CYIL 2013

INTERNATIONAL LAW OF VICTIMS of discrimination, etc.). Secondly, victims’ rights are “rights which are interpreted by international bodies under international treaties of human rights” (p. 123), i.e. international case-law helps to better understand some aspects of these rights, such as the duty to investigate, and prosecute and punish, human rights violations. Finally, they are “rights that are interrelated and that have links between each other” (p. 129). Those findings, albeit largely correct, give rise to certain questions, which unfortunately remain unanswered, and mostly unasked, in the book. If most of the victims’ rights make part of the lex lata, why to engage in a lengthy discussion of the status of the UN General Assembly resolutions? Are victims’ rights human rights? And if so, is the status of victim a special status under the human rights law? Questions of this type, to which more could be added, would deserve to be discussed in the publication. The longest chapter in the book, taking up almost half of its pages, endeavours to set up a “catalogue of rights afforded to victims by international norms” (p. 133). The catalogue is an impressive one, encompassing eleven individual rights (right of emergency assistance, right of continuing assistance, right to investigation and prosecution, right to effective access to the law and justice, right to reparation and compensation, right to the protection of private and family life, right to the protection of dignity and security, right to information, right to specific training for those persons assisting victims, right to truth, right to memory), with the option left to states to extend the protection even further (increased protection). The author provides a detailed analysis of each specific right, seeking to establish its legal basis and to identify its content. Such an analysis, however, reveals that most of the rights would most probably face problems meeting the three characteristics of victims’ rights mentioned above and, especially, the first characteristic of the right being part of the human rights lex lata . The legal basis given for most of the rights is that of various soft-law instruments, coupled with occasional, and mostly indirect, references in the case-law of human rights bodies. Thus the question whether international law of victims already exists, as the book seems to suggest, or whether it is in the process of formation, naturally arises, unfortunately without being paid adequate attention by the author. A review of a book dealing with an international law subject normally focuses on the content of the publication. In the case at hand, however, the form – or rather the language – also needs to be briefly commented upon. The book would have benefited from a more thorough language revision, as it exhibits a rather high number of mistakes and misspellings. The reference to “previous” questions instead of “preliminary” ones, the lack of uniformity in the orthography of certain expressions (International Law – International law etc.) and other deficiencies of this type do not make the understanding of the text impossible – at least not for those with some knowledge of Spanish, who should be able to reconstruct the meaning of the text on the basis of the original language. Yet, it unsuitably takes attention away from the content of the book to its form and provokes embarrassment on the