Liberal Human Rights Research Articles

From Weapon of War to Tactic of Terrorism – Dangerous New Ground in the Fight Against ConflictRelated Sexual Violence and Human Trafficking

In recent years, the term 'tactic of terrorism' has increasingly been used to describe conflict-related sexual violence and human trafficking by non-state armed groups. This framing has complemented (and at times replaced) the longstanding recognition of 'rape as a weapon of war' including at the UN Security Council. This association with terrorism has tactical advantages but also poses wider risks for the realization of human rights. On the one hand, it has the potential to engage counter-terrorism powers and resources to prosecute perpetrators and prompt reparations. However, it also risks legitimizing harmful counter-terror measures and obscuring a more comprehensive understanding of the gendered harms associated with conflict and terrorism. With particular reference to the conflicts involving Boko Haram and Islamic State, this article weighs the advantages and costs of framing sexual violence and human trafficking as a 'tactic of terrorism' in order to inform and warn feminist human rights advocates.

The Missing Coke Bottle

Indonesian artist activist Arahmaiani’s art installations and performances combine western and non-western cultural elements in such a way as to highlight the role of capitalist globalization as an exploitative and destructive neo-colonial force in places like Indonesia. Beginning in the 1990s, Arahmaiani’s work featured a Coca-Cola bottle in a prominent position, emphasizing the effects of commodification and Americanization on indigenous and non-western cultures. Her work is always intersectional, connecting injustices linked to patriarchy, class, and environmental destruction to global political and economic structures in ways not typical of western liberal human rights discourses, such as that demonstrated by academic Lucinda Peach in her own human rights critique. Arahmaiani’s work thus serves as a stark contrast to western liberal human rights discourse that urges academics and activists to redirect their gaze away from the cultural idiosyncrasies of non-western nations towards the western roots of global structures of inequality.

Philosophical racism and ubuntu: In dialogue with Mogobe Ramose

This article discusses two complementary themes that play an important role in contemporary South African political philosophy: (1) the racist tradition in Western philosophy; and (2) the role of ubuntu in regaining an authentic African identity, which was systematically suppressed during the colonial past and apartheid. These are also leading themes in Mogobe Ramose’s African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. The first part concentrates on John Locke. It discusses the thesis that the reprehensible racism of many founders of liberal political philosophy has lethally infected liberal theory. This view neglects the distinction between genesis and justification. Political liberalism has since cleansed itself of the prejudices of its spiritual ancestors. Liberal human rights exclude racism as a matter of principle. The second part discusses the claim that the ubuntu philosophy provides a better basis for a constitution in a modern society than political liberalism. A major problem is that ubuntu is an essentially contested concept. Some philosophers consider ubuntu to be a moribund notion (Matolino); others see it as a vital concept par excellence. In the latter case, it is elaborated from sundry incompatible political views, ranging from African nationalism (Ramose) via humanist communitarianism (Metz) to liberalism (Mboti). Conclusion: as an essentially contested ideological concept, ubuntu should not be a decisive constitutional standard for the application of state force. In contrast, the constitutional model of political liberalism provides a reasonable alternative, as it is designed precisely to solve the problem of social plurality and ideological contest.

“Fake Gays” In Queer Africa

Drawing on work with a Malawian LGBTI-rights nongovernmental organization (NGO), this article’s entry point is the “fake gay,” a person who, according to state political discourse and news media, allegedly fakes a marginalized sexual identity to gain access to foreign resources channeled through NGOs. For LGBTI-identified persons in the NGO’s orbit, meanwhile, fake gays—infiltrating inauthentic gays—breed fear and resentment amid circuits of scarce resource distribution and homophobia. This mythologized figure, rooted in racialized arbitrations of fake or real, sincere or cunning, reveals NGOs, dismissed in critical scholarship as “unqueer”—for spreading homonationalism, sapping radical agendas by institutionalizing liberal human rights frameworks, and smuggling in Euro-American logics of sexual modernity—to be unlikely sites of queer complexity. Reading NGO spaces as customary forms and drawing on discourse analysis and ethnographic vignettes, the author shows how ritualized practices associated with audit culture in aid economies (monitoring and evaluation, paperwork, counting) operate as queer sites of multiplying possibilities and emergences. Rather than expose faking as duplicity or insincerity, the author argues that faking and normalizing practices rooted in logics of standardization, quantification, and replicability are co-constitutive. In addition to proposing the fake gay as a mode of theory that draws attention to (queer) world-making practices within postcolonial aid geographies, this article broadens understandings of the (queer) customary beyond narrowly defined cultural practices such as customs, rituals, and traditions.

