Encyclopedia of human rights issues since 1945. / Winston Langley.

Features aproximately 400 entries on human rights violations,activists,instruments and profiles of countries in which the offenses took place.Focuses on the human beings not on nationals or coreligionists.With human as emphasis,it concerns on how a country treats individuals under its jurisdiction,even when they are its own citizens,could no longer be only its concern but becomes an international concern.Stresses too that national law is not the sole arbiter of human rights but the international standards.Views that the inherent dignity of all human beings and the rights associated with that dignity not only bespeak moral and spiritual sisterhood and brotherhood of human beings,but represent the moral foundations on which friendly relations between and among countries can be fully developed and maintain.Further presents the conviction that if states are obliged to advance the rights of al people ,not only those who happen to be their citizens,and such people have equal claim to the promotion and protection of those rights ,then reasons that it follows the policies of states cannot be evaluated on the basis of traditional national interests but,rather ,on the extent to which such policies are grounded in the interests of the community of human beings.Finally promotes the concept transformed the standing of individuals in international law from that of object on whom the law could have an effect to that of subject,who could take the law in to"his or her own hands"in order to advance his or her own rights ,even to the extent of suing his or her own government.