The Protection of Vulnerable Groups under International Human Rights Law: (Routledge Research in Human Rights Law)

The protection of vulnerable groups varies under international human rights law. Depending on the group at stake, protection may be more or less advanced. In some cases, the international community has deemed it necessary to adopt conventions providing for the rights of certain vulnerable groups and establishing mechanisms to verify State compliance. Other groups have not been the focus of States’ standard-setting endeavours, but their protection still falls within the scope of human rights treaties of general application and the mandate of their respective monitoring bodies.

This book takes an innovative approach to the investigation of the international legal protection of vulnerable groups. Rather than examining the situation of a number of vulnerable groups and applicable international or regional conventions, this book reviews the overall scope of the protection of vulnerable groups under International Human Rights Law. This book conceptualizes the protection of vulnerable groups as an underlying and essential component of International Human Rights Law through a systematic and comprehensive analysis of international human rights law instruments and relevant practice of international and regional human rights monitoring bodies. The book illuminates how human rights monitoring bodies foster protection of vulnerable groups and their members at the domestic level, and underscores and assesses vulnerability paradigms these bodies have elaborated. The book also puts forward a legal definition of vulnerable groups.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international human rights law.

Introduction 1. Introducing the International Legal Protection of Vulnerable Groups 2. The Legal Protection of Vulnerable Groups as an Integral Component of the Scope of International Human Rights Law 3. The Practice of UN Treaty Bodies and Thematic UN Special Procedures Relevant to the Protection of Vulnerable Groups 4. The Practice of The Committee On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Committee on the Rights of the Child Relevant to the Protection of Vulnerable Groups 5. Regional Trends in the Protection of Vulnerable Groups and Their Members 6. The Vulnerability Paradigm of The European Court of Human Rights 7. The Practice of Domestic Courts Relevant to Vulnerable Groups and Persons 8. Conclusive Reflections Conclusions