Security and Human Rights: Finding a Language of Resilience and Inclusion

This is the introduction to the second edition of Security and Human Rights (Hart Publishing 2019). When the first edition of this collection was published in 2007, many scholars were struggling with the question of whether it is possible to reconcile a commitment to human rights with the demands of security in a post-9/11 world. More than a decade later, this fundamental tension remains at the heart of many discussions about the relationship between security and human rights. But in the years that have passed since the first edition, we have also seen the re-emergence of nationalism and xenophobia, a hardening of attitudes towards migrants, and a dramatic increase in Islamophobia in populist security discourse. Combined, these trends mean that the liberal order underpinning the international human rights framework since World War II is now under threat. Two shifts may be necessary in order to reinvigorate an effective defence of rights in the face of security mandates. First, defenders of human rights must directly and critically engage with emotive claims of insecurity and unrealistic promises of security. Rather than reacting with similarly reductive narratives, we should seek to develop a discourse of sober resilience – one that provides a serious account of the risks to security while acknowledging both the inherent constraints on democratic states in achieving security and the wider security benefits to be gained from protecting rights. Ultimately, this narrative will need to build on a recognition, even a celebration, of the risk that comes with a free society. The second, related shift involves meaningful acknowledgment of the role that liberalism has played in the historical and continued oppression of vulnerable groups. By addressing the ways in which the law in supposedly liberal democracies has been co-opted in the name of security, we help to lay bare flaws in the individualistic liberal vision of rights and the disconnect between abstract claims of universality and lived experiences on the ground. This process of exposure should not be seen as a step towards the abandonment of the liberal human rights project but rather as part of an attempt to revive it and make it relevant to those who have borne the ‘costs of security’.

The externalization of Australian refugee policy and the costs for queer asylum seekers and refugees

ABSTRACTThis article argues that Australia’s increasingly externalized refugee policy harms queer asylum seekers and refugees. Australia’s refugee and foreign policies perpetuate colonial and homophobic relations with states such as Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Nauru to meet Australia’s border security priorities. The lack of recognition of queer people in Australia’s foreign policy and the harm caused by its regional refugee policies represent a clear contradiction to Australia’s claimed liberal human rights diplomatic position.

Couples Who Disobeyed the Caste-Like Marital Prohibitions in Israel

This article uses a feminist human rights approach and focusses on one of the most painful experiences in intimate relationships, unveiling a hitherto unexplored type of human rights infringement for divorced women, namely the right to establish a family in Israel, purported to be a democratic state. This phenomenon is based on religious marriage rules and prohibitions that include, inter alia, the classification of Jews into 10 hierarchical pedigrees, which are partially equivalent to Indian castes. Owing to this caste-like classification, thousands of couples are proscribed from marrying each other every year in Israel. This article focusses on couples that disobeyed the prohibitions on couples consisting of male Cohanim (descendants of Jewish priests) and divorced women, as one type of forbidden marriage. Four themes emerged from data analysis of narratives of 26 interviewees, which converge to a common motif of the liminality of Cohen-divorcee couples. The article argues that this liminality undermines the basic rationale of the prevailing millet (personal law) system and discusses the implications of this liminality for women’s human rights and religion-state relations.

(Re)imagining Mandela's Leadership esiXhoseni

Much public discourse positions Nelson Mandela as a global figure who embraced Western English ideals characterised by liberal human rights and heroic individual leadership. This paper challenges that decontextualised presentation of Mandela by locating him esiXhoseni, which is his ancestral, linguistic, geographic and epistemic locality. Pulling Mandela's leadership traits into his indigenous traditions and origins provides an opportunity to (re)imagine the philosophical and moral tools he utilised to form his personal and social sensibilities in the execution of his political responsibilities as an African freedom fighter and statesman. This study also contextualises how Mandela utilised isiXhosa as an African leadership philosophy in the struggle for social justice across his personal and political life. If we are to properly comprehend the primary influences that shaped the ontological canons of Southern African liberation struggle figures, then we must labour to understand how their local and indigenous African languages constructed their political consciousness, principles, ethics, ideals, moral codes and leadership qualities.

