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This collection of essays critiques human rights field missions that were part of large UN and other multinational peacekeeping operations during the period 1994 through 1997. The authors served as human rights officers for the missions, including those in El Salvador, Haiti, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia. The several chapters trace the evolution of the missions, the role of human rights within the peacekeeping process, and the relationship between monitoring abuses and rebuilding the institutions necessary for a rights-respecting civil society. Future peacekeeping ventures should benefit from the analysis of these operations and from the recommendations that conclude each of the two sections of the book

In the beginning of the post-Cold War era, when it seemed that human rights would be strengthened, multiple factors instead began to threaten the future of universal human rights. Though many of the threats to human rights have always existed -- such as prejudice, economic exploitation, & authoritarianism -- many new threats have recently emerged. These contemporary threats to human rights are both subtle & effective. Meanwhile, postmodernist attempts to reconcile human rights with pre-modern traditions have succeeded in discrediting the Enlightenment & may destroy the founding beliefs behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Though this 50-year-old document cannot be considered sacred, the Declaration must be protected from insidious new threats to its existence. To set aside this document as being ineffective in a multicultural world would be foolish. Instead of dismissing the Declaration, it must be strengthened. In this postmodern world, it is deemed the only remaining Grand Narrative. K. A. Larsen

Draws on the extant international law of human rights to derive the content of human rights that ought to be measured. This book contains a comprehensive methodological framework for operationalizing this human rights content into human rights measures. It includes also chapters on the methods, strengths and weaknesses of events-based measures.