International Law and Fact-Finding in the Field of Human Rights

At the time of its original publication in 1982, this ground-breaking volume sought to identify fundamental norms and standards which could help to guarantee the quality and integrity of fact-finding reports. A lot has happened in human rights fact-finding since then. There are numerous human rights fact-finding rapporteurs within the United Nations system and within regional organizations; there are many international commissions of inquiry; international criminal tribunals have helped clarify various areas of the law; NGOs are extremely active in the field. Despite, or perhaps because of these developments, controversies over fact-finding reports are very common. A source of reference to help fact-finders strengthen their work is sorely needed, and this volume remains of inestimable value in that regard. The guidance it provides has stood the test of time and is as valuable today as it was when it was first advanced, arguably it is more valuable today when the need for objective standards of human rights fact-finding has become of urgent importance in a world in which the political ground is shifting visibly. The current volume is a re-issued version of the original text, with new introductory materials.

Professor Dr. Bertrand G. Ramcharan (Guyana) Ll.B. (Hons.), LL.M., Ph.D (LSE), Barrister-at-Law of Lincoln’s Inn, is President of UPR Info and has been Director of the Guyana Institute of Public Policy. He was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ad interim in 2003-2004 with the rank of UN Under-Secretary-General, and Deputy High Commissioner from 1998-2003. He was Professor and First Swiss Chair of InternationalHuman Rights Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva from 2006-2008 and has been Chancellor of the University of Guyana. Previously he was Head of the Speechwriting Service of the UN Secretary-General, Director of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, and Director of the Africa I Division of the UN Department of Political Affairs for three years.He has been UN Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and, before that, Fellow of the LSE. He was a member of the UN Panel of Eminent Persons on Human Rights in Darfur (2007), Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the peace process in Georgia (2008), and member of the ILO Commission of Inquiry into trade union and human rights in Zimbabwe (2009-2010).