Balloon warriors for North Korean human rights activism: a critique of North Korean defector-activists’ post-humanitarianism

ABSTRACTWhile the identity politics of North Korean defector-activists at home and abroad is revealed by unraveling the discursive complexity of their activism, little attention has been paid to the way in which that activism compromises the discursive dynamic of the defector community desiring to contest the power of a ruling paradigm within political culture. A critical analysis of North Korean defector balloon warriors who have crusaded against the North Korea regime through airborne leaflet drops at the South–North Korea border illustrates how their uncritical and unquestioned acceptance of liberal human rights can only leave the defector community vulnerable to charges of being politically-futile disparate citizens. The invocations of transnational liberal hegemonic norms obscure and undermine North Korean defectors’ agency of collective engagement in acts of liberal democratic citizenship. Understanding the propagandistic dimension of their dissenting voices can help expand the scope of analysis of liberal democratic posthumanitarian citizenship.

Western Liberal Democracy: The Struggle of Muslims for Freedom, Equality and Dignity

The increasingly multicultural fabric of Western liberal democracies has given rise to the issue of the presence of Muslim minorities in the West, as rising hatred and hostility toward Islam and Muslims in the West undermine the three guiding principles of freedom, equality and dignity that underpin the foundation of liberal democracy, human rights and multiculturalism. Today, Muslims in the West struggle for freedom, equality and dignity to ensure their ethnocultural survival and full and equal participation within the mainstream society. Therefore, it would be quite correct to say that the endurance of liberal democracy, human rights and multiculturalism built on the Western civilization depends on the eradication of Western Islamophobia.

Human Rights: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges

Human RightsProgress, Opportunities, and Challenges Nicole Bibbins Sedaca (bio) and Kerry Kennedy (bio) A century ago, as the world sought to recover from the destruction of the First World War, leaders began to deliberate how the global community would address myriad complex issues, including human rights. There was a recognition of the scourge of human rights abuses but only a nascent understanding of what protection might mean. Rightfully, many asked what human rights are, who defines them, and who protects them. Now, in 2019, the definition has long been codified—albeit still regularly debated. The last century has seen tremendous progress in four areas: establishing norms, creating mechanisms, increasing the type and quantity of actors in this arena, and shaping the global order. Yet significant challenges remain. Mass atrocities continue worldwide, in places like South Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar. Women face abuse of the most fundamental rights on a daily basis. People are bought and sold into slavery in every corner of the world. And the debate about how—or even whether—to address abuses of human rights remains. A reflection on how and where progress was made sheds some light on new opportunities to consolidate and build on these gains. In 1918 the world stood aghast at the bloodshed and loss of life following what was then called "the Great War." The signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 would not only officially end the war, but begin the codification of global norms around key human rights. With the creation of the League of Nations one year later, global leaders sought support for a body that would build global order and peace, promote "fair and humane conditions of (labor) for men, women and children," and empower the League and subsequent organizations to take action in a number of areas, including labor rights and human trafficking.1 Despite these efforts, these organizations failed to prevent the massive and unfathomable human rights violations and atrocities committed before and during the Second World War. This war forced further reckoning [End Page 16] with fundamental human rights and restraint of the state. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill's 1941 Atlantic Charter articulated not only the two countries' shared war aims, but also, importantly, the countries' clear support for the inherent rights that were being deprived to people globally.2 It was an articulation of British and American commitment not only to the values at home, but also to a desire for these rights to be extended globally. As the war concluded and the world began to comprehend the immensity of the mass atrocities and genocide that had unfolded, global leaders gathered in New York to begin a conversation that was deeply infused with the recognition of the importance of human rights. The founding Charter3 of the newly created United Nations opened with a clarion call for global human rights.4 With the UN Charter and—subsequently and notably—the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a global standard for how to define human rights was set. It was not crafted by all nations, or captured in a binding document, but nonetheless the monumental step toward crafting a global standard was taken. And at the same time, the tension between human rights protection as a global mandate and the respect of national sovereignty as a nation-based right was also deepened. The creation of the Universal Declaration paved the way for several significant developments that would characterize the next seven decades of human rights efforts. Norm-Setting and the International Human Rights Infrastructure The Universal Declaration was just the beginning of what would be a proliferation of human rights–related international documents and provided a comprehensive blueprint for which rights should be recognized and protected. Equally important, it linked inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all people to "the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world" and pledged that the General Assembly shall "strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories...

