This book analyses the use of the expression 'serious violations of human rights', and similar ones, such as 'gross' or 'grave', in international practice. It highlights some of the recurring responses and consequences to such violations and suggests that a new special regime - eponymous to the above-mentioned expression - was formed.

This special regime is understood as substantively limited to a very specific issue-area of human rights violations. Within this regime, a series of monitoring mechanisms and procedures are in place to highlight, document, and record such violations; specific measures are taken to enforce compliance; and certain consequences arise focused on remedying the victims of such violations. As such, this special regime is comprised of at least four thinly interconnected components: the substantive, the monitoring, the enforcement, and the remedial ones.

This monograph constitutes a first step towards the recognition of such a regime, allowing far more constructive and coherent elaboration in the future. Practice around this category of violations may well evolve in a different direction than the one suggested here. However, what becomes apparent from this work is that the serious violations of human rights are a key notion in the international legal order as it allows the international community to depict those factual situations requiring its attention and action.

About the Author:
Dr Ilia Siatitsa is currently Programme Director and Senior Legal Officer at Privacy International (PI) and her work focuses on research and litigation on the impact of new technologies on human rights. She is a qualified lawyer in Greece and has a PhD in International Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva. Before joining PI, Ilia was a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights leading the research on human rights in the digital age. She was also a member of the research team of the Big Data, Human Rights and Technology Project housed at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex. She also holds an LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights from the Law School, University of Geneva, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, an LLM in Public International Law from the University of Athens, and a Law Degree from the Democritus University, Greece.