Criminal punishment is increasingly regarded as a necessary element of human rights protection. There is a growing conviction at the international level that those responsible for the most serious crimes should not go unpunished. Though there is a wealth of legal writing on international criminal law, the question why and to what extent criminal prosecution is a necessary means of human rights protection has hardly been addressed in a comprehensive analysis. This book is the first to examine the duty to prosecute serious human rights violations. It does so by exploring the concepts of...