The persistence of human rights violations around the world clearly demonstrates the need to focus more attention on preventive action.

Consequently, international organizations are increasingly strengthening the preventive dimension of their human rights activities. Preventive mechanisms have also emerged and continue to gain ground at the national level.

These new realities, however, seem to have received little attention by the academic community. Yet they raise many important issues, which need to be further explored. The above considerations prompted the Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights to mark its twentieth anniversary by organizing an International Colloquy on the topic of the prevention of human rights violations.

The present Volume contains contributions by the participants, based on the reports they presented at the Colloquy, substantially revised and updated. It constitutes the first attempt at a systematic analysis of the subject of the prevention of human rights violations, focusing on the following five aspects: conventional regimes, non-conventional monitoring mechanisms, international commissioners and Ombudsmen, national Ombudsmen and human rights institutions and the development of a human rights culture. It closes with a theoretical synthesis of the various approaches to the prevention of human rights violations, focusing on the context, the concept and function, as well as methods and techniques of prevention.

I am a high school student and I am currently working on a research paper on Alexandre Dumas for Honors English II. This book contains some pertinent facts and information on Dumas, his works, and the era of Romaniticism.

This book isn't as great as The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, or any of Dumass' other great works but it is a great book to read. If you are interested in gothic fiction or mystery you should read this book. I will tell you that the shock at the end of the book is worth reading the whole thing for. Overall, I thought it was a great piece of work.

Very interesting book years ahead in talking about the troubles we now face. I would assume this would be brought back out given the state of the war on terrorism. Ok so he does not have a boatload of facts, but that was in 1992 - look at what has happened over the past 10 years. He comments were right on. There are lost of interesting stories from Africa to Europe and central Asia. This book provides a look into the French intelligence agency that for me a new given that most books in the area deal with the CIA, MI5 or the KGB. If you read this book you will be talking about it to your friends for weeks after you have finished it. The book is written well and keeps moving, it does not get bogged down in "the French are the best" hyperbole.

Even if -- as with this reviewer -- you don't beleive everything he says and even if you are not prepared to follow his teachings as a disciple, Meher Baba stands out as one of the 20th century's great religious personalities. Some translations of his writings have been poor -- but not this one. It contains the magical simplicity of the teacher's words, and conveys it in a poetica manner befitting the way it was originally tramsitted.

In view of the title, I was naturally curious about this book, and had a heck of a time finding a copy. It's not on a par with THE THREE MUSKETEERS, but isn't a bad read at all. Thanks, Alex.

I read the book when I was younger and kept a copy with me for the longest time and then in my travels I somehow misplaced it...It is part of the reason I'm trying to get it again. It is a strange haunting story that has many different twists and turns in the plot. It has some poetry, suspence, and a Edgar Allen Poe-ish quality about it. It is a novel to read and re-read again. The search for this book has made a lot of bookstore staff give me a second strange look, but there's more to the story than meets the reader's eye. It is a classic horror story and should be read.

Yes, I am absolutely crazy about 16th century French history. And Dumas has a whole series for this era. Though "La Dame de Montsoreau" is my favorite of the series, the Forty-Five does not lack young, handsome and rich gentlemen and beautiful and graceful ladies, not to mention the private lifestyle (humorous I found) of the King Henri III and his brother the duc d'Alençon. It was overall just captivating, I felt like I was reliving this time period. Again, I suggest you read the whole series, especially since this is the last book in the series. But I prefer this 'Valois' series to the 'D'Artagnan' or 'Marie-Antoinette' etc. series... It's more fascinating for me. The only thing is, that the end leaves a little something to be desired. I don't know if Dumas meant to write a fourth book in the series, cuz he seems to leave a few things hanging. But if you can ignore that, the rest of the plot is great!

Santiago, my 5 yr old son, and I, have read the spanish version of the book. We were able to follow the adventures of the three kids inside the Internet looking for the mother's image... We have been pleased by the carefully made presentation of the photographs and the book. I was forced many times to repeat that it was just a tale, not real, otherwise my son would have been really frightened!

Perhaps the main virtue of Popovic's work is that it remains the only significant scholarly study of its subject, the 9th-century revolt of Zanj slaves who worked in the marshlands of southern Iraq. Although the event played a key role in everything from the fall of the Abbasid caliphate to changes in trade routes throughout the Indian Ocean, historians have shied away from studying it because the only real source we have is the chronicle of al-Tabari.

Popovic has collected the fragments of al-Tabari which touch upon the revolt, and sought to provide some analysis. However, it is sometimes difficult to see the basis of his conclusions, and there are many issues which he does not explore, such as a possible ethnic connection between the African troops of the caliph who joined the rebels and the Zanj themselves. He also tends not to touch the broader impact of the revolt mentioned above. The religious ideology of the movement also needs further scrutiny.

Nonetheless, for a general reader interested in this little corner of history, Popovic can provide the details in a readily accessible form.

We are often informed that slaves who arrived in the Middle East were generally treated better than slaves in the West; however, Popovic's work sheds light on how harsh treatment in a situation similar to that in which slaves were often placed in the west led to a grand revolt not matched since Spartacus!

Popovic, relying on al-Tabiri and other writers, informs us that the Zanj were a people of eastern Africa. They were often taken in razzias from Muslim states such as Zanzibar (see Ibn Battuta in Black Africa). Many of these Zanj were taken to the Mesopotamian region of Iraq and put to work on giant agricultural "plantations" and in mines.

The Zanj were involved in a number of insurrections, all of which were failures - until they joined the uprising formed by Ali b. Muhammad, a non-Zanj, non-black Muslim. Although the Zanj made up a large part of the revolutionary forces, few Zanj (unlike the black leaders of Maroon colonies in Jamaica, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba and etc.) had any real power in the new revolutionary state. Still, their continuing adherence to the state (which, as Popovic tells us, included black soldiers who defected from the Caliph's and local leaders' forces) tells us that they preferred society under the non-black Ali's dictatorship to slavery in the fields and mines. On the other hand, as with many western maroon colonies, the Zanj and others had no problem taking goods and slaves from (and making slaves of
the local population).

The nascent civilization continued to grow for many years, until the Caliph decided he had the time and resources to make a concerted effort to destroy Ali b. Muhammad's young kingdom. Using a combination of force and amnesty, the official government quickly began driving Ali's forces back into the swampy areas south of Basra and eventually drove the remnants of the rebellion to the rebel capitol. Within a few years, the "Zanj" Revolt was over and Ali bin Muhammad was dead.

This historical, social and anthropological study of the Zanj Revolt stands with Price's MAROON SOCIETIES as an important study of the development of government, customs, and social status in societies generally - as well as a study of a rather interesting aspect of the black diaspora caused by slavery.

This book (which I have not read) is purported on this webiste and elsewhere to be a collaborative effort between Dumas and Williams or at least a Williams adaptation of a Dumas play. It is actually believed by many others to be the sole work of Williams and of inferior quality to anything penned by Dumas.

A must read for any book fan worth his salt... a masterful book.... I loved it tremndously......
The story is about , as most of you will know , D'Artagnan , who comes from the district of Gascon to the city to become a musketeer and his adventures with the new friends he makes from the King's musketeers.......

I recommend this book to everyone......