Promoting human rights in the era of globalization and interventions: the changing spaces of struggle

Abstract

A new cartography of geopolitical and corporate interests is reshaping the international order after September 11, calling into question the state's ability to secure fundamental rights for its citizens and to preserve participatory democracy. If civil society tends, among human rights activists, to be the preferred venue to articulate human rights concerns against the state and other powerful entities, one may wonder whether civil society has not become an arena dominated by consumerism or the pursuit of security. With the weakening of social forces for human rights in civil society as a buffer between the state and the private realm, how can we protect individuals from deepening incursions by the state and the globalized market in our age of war against terror? This article considers these issues, by placing them in historic context. More specifically, it examines how selected events since the Second World War have transformed the spaces which support and shape campaigns for human rights struggle. Micheline Ishay is professor and the director of the Human Rights Program at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, Colorado. She has written and editedInternationalism and Its Betrayal(University of Minnesota Press),The Nationalism Reader(Humanities and Prometheus Press),The Human Rights Reader(Routledge) andThe History of Human Rights, from Ancient Times to the Era of Globalization(University of California Press, 2004). She has also written numerous articles in various human rights and international studies journals.