I Book Review: The Netherlands and the Development of International Human Rights Instruments
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/016934410902700111 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
Netherlands Q uarterly of Human R ights, Vol. 27/1, 115–130, 2009.
© Netherlands I nstitute of Human Ri ghts (SIM), Printed in the Net herlands. 115
PART D: DOCUMENTATION
I BOOK REVIEWS
Hilde Reiding, e Netherlands and the De velopment of International Human
Rights Instrume nts, School of Human Rights Research Series , Intersentia, Antwerp
– Oxford, 2007, xix + 539 pp., ISBN: 978–90–50 95–654–3*
is is a fascinating book, written by an historian, which looks in-depth at one
facet of t he Netherlands foreign policy from the 1980s onwards, t he country’s
involvement in human rights sta ndard setti ng and institution bu ilding at UN a nd
European levels . e rst t hought that might strike readers is why the 1980s? What
of the period before the 1980s, which might be termed the classic era of i nternational
human rights standard setting from 1948 when the International Bill of Human
Rights and t he main anti-discrim ination conventions were draed? What was the
stance of the Netherlands over thi s period? e histor y of those decades is briey
touched upon by Dr Reiding citing the work of others who have charac terised the
Netherlands a s having a largely undisting uished record. Its colonial preoccupations
and commercial interest s dominated foreign policy. However with the publication i n
1979 of an ocia l policy paper on human rights and foreign policy a new era began.
e Government decla red – and it was one of the rst European governments to
do so – that the promotion of human rights would be hencefort h ‘an essenti al part
of its foreign policy’. e book takes thi s new position as its point of departure and
examines how the Net herlands pro-human r ights policy worked out in respect of a
number of human rights sta ndard setting initiatives over the ensu ing decades. At the
UN, the book exam ines the Netherlands’ approach to the dra ing in the 1980s of the
Convention agai nst Torture and the Convention on the Rig hts of the Child. At the
European level the focus is on the reform of the Council of Europe’s Social Char ter in
the 1990s including its collective complai nt mechanism, a nd over the same decade,
the protection of minorities u nder the CSCE later the OSCE.
e European Union (EU) is excluded from the study a nd for good reasons. First,
the book is based on the author’s doctoral thesis and there are neces sary limits on the
scope of a thesis . Further, t he EU’s human rights mandate is a recent development
and it would be a major undertaking to isolate that mandate, and the Dutch approach
to it, arising from such tre aties such as those of Maastricht and Amsterda m. Another
reason relates to lack of acces s to background EU policy documents which are closed
for 30 years whereas the author has had access i n the Netherlands to the archives
* Kevin Boyle, P rofessor of Law, University of Essex , UK.
To continue reading
Request your trial