(2008) “Human Rights Politics, Gender and Injustice: Transitional Justice in Argentina and South Africa”, International Journal of Transitional Justice (Oxford), 2, 83-105. (original) (raw)

Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood

Ethics & International Affairs, 2002

In the lexicon of rights, the concept of human rights can play a wide variety of roles. Human rights can be defined as substantive natural rights that transcend politics and culture or as the rights that underlie political and cultural differences. They can be defined narrowly as rights that could be asserted against enemies in war or, more broadly, as the aspirational goals to which governments are held accountable by their citizens and the world. Despite their lack of recognition in covenant and positive law through much of the twentieth century, human rights are increasingly asserted on the basis of such recognition. To some, human rights are simply the sine qua non (procedural? biological?) for asserting other rights, whatever these may be. In this paper I do not choose among these uses of the concept of human rights by propounding a single definition; neither do I defend or criticize human rights in general.

Discursive Framings of Human Rights

This paper investigates the way in which victims, relatives of the victims and victims associations use the human rights discourse in developing discursive and social practises to transform victimhood in active and committed citizenship, struggling to obtain the right to truth, if not justice, in the aftermath of the ‘Years of Lead’, i.e. the wave of political terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s, in Italy. It examines therefore the relationship between victimhood and political agency and how human rights influence their struggle to overcome the violent conflict of the past through a profound societal transformation. It analyzes victims’ self-narratives, practices and narrative modes established by victims associations to promote victims’ rights and memory activism practices in social media. These narratives will be analysed with the aim of identifying the narrative and thematic modes in play and especially what type of identity they transmit: it is not that of traumatized, self-absorbed victims, but rather that of citizens who assert their right to truth, justice and memory and place their claims in the name and to the benefit of a national community of belonging.

Human Rights from a Third-World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law

""This book takes up the point of view of the colonized in order to unsettle and supplement the conventional understanding of human rights. Putting together insights coming from Decolonial Thinking, TWAIL, Radical Black Theory and Subaltern Studies, the book constructs a new history and theory of human rights, and a more comprehensive understanding of international human rights law in the background of modern colonialism and the struggle for global justice. An exercise of dialogical and interdisciplinary thinking, this collection of articles puts into conversation important areas of research on human rights, namely theory of human rights, history, and international law. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Decolonial Strategies and Dialogue in the Human Rights Field José-Manuel Barreto …………………………………………………… Part I: Critique of the Theory of Human Rights 1. Who Speaks for the “Human” in Human Rights? Walter Mignolo ………………………………………………… 2. Provincializing Human Rights? The Heideggerian Legacy from Charles Malik to Dipesh Chakrabarty Martin Woessner ……………………………………………….. 3. The Legacy of Slavery: White Humanities and its Subject Sabine Broeck …………………………………………………… 4. “Moral Optics”: Biopolitics, Torture and the Imperial Gaze of War Photography Eduardo Mendieta ……………………………………………… Part II: Signposts for an Alternative History of Human Rights 5. Imperialism and Decolonization as Scenarios of Human Rights History José-Manuel Barreto …………………………………………… 6. Las Casas, Vitoria and Suárez, 1514-1617 Enrique Dussel ………………………………………………… 7. The Haitian Revolution and the Making of Freedom in Modernity Anthony Bogues ……………………………………………… 8. Beyond Love and Justice: Natural Law in Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community Vincent Lloyd …………………………………………………… 9. Human Rights, Southern Voices: Yash Ghai and Upendra Baxi William Twining ……………………………………………… Part III: Decolonizing Constitutional and International Human Rights Law 10. The Rule of Law in India Upendra Baxi …………………………………………………… 11. Eddie Mabo and Namibia: Land Reform and Precolonial Land Rights Nico Horn ……………………………………………………… 12. Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States in the Construction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Susan Waltz ……………………………………………………… 13. Forging a Global Culture of Human Rights: Origins and Prospects of the International Bill of Rights Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat ………………………………………… 14. Mode d’assujetissement: Charles Malik, Carlos Romulo and the Emergence of the United Nations Human Rights Regime Glenn Mitoma …………………………………………………… LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat is Juanita and Joseph Leff Professor and Chair of Political Science at Purchase College, State University of New York. She is the author of Democracy and Human Rights in Developing Countries (iUniverse, 2003), Human Rights Worldwide: A Reference Handbook (ABC-CLIO, 2006) and Insan Haklarý ve Demokrasi Üzerine Tezler (Boyut Yayýnlarý, 2007). José-Manuel Barreto is Visiting Fellow, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of De los Derechos, las Garantías y los Deberes (with Libardo Sarmiento, Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, 1998). His works have appeared in collections such as Critical Legal Theory (Routledge, 2011) and Critical International Law: Post-Realism, Post-Colonialism, and Transnationalism (Oxford University Press, 2012). Upendra Baxi held the position of Professor of Law at the University of Delhi and served as Professor of Law in Development, University of Warwick. His publications include The Future of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Human Rights in a Posthuman World: Critical Essays (Oxford University Press, 2007). Anthony Bogues is Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science, Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Freedom: The Early Political Thought of C.L.R. James (Pluto, 1997), Black Heretics and Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals (Routledge, 2003) and Empire of Liberty: Power, Freedom, and Desire (University Press of New England, 2010). Sabine Broeck is Professor of American Studies at the University of Bremen. She is the author of White Amnesia - Black Memory? Women's Writing and History (Peter Lang, 1999) and Der entkolonisierte Koerper. Die Protagonistin in der afro-amerikanischen weiblichen Erzähltradition der 30er bis 80er Jahre (Campus, 1988). She is currently President of the International Collegium for African-American Research (CAAR). Enrique Dussel is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, Mexico. His publications include Ethics of Liberation in the age of Globalization and Exclusion (Duke University Press, 2012), Twenty Theses on Politics (Duke University Press, 2008) and The Invention of the Americas. Eclipse of "the Other" and the Myth of Modernity (Continuum, 1995). Nico Horn is Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Namibia. He is the author of Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Namibia (with A Bösl, MacMillan 2008) and The Human Face in the Globalizing World, Ten Years of Human Rights Education (with M.O. Hinz and C. Mchombu, University of Namibia, 2002). Vincent Lloyd is Assistant Professor of Religion, Syracuse University. He is the author of The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology (Stanford University Press, 2011) and Law and Transcendence: On the Unfinished Project of Gillian Rose (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York. He is the author of Global Fragments: Latinamericanism, Globalizations, and Critical Theory (SUNY Press, 2007) and Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy: Karl-Otto Apel's Semiotics and Discourse Ethics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). Walter Mignolo is William Wannamaker Professor of Literature, Duke University. His publications include The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Duke University Press, 2012), The Idea of Latin America (Blackwell, 2005) and Local Histories/Global Designs (Princeton University Press, 2000). Glenn Mitoma is Assistant Professor, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut. His research interests include the history and contemporary working of universal human rights as discourse, structure, and practices, and is currently focused on developing a “human rights biography” of Charles H. Malik. William Twinning is Emeritus Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London. His publications include General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law from a Global Perspective, (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and How to Do Things With Rules (with David Miers, CUP, 2010). He is the editor of Human Rights: Southern Voices (CUP, 2009). Susan Waltz is Professor of International Relations and Public Policy, University of Michigan. She has written “Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States.” (Human Rights Quarterly, 2004) and “Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Third World Quarterly, 2002. She currently sits on the Board of Amnesty International-USA. Martin Woessner is Assistant Professor of History & Society, The City College of New York's Center for Worker Education (CUNY). He is the author of Heidegger in America (Cambridge University Press, 2011). ""

