of progress in one area of the world have often been quickly offset by new reports of mass atrocities in another part and by realizations that there are not enough resources to enforce basic human rights norms. Although human rights violations continue, the legal norms of international human rights law and the institutions that may be able to enforce them continue to develop. Recognizing that we cannot do justice in this review to all of the institutions that handle international human rights issues, we focus particularly in this year's annual review on developments from the European Court of Human Rights, an institution that has received inadequate attention in our earlier committee reviews of recent developments in international human rights law.' Indeed, what can be described as serious omissions of important legal and political developments can probably be found here and in each of those earlier articles. We feel it important to again expressly affirm that omissions of particular countries or issues on the human rights agenda cannot be construed as indicating that an event or issue is unimportant, but instead is a combination of. (1) a concession to the unfortunate but necessary space limitations in this journal; (2) recognition of the overlapping interest of other committees on many significant matters relating to international human rights, such as developments in the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, 2