This book brings together a remarkable selection of Marc Bossuyt's opinions and insights on specific areas of his interest and expertise. Marc's writings carry the imprint and consistency of legal precision. As also transpires from the farewell lecture delivered at the University of Antwerp under the telling title At the Crossroads of Law and Politics, other qualities and dimensions also come to the fore. A comprehensive and effective human rights policy requires, in addition to international and domestic judicial control, a variety of extra-judicial means of prevention, promotion and protection, particularly in situations where gross violations are imminent or rampant.

Some forty years cover Marc Bossuyt's intricate professional involvement in support of the cause of human rights and fundamental freedoms. As it happened, being myself Marc's country neighbour from the North and brought up in the same mother tongue, I shared with him, albeit not precisely concurrently, similar experiences in a series of United Nations human rights mechanisms in Geneva. Many of our footsteps were set around the Lac Léman, not physically walking together but in a common spirit of having the same objective in mind: helping to make the global human rights agenda more effective and credible.

Against this background I wish to single out two areas of an institutional and thematic nature which may serve as illustrations of contributions made by Marc Bossuyt to the United Nations human rights legacy. First, his membership and leadership as an independent expert of the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities (in later years re-named Sub-Commission on the Promotion and the Protection of Human Rights). It was with the active input of Marc Bossuyt that the Sub- Commission, oft en withstanding the odds of political tensions, initiated major developments in the UN human rights arena, frequently in close concert with civil society organisations and academia. A thorough examination of the various components of the UN human rights agenda is bound to reveal the pioneering role the Sub-Commission has played in the framing of normative standards, in giving new impetus to thematic issues of wide public concern and in taking on gross and consistent patterns of human rights violations.