Confronting Apartheid

Book excerpt: Looking back over a long and distinguished career, John Dugard describes the work he undertook in defence of human rights by opposing the system of apartheid in South West Africa/Namibia and South Africa and more recently in occupied Palestine, which enforces a system that closely mirrors apartheid in South Africa. He shows how law was used by progressive lawyers in Namibia and South Africa to strike at the heart of apartheid. The entrenchment of a system of discrimination and oppression in occupied Palestine is carefully examined in the context of apartheid, but he ends on a note of hope that the international community, acting through civil society and the institutions of international law, will ensure that a just solution is found to this seemingly intractable problem.