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.
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.
Industry Reviews
A fierce and thoughtful answer to those who thoughtlessly criticise the whole idea of human rights and its core values of dignity and equality - but also a blueprint for how human rights thinking might help us solve the great problems of the day - cyberspace and AI, armed conflict and climate change - and give democracy a future -- Brenda Hale
An ideal introduction to the subject of human rights ... Chakrabarti is excellent on the historical origins of her subject ... and shows how the idea of human rights can have a direct bearing on the problems of today, whether war, climate change, poverty or artificial intelligence. In Chakrabarti's hands, the underlying values are what matter about human rights, forming a roadmap to civilised living at a time of change and crisis. I cannot offhand think of a better, more attractive introduction to the subject for those curious to know more about it than the occasional newspaper headline ... Chakrabarti has an enviable writing style, her fluency in print matching her bewitching speaking skills; many times I could hear her voice coming through the text ... pugilistic in her defence of human rights, Chakrabarti is a key high priest in this, the most important of our secular religions -- Conor Gearty * Irish Times *
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)
