Individual Responsibility in International Law For Serious Human Rights Violations

Over the last century, international law has sought to keep pace with sweeping changes that have revolutionised the international community. It has done so in various ways: by developing new fields, adopting new legal instruments, and including new actors and entities in the international fora. Human rights law and environmental law have emerged to address essential issues raised by civil society. Treaties, judgments and soft law instruments have attempted to fill the gaps in regulation. International organisations, corporations, civil society organisations and individuals have all worked to make and enforce, also by judicial means, legal rules. But is all this sufficient?

The book applies an interdisciplinary analytical framework, based on social psychology theories of inclusion and exclusion, to a discussion of legal discourse and the development of legal frameworks in Europe concerning migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and European citizens.

A timely contribution to the study of peace psychology in Latin America, this volume describes clinical, psychosocial, and community interventions with victims from Mexico to Chile from the 1970s onward. Chapters analyze how to conceptualize complex processes such as the appropriation of children and political repression, raising psychological, juridical, and political implications for the victims, their families, human rights organizations, and society. Also included are studies and analyses of political processes in countries currently undergoing crises such as Venezuela and Colombia and the challenges posed by the peace process from a political psychology perspective. All authors present the results of studies or clinical cases illustrating creative methodologies and practices in different contexts.