Human Rights Politics & Transitional Justice

2008

This paper explores transitional justice as a way to bring an end to violence and consolidate peace. It approaches transitional justice as an expression of the 'never again' consensus to prevent or prosecute crimes against humanity. It explores transitional justice as an expression of globalizing law and the implications this has for the recovery of the 'rule of law' and 'political legitimacy' in the post conflict State. It takes Robert Meister (2002)'s formulation of the politics of victimhood, revenge and resentment in the relationship between the beneficiaries and the victims of injustice, as remaining at the centre of transitional justice politics in trying to decide on the balance between reconciliation and justice projects. It explores how human rights discourse has been used to de-politicise the 'victim' by adopting an individually embodied concept of violence as opposed to a structural one. It argues that transitional justice as an expression of globalizing law has been primarily directed at maintaining peace to achieve closure on past 'evil' but that the beneficiary-victim issue has re-emerged in the social justice movements and renewed desire for prosecutions.

Recovering the Human in Human Rights

It is often said that human rights are the rights that people possess simply in virtue of being human – that is, in virtue of their intrinsic, dignity-defining common humanity. Yet, on closer inspection the human rights landscape doesn't look so even. Once we bring perpetrators of human rights abuse and their victims into the picture, attributions of humanity to persons become unstable. In this article, I trace the ways in which rights discourse ascribes variable humanity to certain categories of people. I set the stage for my discussion of the human in relation to human rights by examining John Locke's account of the justification for punishment. For Locke, in committing a crime one abrogates one's humanity and forfeits one's rights. Likewise, I argue, human rights discourse takes a scalar view of humanity. I consider victims of genocide who are dehumanized as helpless and passive, victims of state persecution who are super-humanized as righteously agentic, and perpetrators of genocide who are dehumanized as out-of-control beasts. In each case I use relevant testimony to argue that the scalar view of humanity is factually incorrect and morally deplorable. For genocide victims, I discuss testimony that Selma Leydesdorff gathered from women who survived the Srebrenica massacre. For a victim of persecution, I discuss Liao Yiwu's memoire of his detention and imprisonment in China because of his artwork protesting the Tiananmen Square massacre. For perpetrators of genocide, I discuss testimony Jean Hatzfeld gathered from Hutu men who systematically murdered Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide. Finally, I apply my critique of dehumanized and super-humanized victims and dehumanized perpetrators to the problem of transnational trafficking in persons and argue that the view I advocate necessitates reforming immigration policy with respect to persons trafficked into forced labor.

THE MODERN HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSE: A construction that jeopardizes its own values and effectiveness

ANAIS SOCIOLOGY OF LAW 2017: Perspectivas das relações entre direito e sociedade em um sistema Social Global, 2017

In a world of political and economic instabilities, the role of human rights discourse should be seen as neutral, solid and coherent towards the preservation of the individuals' life and dignity. However, this article aims to promote a debate about the modern interpretation of what emerged as the man's natural law, and today is the foundation of a transnational and highly complex structure: the international humanitarian system. Through a critical literature review, this work combined arguments proposed by Habermas and Arendt, with the morphological structures of the state, rights of the man and sovereignty, and the Kantian view of cosmopolitanism. This article's main objective is to highlight discrepancies between the theory and practice of human rights discourse, demonstrating the dilemma of duality that abases this system's effectiveness. Yet, the present work found and sustains that human rights discourse may fail where it aims to universalise and promote civil rights as inherently human rights, which ultimately disregard sovereignty, people's self-determination and, in numerous cases, contributes to the destabilisation of institutions and international relations.