An insiders comprehensive guide to the Councils complex workings and geopolitical dynamics. Drawing on decades of experience, Tistounet highlights the Council's innovative mechanisms and its role in shaping global human rights, while addressing criticisms with nuanced insights. -- Elvira Dominguez-Redondo, Kingston University, UK Over the years, the UN human rights system, a somewhat inaccessible administrative structure, has grown up. The new and the old continue living together through vicissitudes and rearrangements. It is that complex stage where Eric Tistounet sets his extraordinary book The UN Human Rights Council: A Practical Anatomy. Tistounet has worked within the secretariat of the Council since its establishment in 2006 and is better placed than anyone to unveil the Councils real functioning. In this Practical Anatomy of the Council he is very soberly and elegantly implacable in trying to identify what has worked well and what must be done. For him the Council must be judged by the impact it may have on the lives of common people all over the world. This book is extremely important for all those who want to better understand, within the framework of the Human Rights Council, the present tensions between democratic aspirations and the risk of the persistence of authoritarian models based on inequality and violence in denying human rights. -- Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Chair of the HRC Commission of Inquiry on Syria Acclaim from previous edition: This is a valuable book that helps us understand the functioning of the Human Rights Council, its contribution to upholding human rights, its strengths and its dilemmas. These can help identify strategies for its future strengthening. Written by a consummate professional human rights practitioner, it gives a rare insight into how international institutions actually function, and how they may be made more dynamic, given the political will. Eric Tistounet has done the human rights cause a great service. -- Bertrand Ramcharan, Former Acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 'No-one knows the UN Human Rights Council, including its ins and outs and all of its secrets, better than Eric Tistounet. As Secretary of the Council he has played a central role in shaping and guiding it, and in this book he shares the insights that governments, advocates, scholars, and others interested in the Council and the UNs human rights programme need to know.' -- Philip Alston, New York University, School of Law, US
