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The themes and issues explored in this book - religion, human rights, politics and society could not be more relevant to the post 11 September 2001 world. They lie at the heart of global political debate today. The collection explores these issues after the passing of just over two decades from the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination based on Religion or Belief. That declaration set out minimum international standards for the elimination of such discrimination. Sadly the challenge of intolerance on the basis of religion or belief continues to plague us, and tackling it seems to have become increasingly entrenched. The complexity of this phenomenon requires expertise from different quarters. This collection draws from diplomatic, activist and theological quarters and benefits from the analysis of scholars of law, history, religious studies and sociology. The ten chapters of this collection examine the relationship between human rights, law and religion; offer a typology for the study of religious persecution; problematise the consequences flowing from religious establishment in religiously plural society; analyse the implications of the directions being taken by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the protections offered by the European Commission council Directive 2000/43/EC outlawing workplace discrimination; study the 1981 Declaration and its promotion through the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief; and explore the intricacies of this freedom in detail from within the context of the United Kingdom and The Netherlands

The purpose of this article is to give attention to the concept of racist hate speech and particularly to the fact of its complexity and inseparability from a wider spectrum of hatred. Using the methodology of intersectionality, this article encourages the CERD Committee's continued but cautious engagement in relation to racist hate speech. This article is a lightly modified version of a paper the author was invited to present at the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination's day of thematic discussion on Racist Hate Speech, held during CERD's eighty-first session on 28 August 2012 in Geneva.

The purpose of this article is to give attention to the concept of racist hate speech and particularly to the fact of its complexity and inseparability from a wider spectrum of hatred. Using the methodology of intersectionality, this article encourages the CERD Committee's continued but cautious engagement in relation to racist hate speech. This article is a lightly modified version of the article that the author was invited to present at the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination's day of thematic discussion on Racist Hate Speech, held during CERD's eighty-first session on Aug 28, 2012 in Geneva. Adapted from the source document.

The policy decision to replace the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights (CHR) with a new UN Human Rights Council (HRC) was taken by governments at the September 2005 World Summit and adopted as a General Assembly (GA) resolution on 15 March 2006.1 This brought an end to the CHR's chequered 60-year history.2 The membership, structure and aims and procedures of the new HRC underwent months of intense discussion between States in the lead up to the adoption of this resolution. The purpose of this note is to explain the various proposals explored in the shaping of the HRC and the extent to which the resolution bringing it into being responded to weaknesses perceived in the CHR. Since almost every reference to the CHR came to be prefaced by the term 'discredited' since 2005, the question is to what extent the reasons for the loss of legitimacy in the CHR were actually addressed in the crafting of the new HRC.

Decision-making by the UN Commission on Human Rights has become little more than a highly politicized and polarized game, almost totally negligent of the legal nature of the human rights instruments that uphold the standards by which Commission decision-making should be guided. The 60th session of the Commission included some significant discussions and decisions regarding country and thematic mandates. The purpose of this article is to present the key setbacks and developments during the session and to analyze how these have impacted on the overall stature of the Commission within the international human rights system. This paper discusses the Commission's country-specific resolutions in detail, and outlines several thematic mechanisms in the subsequent section. Overall, the session was notable more for setbacks rather than developments in the field of human rights. Instead of making strong condemnations against human rights violators such as the Sudan, the Commission was directed by political interests, protecting some of the worst violators of human rights from exposure and shaming. Though the stature of the Commission has declined considerably in recent years, it still maintains the potential of playing a strong role in the defense, promotion and monitoring of human rights.