The end of the Cold War in 1989 inaugurated a new period in the history of human rights. The peaceful collapse of the Soviet Empire and the transition from apartheid in South Africa surprised many observers. Those who worked in non-violent movements seemed to have had more power than many realists in the field of international affairs had imagined. Since then, dictatorships which seemed unassailable have been toppled by other mass movements, and without an attendant bloodbath. Not everywhere to be sure – witness Tiananmen Square and the former Yugoslavia – but in states with substantial armed forces and police powers like Egypt, Tunisia, Chile, Ivory Coast, East Timor and elsewhere. There have been successful prosecutions in the United Nations Criminal Court in The Hague and in the International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania for violations of human rights and genocide.

In this dramatic and fast-moving context, there has been considerable scholarly and general interest in the subject of human rights, in particular in the English-speaking world. Lawyers, sociologists, historians, political scientists, anthropologists, literary scholars have all contributed to this ongoing and voluminous discussion. Paradoxically, the European countries have not advanced the conversation as much as to the meaning and practice of human rights, despite the fact that they were in the forefront of the construction of the first Convention on Human Rights to apply to an entire region. The European Convention on Human Rights was ratified in 1950, and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg began its work in 1960.