Human rights: Early days or coming to an end?

The speech addresses how human rights are being challenged and to what extent we are witnessing the end times of human rights. Neo-liberalism and populism coming from different corners converge and contribute to the erosion of human rights as well as rule of law institutions. Attempts to link human rights to one or the other economic theory contribute to lifting human rights away from their status of being universal. Human rights are not there to substitute ideological systems, instead it is a far more limited project. In the latter part of the speech new bottom-up trends pulling in the opposite direction are highlighted. As an outcome of the financial crisis and the growing inequality, a stronger awareness has emerged globally about the negative consequences of corruption and tax evasion on human rights and democratic institutions. Human rights are regaining a momentum and credibility in that space. This is closely linked to the new human rights city movement, where local communities take greater responsibility in realizing human rights for their citizens. Finally, in this part the mainstreaming of human rights in laws and political strategies is addressed together with the concept human rights by design. The speech ends on a forward-looking note recognizing the immense challenges that confronts the liberal democracy and human rights currently, however, also recognizing the depth of human rights in most communities.

Legalisation of Euthanasia in Finland: Via a Citizens’ Initiative?

Abstract This article combines two legal and ethical questions: a) the new Finnish method of citizens’ democratic participation (the citizens’ initiative), and b) the complex and controversial question of euthanasia. Both are currently pertinent questions in Finland. The citizens’ initiative institution is a success, especially for liberal people and human rights organisations in promoting issues which coalition governments are not ready to submit to the Parliament of Finland. The euthanasia question meets these requirements and the citizens’ initiative on euthanasia (KAA 2/2017) in principle has a good chance of succeeding in the Parliament, but the result is unpredictable. Many members of the Parliament have not yet decided their attitude to euthanasia, which is a more complicated issue than, say, same-sex marriage.

The Marrakesh Declaration on Rights of Religious Minorities: Opportunity or Dead End?

ABSTRACTThe article examines critically the Marrakesh Declaration on Rights of Religious Minorities, issued by 250 Islamic scholars and leaders in January 2016, and hailed as an important step towards Islamic recognition of rights for minorities in the Middle East. Although the declaration falls short of the ideals of the international liberal human rights discourse, it may move Islamic theological discourse towards greater recognition of equal rights for all through the promotion of the concept of citizenship. The author situates the declaration within a broader ecology of declarations and conferences through which Islamic theologians have sought to reduce tensions between religious groups, all of which has been met with expectations, and most of which have fizzled out with few tangible fruits. The article suggests that despite the absence of concrete results in the fields of law and politics, such initiatives may have a positive impact on how differences are represented discursively and therefore on implementation of rights on the ground. However, such results, too, come with certain costs, not least that of potentially entrenching traditional Islamic modes of theologising and stifling other voices. In addition, declaration fatigue may undermine a message that otherwise could strengthen the freedom of religion or belief.

Rethinking the International Order—Towards the Zeroth Generation of Human Rights

This article revisits the idea of ‘generations’ of human rights at the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration (UDHR) and 25th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration, in a new ‘post-human’ context. The basic assumptions underpinning human rights are compromised when the subject of rights is re-shaped by the ‘stark utopia’ of market globalisation. Current critiques of liberal human rights coincide with the potential collapse of the ‘floor’ of basic assumptions underpinning human rights universalism. Repeated retrogressions of human rights laws, norms and values make ambitions for a progressive realisation of rights seem unachievable when even basic standards are compromised. A post-human imaginary frames the argument for recovering the principle of humanity. The technology-humanity nexus is explored, going beyond the application of science and technology to human rights to view law and human rights as enabling, human-centred social technologies in themselves. The concept of a zeroth generation of human rights adapts the fictional zeroth Law of Robotics to the predicament of human rights in post-human times.

