I Book Review: Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice: Challenges for Empirical Research

Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 28/3 (2010) 501 overlap increasingly recognised. She is in favour of a convergence of interests, while recognising that this does not necessarily translate in a singly approach. Chapter 16, by Rebecca Firestone and the editors, seeks to summarise the previous chapters and to come up with some conclusions. It is clear that the Cairo Conference brought about an important shift in policy and programming with respect to global health, development and (women’s) human rights. Human rights have demonstrated to have moral and legal force as a discourse and a claim, but do not automatically lead to change. Hard work remains needed to put the human rights-based goals and approaches into action. The authors identify various obstacles for the future, including political challenges, but conclude the book with an optimistic message: by creating new alliances and designing new strategies the goals enshrined in the Cairo Programme of Action can be achieved, despite the fact that the MDGs nowadays rank much higher on the global policy agenda. As mentioned before, this book contains interesting chapters – some of which I have referred to – and provides useful information on the ICDP, its evolvement and the way it was overtaken by the MDGs. The book fails, however, to address human rights in a substantial, let alone systematic way. Scholars interested in the human rights dimensions of sexual and reproductive rights will therefore not find what they are looking for in this book. Fortunately, there are many other publications – including, for example, the work of Rebecca Cook – that meet this needs. Reproductive Health and Human Rights is an interesting additional source of information on reproductive health issues, but does not really add much to the discourse.