Sonia Picado Sotela, the Vice President of the IIDH Council of Directors, a former Judge of the Inter American Court and former IIHR director, offers us an account of Thomas Buergenthal's life, going from his anguished and painful childhood years in Europe under the Nazi yoke, through his brilliant uniiversity career, commencing at Wets Virginia's Bethany College, at New York University, where he is awarded the degree of Doctor of Law, at Harvard where he is granted a master's degree in Law and a Doctor of Legal Science degree in International Law. Dr. Picado tells us about Thomas Buergenthal's fruitful professional and teaching activity, as a professor and expert of international and human rights law, and a convinced defender of these rights. She evokes his reknown work as a Judge of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, where he acted as President and was considered its most influential member. There is a special mention of Burgenthal's performance -recognized worldwide- as a member of the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, where he was accompanied by former President of Colombia, Belisario Betancourt and former Venezuelan foreign minister, Reinaldo Figueredo Planchart. There are many other abundant notes on the judge's life such as his performance in the United States Delegation to the meeting on Human Dimension of Copenhaguen, during the Conference on on Security and Cooperation in Europe; his role for the advancement of the cause of human rights in the United Nations Organzation for Education and Culture (UNESCO) including participation as chief United States representative in the Committee in charge of drafting said organization's procedures' project for the formulation of claims on violations of human rights; his actions as Senior Rapporteur at the Montreal Meeting on Human Rights which was the main impulse for the Theran proclamation adopted in 1968 by the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights. Sonia Picado does not obviate quoting some of Thomas Buergenthal's most important publications such as The International Protection of Human Rights, written in 1967 jointly with Professor Louis Sohn of the Harvard School of Law; "International Human Rights and International Education", written with Professor Judith Torney-Purta, of the University of Maryland, in 1977; Human Rights in a Nutshell (1988) an essential manual for the study of human rights in the law schools of U.S. universities; Manual Internacional de Derechos Humanos [in Spanish] (1990) a jopint work with Claudio Grossman and Pedro Nikken; and "Protecting Human Rights in the Americas" in conjunction with Robert Norris and Dinah Shelton, a work that was awarded the Prize to the Best Book of the Inter-American Bar Association.

The biographic account offered by Sonia Picado closes with a quotation of the words pronounced by Thomas Buergenthal on the occasion of the commemoration of the fifty years elapsed since the famous Auschwitz March of Death where he was forced to participate as a Holocaust survivor. We now reproduce these words

The purpose of our life, our raison d'être, must be to prevent a repetition of the past, not only for Jews but for all mankind. We must do our work, big or small, to ensure that those who come after us, be they Jews, Haitians, Ruandese, human beings from any part of the world, with no concern for their race, religion, nationality, do not become the victims of what we lived.

As lomg as we do not identify ourselves with the victims of what happens around us and find ways to express our solidarity to help within our possibilities, our survival will be nothing but an insignificant act of good luck. It is only by making its inhumanity universal that our people's suffering gets tru significance for the future.

Louis Sohn, a Distinguished Research Professor of Law at the International Rule of Law Institute of the Goerge Washington University Law Center, brings to the hommage book his work titled The Contribution of Latin American Lawyers to the Development of the United Nations Concept of Human Rights and Economic and Social Justice. There is an account of the evolution of human rights projects through more than fifty years of the International Conference of the American States under the impulse of Latin American jurists, first exerted on the problem of childhood on the occasion of the First American Congress of the Child in Buenos Aires, in 1916, which culminated with the creation of the American Institute for the Protection of Childhoos in 1927. There is a summary of the American nations' system, through its conferences, in the field of woman's rights, of the workers' conditions. There is a special mention of the Lima Declaration in Favor of Women's Rights; there the Eighth Conference of American States agreed to declare that women are entitled to: a) political treatment on the basis of equality with men, b) to enjoy equality as to civil rights, c) to full protection and opportunities at work and d) to the widest protection as mothers. Professor Sohn's work gives special emphasis to the role played in favor of human rights by an illustrious Panamanian statesman, Ricardo J. Alfaro, who was also Panama's President (1931-1932), Secretary General of the American Institute of International Law; at the Institute, Alfaro was the main supporter of the adoption of a Human Rgihts Charter, of which the draft was presented to the world as a Declration of Essential Human Rights. As professor Sohn recalls, these rights and guarantees mentioned in the Declration are: Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Opinion, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of reunion, Freedom of Association, Freedom in as to Harming Interference, the Right to a Fair Trial, the Right not to be Arbitrarily Detained, the Irretroactivity of Laws, the Right of Property, the Right to Education, the Right to Work, the Right to Good Working Conditions, the Right to Food and Housing, the Right to Social Security, to Participate in Government, to Equal Protection and the principle according to which, in exercising one's own rights one is limted by the rights of others. Undoubtedly, Professor Sohn, managed to emphasize, in a brieve article, on Latin American contribution to the concept adopted on human rights by the United Nations, clearly reflected in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has statutory force in almost all civilized nations, as well as in the American Convention on Human Rights, a law in practicaly all our Continent.