The “Quebec Values” Debate of 2013: Minority vs. Collective Rights

This article investigates the debate in the province of Quebec, Canada in 2013 over the Charter of Quebec Values introduced by the separatist ruling party, the Parti Quebecois. It relies in particular on government documents, debates in Quebec’s National Assembly, and editorials in the French-language press. It relates the Charter to the preceding Bouchard-Taylor Commission Report in 2008 on accommodation by public bodies of particular religious requests. The debates concerned the right to manifest one’s religion, the rights of (particularly Muslim) women, and the rights of the collectivity as opposed to the minority. Part of the debate was about Quebec’s particular policy of interculturalism, as opposed to Canada’s policy of multiculturalism. The article concludes by advocating multiculturalism grounded in liberal human rights over coercive integration of minority groups into the pre-existent collectivity.

Rethinking the International Order—Towards the Zeroth Generation of Human Rights

This article revisits the idea of ‘generations’ of human rights at the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration (UDHR) and 25th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration, in a new ‘post-human’ context. The basic assumptions underpinning human rights are compromised when the subject of rights is re-shaped by the ‘stark utopia’ of market globalisation. Current critiques of liberal human rights coincide with the potential collapse of the ‘floor’ of basic assumptions underpinning human rights universalism. Repeated retrogressions of human rights laws, norms and values make ambitions for a progressive realisation of rights seem unachievable when even basic standards are compromised. A post-human imaginary frames the argument for recovering the principle of humanity. The technology-humanity nexus is explored, going beyond the application of science and technology to human rights to view law and human rights as enabling, human-centred social technologies in themselves. The concept of a zeroth generation of human rights adapts the fictional zeroth Law of Robotics to the predicament of human rights in post-human times.

From Citizen to Cytizen. How to Escape from Cyberstates?

The Modern Western state is characterized by unmediated individual access to wellness, health, safety and liberal human rights. The Newtonian conception of space and time makes formal room for a discursive public area with the citizen and the public institutes in the margin, while participation and ethical responsibility is a prejudice of good citizenship. It is a necessary condition of consistency and coherence of the nation. To date, global migration and multiculturalism threaten those necessary basic conditions of Western states´ political equilibrium. To challenge the actual global phenomena national states transform into virtual places of fear dominated by cybernetics, digital bureaucracy while citizen’s identity is mirrored by the efficiency and unisexual beauty ideal of cyborgs. The substantive conception of technology is government’s tool box to realize the cyberstate while citizen reduce to “cytizen”.In order to escape from this global grey, we propose a different conception of space and time namely the Leibnizian conception of pluralistic independent participating worlds. Moreover, we modify Leopold’s Land-Ethics by introducing the transpersonal identification claim of Warwick Fox inside the common Land so-called eco-homeland while the care for the foreigner serves as paradigmatic core attitude to all participants of the eco-homeland. So we constitute a common eco-refuge, similar to the ideas of Bookchin´s eco- anarchistic ideas but avoiding his dialectic ideal conception of the Land and its participants.

Empathetic trappings: Revisiting the nineteenth century in Octavia Butler's Kindred

ABSTRACTOctavia Butler's 1979 novel, Kindred, is a postmodern slave narrative that redefines the previous literary constructions of slavery in the United States. Through its rejection of the nineteenth century slave narrative and sentimental novel, Kindred highlights the main problem with nineteenth century narrative empathy: Forging an intimate identification between reader and character to enact empathy is founded through the representation of bodies in pain. In place of this identification tactic, Kindred reveals a new critical apparatus, essential for a mobilization of empathy centered on understanding both history and the process of historical recuperation. This investigation of empathy sheds light on the problematic construction of the early liberal human rights model across the Americas, a model centered on promoting identification with the suffering other.

Human Rights and Domination

At the turn of the new millennium, a new phenomenon has emerged: conservatives who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture began to embrace human rights in order to advance their own political goals. This accounts for how human rights - generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices - are being deployed to subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, the article describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians. We outline the increasing convergences between liberal human rights NGOs, militaries, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how radically different political actors champion the dissemination of human rights while mirroring each other’s political strategies. We demonstrate the multifaceted role this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other they have become a tool for enhancing domination.