Richard Lang & Claire-Michelle Smyth 
Contemporary Challenges to Human Rights Law [PDF ebook] 

This collection of essays highlights the many problems and challenges facing human rights law today. Bringing together academics, practitioners and NGOs, it examines some of the contemporary challenges facing human rights law and practice in England, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, France and America. It is clear that we live in a time where human rights are in crisis. A decade of austerity measures at the domestic, regional and international levels evidently has had a detrimental effect on the protection of human rights. Cuts to social spending have resulted a failing social welfare system, a health service buckling under pressure, unprecedented rises in homelessness and child poverty, and the emergence of the ‘working poor’ and zero hours contracts. Austerity, famine, civil war, oppressive governmental regimes and climate change have seen vast migrations, resulting in a resurrection of far right-wing ideology. In the UK, this is seen in what can only be described as propaganda and scaremongering during the campaign for Brexit and in subsequent political elections evidenced by the increase in racially motivated hate crime within the UK. The landscape of human rights is such that it has resulted in some beginning to question, are human rights rights at all?