Human Rights: The Case for the Defence

A powerful and urgent explanation and vindication of our human rights and freedoms

Our human rights are endangered. After the devastation of World War Two the international community united to enshrine fundamental rights to refuge, health, education and living standards. They protected privacy, fair trials and free speech and outlawed torture, slavery and discrimination. Their goal was greater global justice, equality and peace. That settlement is now under attack from opponents on both left and right and populist and authoritarian movements worldwide. Simultaneously, we are threatened by war, inequality, new tech and climate catastrophe, crises human rights can help us address.

In this urgent, powerful book, Shami Chakrabarti, demonstrates why human rights matter and why we need to secure further rights to deal with challenges of the present and future. Outlining the historic national and international struggles for human rights, from ancient Babylon to the present day, Chakrabarti is an indispensable guide to the law and logic underpinning human dignity and universal freedoms. This book equips supporters in the battle of ideas and will encourage doubters to think again.

To believe in human rights is to believe in human beings. If they - and we - are to survive, these rights must be owned and understood by everyone.

Review

An impassioned, thoughtful reminder of why the principle of human rights is a universal force for good, at a moment when some in power would have us believe otherwise. Read and feel inspired -- Angela Saini, author of THE PATRIARCHS

Full of passion and idealism but also fine scholarship, this book sets out a plan for how Humanity can avoid a cruel, Hobbesian future. It will be required reading for anyone who believes that Human Rights offer a better path forward for global society than the Manichean one it is presently treading -- Andrew Roberts

A book that is as passionate, as precise, as needed, as human rights themselves. After 30 years as a lawyer and campaigner at the rock face of human rights work, Shami Chakrabarti argues the case for defending and promoting these rights with reason, lyricism and subtlety, offering us comfort and a compass for the future -- Ahdaf Soueif

I would follow this woman to the end of the earth. If you are a human you need to read Shami Chakrabati's Human Rights. If you are not then don't. We need this book now more than ever -- Lemn Sissay (via X)

The threat to human rights is ever increasing and the practical way this book informs us is commendable. The book gives us a road map of what we are facing that is easy to understand. People across the world face more conflict than ever. Wars that have nothing to do with ordinary people going about their daily lives come from the governments that are supposed to protect them. The book is worth reading -- Doreen Lawrence

Human rights need informed and passionate supporters, perhaps now more than ever. Shami Chakrabarti is both, her eloquence and persuasiveness evident in every page of this lively and accessible book -- Conor Gearty

Even within the most open of societies, the case for human rights has to be refashioned in each generation. Shami Chakrabarti's pages glow with the persuasive gifts and 30 years' of practical experience she brings to her task -- Peter Hennessy

A clear, impassioned case for human rights law… absorbing… For Chakrabarti the ECHR isn’t just a set of amalgamated legal safeguards but a source of “sheer poetic insight” into human nature… This is law essentially willing civilisation into action, and as with difficult music or the higher reaches of maths, there is a hidden beauty in it ― Observer

About the Author

Shami Chakrabarti is a leading British human rights lawyer and campaigner who has written and broadcast widely and held a number of public roles in recent decades. A legislator in the House of Lords, she is the author of On Liberty and Of Women. Director of Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) from 2003 to 2016, she was Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales from 2016 to 2020.