No More: The Battle Against Human Rights Violations

Raymond A. Jones is a history professor at Carleton University in
Ottawa.

Before World War II, human rights were understood to be within the
domestic jurisdiction of states; but after the genocidal abuses of the
totalitarian Nazi and Soviet states, the United Nations passed the
universal Declaration of Human Rights to give private citizens the same
protection that the Geneva conventions had previously given to soldiers
at war. In spite of almost universal state acceptance of the principle
of human rights, violations continue, whether fueled by the state
terrorism of the national security state or by the imperatives of
fundamentalist religions, communism, and apartheid.

Winnipeg lawyer David Matras is an experienced human rights activist,
the co-ordinator of the Canadian legal network of Amnesty International,
and the author of several books dealing with immigration, refugees, and
war criminals. In No More, he provides an original Canadian perspective
on the process of international human rights protection; on Canadian
compliance with international human rights standards; and on economic,
social, and cultural rights within Canada’s Charter of Rights and
Freedoms.

Matras’s prescription in dealing with all these issues is an absolute
rejection of the cover of cultural relativism. Human rights are
universal and indivisible. If the principle is absolutely clear, based
as it is on the sanctity of life, should the strategy to be pursued by
human rights activists activism go beyond moral outrage? The answer to
this and many other important questions are given in this scholarly,
thoughtful, and, above all, compassionate study.