ABSTRACT
This book has provided an introduction to the intersection of two complex and rapidly developing fields of study and policymaking: human rights, and conflict resolution and peacebuilding. It has offered an overview of relevant international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and presented scholarship and debates about human rights and the causes and consequences of conflict, options for conflict prevention and conflict resolution, and options for seeking accountability for past atrocities. There are many tensions between the promotion of human rights and the resolution of conflict, but there may also be opportunities for engaging in each in a more complementary fashion. This book has sought to assist students seeking to work in this hybrid area with these analytic tools, as well as with the study of contemporary situations presenting challenges of protecting human rights while addressing conflict. These situations range from largely internal armed conflicts with regional or international dimensions, as in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to diffuse and globalized confrontations such as the “global war on terror.” Finally, the book has presented a range of critical mechanisms and institutions developed as part of efforts to implement human rights and humanitarian law, generally through criminal accountability, even as conflicts have raged: ad hoc tribunals, transnational mechanisms, hybrid tribunals, and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
