The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Commentary and Guide to Practice

This book is a practical guide to freeing political prisoners and provides a comprehensive review of this UN body's 1,200 jurisprudence cases.

Jared Genser (Author)

9781108822428, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 April 2020

654 pages, 20 b/w illus.
25.5 x 17.8 x 3.8 cm, 1.23 kg

'… Genser performs a great service for practitioners here in his close reading and enumeration of findings of the 2010 UN Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Countering Terrorism - with its critically important discussion of those 'circumstance (that) can elevate prolonged incommunicado detention into an act of torture or other mistreatment'.' Brian Phillips, Journal of Human Rights Practice

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is the first comprehensive review of the contributions of this important institution to understanding arbitrary detention today. The Working Group is a body of five independent human rights experts that considers individual complaints of arbitrary detention, adopting legal opinions as to whether a detention is compatible with states' obligations under international law. Since its establishment in 1991, it has adopted more than 1,200 case opinions and conducted more than fifty country missions. But much more than a jurisprudential review, these cases are presented in the book in the style of a treatise, where the widest array of issues on arbitrary detention are placed in the context of the requirements of multilateral treaties and other relevant international standards. Written for both practitioners and serious scholars alike, this book includes five case studies and a foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu.

Foreword by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu
Part I. Background: 1. Overview of the working group
2. Deliberations of the working group
Part II. Individual Case Procedure: 3. Process for taking a case to the working group
Part III. Case Jurisprudence: 4. Category I: no legal basis for detention
5. Category II: violation of fundamental rights and freedoms
6. Category III: violation of rights of due process
7. Category IV: violation of rights of asylum seekers
8. Category V: discrimination on protected grounds
9. Detention not arbitrary
Part IV. Additional Case Studies: 10. Mohamed Nasheed v. The Maldives
11. 'Balyoz' or Sledgehammer Cases v. Turkey
12. Aung San Suu Kyi v. Myanmar
13. Mukhtar Ablyazov v. France
14. Yang Jianli v. China
Table of authorities
Appendices: required legal materials
Index.

Subject Areas: Human rights & civil liberties law [LNDC], International humanitarian law [LBBS], International human rights law [LBBR], Human rights [JPVH], United Nations & UN agencies [JPSN1]