Description: This textbook provides an interdisciplinary overview of international human rights issues, offering international coverage (especially the Global South). Fully revised and updated, this second edition considers the philosophical foundations of human rights, explores the interpretive difficulties associated with identifying what constitutes human rights abuses, and evaluates various perspectives on human rights. It then analyzes institutions that strive to promote and enforce human rights standards including the United Nations system, regional human rights bodies, and domestic courts. It also discusses a wide variety of substantive human rights issues including genocide, torture, capital punishment and other forms of punishment. In particular, it covers understudied topics such as socio-economic rights, cultural rights and environmental rights, and emerging issues, such as right to health and human rights and technology. It focuses on the rights of marginalized groups including children's rights, rights of persons with disabilities, women's rights, labor rights, Indigenous rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Brief description: Cher Weixia Chen is Professor in the School of Integrative Studies and founder of the Human Rights and Global Justice Initiative, George Mason University. She is the recipient of the 2021 GMU Oscar Mentoring Excellence Award (2021), the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice (2023-24), the Human Rights in Higher Education Award by University and College Consortium for Human Rights Education (2024), and the GMU CHSS Faculty Civic Excellence Award (2025).
Review Quotes: 'Comprehensive and readable, International Human Rights: A Survey is the essential contemporary human rights reader. It leaves no current issue, group, or region behind - from identity to culture, racial disparities, and gendercide.' Mark Fathi Massoud, Professor of Politics, UC Santa Cruz, USA