Conservative Human Rights Research Articles

A Front for ‘Humanity’ Greek and Greek Cypriot Orthodox Advocates Between Anti-colonialism, Self-determination and Enosis (1950–1960)

During the 1950s, the Greek Cypriot Archbishop Makarios was the first to associate political claims for the annexation of Cyprus to Greece (Enosis) with the international anti-colonial claims for self-determination. Makarios alleged that British authorities had violated human rights and pressurised the Greek government to back the Cypriot population. As soon as armed conflict broke out in 1955, Greek Orthodox prelates and civil society actors, led by Makarios, launched an international ‘illumination campaign’ to expose the British authorities. This article investigates the Greek-based human rights activism arising from within the Greek and Greek Cypriot Orthodox Church, with the parallel support of right-wing civil society advocates. It therefore aims to shed new light on British decolonisation through the lens of religious humanitarian networks that spread in the Global South, international church forums and international humanitarian organisations. The study contends that these advocates put forward their own irredentist version of a ‘conservative human rights revolution’. Moreover, the article shows how Greek humanitarian and child welfare organisations borrowed nationalist arguments from these activists. Ultimately, ecclesiastical lobbying for human rights impacted the outcome of Cyprus’ decolonisation, inheriting ethno-nationalist arguments against federalisation since the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus in August 1960.

The Reagan Turnaround on Human Rights

Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard’s Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights is a welcome addition to the rapidly growing scholarship on human rights and U.S. foreign policy.1 Based on excellent research in a wide range of primary sources, including the papers of numerous members of Congress that have not been previously used by scholars, Søndergaard’s work makes three significant contributions. It demonstrates convincingly that President Ronald Reagan, who entered office determined to downgrade human rights as a foreign policy concern, was forced to change course in 1981; places Congress at the center of the analysis to show how it built on the human rights breakthrough of the 1970s to influence U.S. foreign policy throughout the 1980s; and provides a new interpretation of Reagan’s approach to foreign policy. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan attacked President Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy as well intentioned but harmful to American interests. He portrayed Carter as weak in standing up to America’s enemies while attacking the nation’s friends, ultimately leading to the fall of the Shah of Iran and the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. As part of his promise to return to the verities of the United States’ policy of containing communism, Reagan pledged to stop using human rights to attack American allies. Yet, the effort to abandon human rights as a concern in foreign policy was quickly changed. As Søndergaard demonstrates, “within the first year, pressure from members of Congress had led Reagan and his foreign policy advisors to revise their position on human rights” (47). In making this argument, he follows the path breaking work of Sarah B. Snyder in finding that it was congressional opposition to the nomination of Ernest Lefever, an outspoken opponent of using human rights in the making of foreign policy, for the position of assistant secretary of the State Department’s Human Rights Bureau, and the ultimate rejection of Reagan’s selection, that led the administration to change course and develop a conservative human rights policy.2

The Conservative Human Rights Revolution European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention, written by Marco Duranti

The Conservative Human Rights Revolution European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention, written by Marco Duranti

Matthew Frank. Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe; Marco Duranti. The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention.

M<scp>atthew</scp> F<scp>rank</scp>. <i>Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe</i>; M<scp>arco</scp> D<scp>uranti</scp>. <i>The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention</i>.

Marco Duranti, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution. European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2017

Marco Duranti, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution. European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2017

The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention

The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention

Voorbij de laatste utopie

Abstract Beyond the Last Utopia. About the historiography of human rights Human rights is a highly contested concept in both current public debates and recent historiography. In this review essay the historiographical debate about human rights, in particular invoked by Samuel Moyn’s Last Utopia (2010), is analysed by discussing three recent monographs: Mark Bradley’s The World Reimagined (2016), Steven L.B. Jensen’s The Making of International Human Rights (2016), and Marco Duranti’s The Conservative Human Rights Revolution (2017). Although these books offer valuable insights into the much- debated ‘global breakthrough’ and chronology of human rights, their main contribution has to be located elsewhere: in ‘provincializing’ the foreign policy of the United States (Bradley), in pointing to unknown but influential actors and issues in the history of the United Nations (Jensen), and in providing a new perspective on the early days of European integration (Duranti). Based on this analysis, it is argued that human rights and their chronology should no longer be considered as a historiographical field in isolation, but that human rights must be investigated as part of broader political ideologies and practices, as a tool of marginalized countries and groups, and as a concept that enables historians better to understand relations between developments at the local and translocal level, and domestic and foreign policies.

Marco Duranti, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention

Marco Duranti, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention

Against Conservative Internationalism

Europe’s integration and its broader postwar reconstruction, some scholars now claim, were conservative projects, geared toward bolstering traditional social, cultural, and economic hierarchies. Marco Duranti’s The Conservative Human Rights Revolution is a sweeping political and institutional history that reconstructs a transnational movement of conservative politicians and thinkers, who established the European Court of Human rights (ECHR) in the aftermath of the Second World War. In Samuel Moyn’s narrative, Christian Human Rights, the postwar popularity of human rights signals the triumph of conservatism. Udi Greenberg reviews Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention by Marco Duranti and Christian Human Rights by Samuel Moyn.