The third paper of this collection was written by Antônio Augusto Cançado Trinidade, with the title of A Proteção Internacional dos Direitos Humanos no Limiar do Novo Século [The International Protection of Human Rights on the Dawn of the New Century]. Cançado is currently the Executive Director of the Inter American Human Rights Institute; he has been a Judge at the Inter American Court of Human Rights and Full Professor at the University of Brasilia. An authorized perspective is offered to us on the human rights' situation as the new century is about to begin. The review commences with the expansion of the human rights protection system as from the adoption, in 1948, of the American Declaration of Human Rights. Three quite clear stages are distinguished in the human rights protection system's evolution: 1. From Paris to Teheran: From the Internationalization to the Globalization of Human Rights; 2. From Teheran to Vienna: From the Globalization to the Indivisibility of Human Rights; and 3) From Vienna to the New Century: From the Indivisibility to the Overall Presence of Human Rights. Let us summarize now what Cançado says on these three phases:

From Paris to Teheran.- This period, referred to by Cançado as: From Internationalization to Globalization of Human Rights, is characterized, during the two decades following 1948, by the disappearance of the objection of national competence as opposed to the action power of international supervision organizations' as opposed to national competence and by the assertion of the individuals' international procedural capacity. During this period, in 1966, the two United Nations Covenants were adopted and "the complementary nature of the multiple instruments (general treaties, ësectorial' conventions, procedures based on resolutions, both at global as regional levels) by means of a construing process subsequently reinforced by the supervising organs' case law". The stage culminates with the First World Human Rights Conference, that took place in Teheran, in 1968. This Conference strengthened the human rights' universal nature and the concept that they are indivisible. We are told of globalization because the contemplated problems were global and required global solutions; among these global problems there were the most serious human rights violations such as genocide, torture and apartheid.

2. From Teheran to Vienna.- We enter the process going from globalization of human rights to their indivisibility. Resolution 32/130 of 1977 by the United Nations General Meeting reaffirmed Teheran's Proclamation, the indivisibilty of global human rights and gave priority to the "search for solutions for massive and fragrant violations of human rights". Under this impulse, the General Meeting, in December 1990, called for the Second World Human Rights Conference that was held in Vienna. Cançado tells us that "a careful reading of its main final document, the Vienna Declaration and its Action Program, gives the first impression that, as opposed to the Teheran Proclamation that resulted from the First World Conference, it lacks a central axis, a master idea…" and he goes on saying" "In effect, it was quite significant that the Teheran Conference had achieved the consecration, in a world then divided by the cold war's bipolarity, of the thesis of the human rights' indivisibility, now accepted virtually on a world level, leading to a considerable transformation in the treatment of human rights issues on an international level, as from that moment". The difficulties found in Vienna are mentioned, with the participation of 165 Nations -there were 68 only in Teheran- and bearing in mind the forum of 800 non government organizations (ONGs). To the Conference's complexities, the fact was added that there were delegations from newly created Nation States having appeared after 1968 and lacking the experience of having participated in the drafting of the Universal Declaration and of the two Human Rights Covenants. At this period's closing, it is Cançado's opinion that "both the Teheran as the Vienna Conference are part of an extended process of building a universal culture of human rights' compliance.…"

A most illustrative summary is presented of the Vienna Declaration and Action Program. In this summary, the recognition point out, in the Declaration "of human rights as being inherent to all human beings, and of the legitimacy of the entire international community's concern for the promotion and protection of human rights everywhere, by considering them as a primary responsibility of governments". There is a relation -among the most satisfying moments in the Drafting Committee's work- of the approval of an entire section dealing with the recognition of the right to development as a universal human and inalienable right. He refers that the Vienna Declaration and Action Program are linked also "to the need for urgent incorporation of international human rights and humanitarian instruments to the States; domestic law, in order to warrant their due and full implementation". Somehow criticizing the Vienna achievements, Cançado says:

Those of us who have been acting for many years within the universal human rights movement would have preferred a document establishing more precise commitments by the States and international organizations, for instance, in the field of the mobilization of human resources and materials being indispensable for the protection of human rights' cause, and with a more thorough review of the problems of coordination and ways for reinforcing the protection mechanisms.

3. From Vienna to the New Century. In these years being so close to the twenty first century, Cançado is of the opinion that, first, there should be a reinforcement of "adequate international structures" to act directly on the respect of human rights and the maintenance of the Rule of Law. Second, as from Vienna, it has become necessary to mobilize all of the United Nations' sectors towards the promotion of human rights as well as to offer a greater complementation between global and regional protection mechanisms. As to this second issue, there should be a closer approach between agencies and organizations being dedicated to the United Nations' three basic objectives -peace and international security keeping, the promotion of economic and social development and the respect for human rights-, in order to achieve joint realization of these objectives and to "incorporate the human rights' dimension to all its programs and activities".

A his work's last reflection, Cançado, for these last days of the XXth. century, calls for the continuous need for protection and monitoring of human rights throughout the world. These are his words: "Something arises as more transcending than any of the texts officially adopted in Vienna, and it is the truly universal mobilization and dialog process generated by the Conference: both as such as by its three Regional Preparatory Meetings, as well as by the Preparatory Committee's four sessions and the numerous Conference ësatellite meetings'. They assembled a continuously growing contingent of government Delegations being struck by the noble cause. Thus, there was greater importance in this performance of universal collective thinking that was generated by the World Conference than in any document. It will certainly strengthen the human rights movement in the sense that it will generate and consolidate a continuous monitoring of its compliance by all and everywhere".