Providing an overview of institutional developments and innovations in human rights politics, this volume discusses some of the most important current and emerging human rights issues. It takes stock of the initiatives, policy responses and innovations of past years to identify some of the challenges that will likely require bold and innovative solutions. The contributors focus on actors and/or issues that are outside the mainstream of international human rights politics; the chapters address issues that have only emerged as an important part of the international human rights agenda and generated much advocacy, diplomacy and negotiations since the end of the Cold War. These issues include: the International Criminal Court, the norm of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the proliferation of small arms and light weapons and its human rights impact, truth commissions, and the rights of persons with disabilities. The contributions offer a direct challenge to entrenched notions of state sovereignty and represent a departure from established ways of policy making.

The Sovereignty of Human Rights advances a legal theory of international human rights that defines their nature and purpose in relation to the structure and operation of international law. Professor Macklem argues that the mission of international human rights law is to mitigate adverse consequences produced by the international legal deployment of sovereignty to structure global politics into an international legal order. The book contrasts this legal conception of international human rights with moral conceptions that conceive of human rights as instruments that protect universal features of what it means to be a human being. The book also takes issue with political conceptions of international human rights that focus on the function or role that human rights plays in global political discourse. It demonstrates that human rights traditionally thought to lie at the margins of international human rights law - minority rights, indigenous rights, the right of self-determination, social rights, labor rights, and the right to development - are central to the normative architecture of the field.

This study entitled State sovereignty versus individual human rights is a critical reflection of the relationship between sovereignty and (individual) human rights especially as it related to the Rwandan genocide in which about a million people perished in only 100 days. The fact that Rwanda government conducted a genocide against its citizens and continued to enjoy the benefits of sovereign rights of independent states such as the protection from foreign interference, well knowing that peoples rights were being violated, moved me to question the legitimacy of state sovereignty of an abusive government. The purpose of this study was to find out whether the people s sovereignty has been hijacked from the Rwandans by the state, and misused as a shield to mask violations of individual rights from international scrutiny. And further determine whether state sovereignty was made an excuse for non-intervention to stop the genocide. Therefore, the study set out to accomplish the following objectives; to establish the attitudes of the citizens about their sovereignty and independence in light of the past and present governments; to assess the role of sovereignty and international response to the1994 genocide; to examine the current level of human rights observance in the country; and make recommendations. I employed a qualitative Ex-post facto study design since I was looking at the conditions that had already occurred. In such a case there is no manipulation of conditions i.e. the genocide had already occurred. So the design was deemed appropriate in as far as the descriptions of facts. The study was conducted in Kigali, which was the epicentre of the genocide. Using purposive and simple random sampling techniques, a sample of 100 respondents was selected from a study population of 1000 people comprising civil servants, government officials, church leaders, civil society leaders and locals. Using self-administered questionnaires and interview guide data was collected and responses got, were organized, tabulated, and the frequencies determined. The discussion and analysis of data collected gave the following findings; that sovereignty was not a common right in pre-genocide Rwanda and that the 1962 independence was a Hutu independence rather than Rwandan; it was found out that there was gross misuse of sovereignty by the state government, which culminated in the successive and 1994 genocide; the international community breached the 1948 Geneva Convention obligation; there is considerable observance of human rights by the current government although there are still serious human rights concerns. It was recommended that human rights education be incorporated in the education curriculum at all levels to combat cognitive dissonance among Rwandans. Secondly, that those countries that were concerned in one way or another, should account for the untold suffering that the people went through, and thirdly, that the international community (UN) should be restructured to have new standards for prompt humanitarian intervention and that state sovereignty should cease to be used as justification to shield human right abuse. And finally, it is recommended that a regional Crisis response force be established for prompt deployment to the crisis area as an African initiative. I believe these recommendations are relevant to the UN, AU, and the civilized nations in the quest to protect human rights of all peoples everywhere.

This book argues that the effectiveness of the state apparatus is one of the crucial variables determining human rights conditions, and that state weakness and failure is responsible for much of the human rights abuses we see today. Weak states are unable to control their own agents or to police abuses by private actors, resulting in less accountability and more abuse. By contrast, stronger states have greater capacities to protect human rights; even strong authoritarian states tend to have better human rights conditions than weak ones. The first two chapters of the book develop the theoretical connections between international law, sovereignty, states and rights, and the consequences of state failure for these relationships. The empirical chapters (Chapters 3-6) test the validity of these theoretical claims, employing a multi-method approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. Englehart uses case studies of Afghanistan, Burma/Myanmar and the Indian state of Bihar to analyze types and patterns of state failure, based on analysis of NGO reports, archival research, primary and secondary texts, and interviews and field research. Examining what happens to human rights when states fail, the book concludes with implications for scholars and activists concerned with human rights. This book will be of great use to scholars of international relations, comparative politics, human rights law and state sovereignty.

Looking at two of the key paradigms of the post-Cold War era–national sovereignty, and human rights – this book examines the possibilities for their reconciliation from a global perspective. The real or imagined fear of a flood of immigrants has caused and fuelled the surge of an amalgam of populist political forces, anti-immigrant movements, and exclusionist nationalism in many developed countries. In the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of two phenomena in the political and legal spheres. On the one hand, there are liberal globalists asking for respect and the protection of the basic human rights of migrants and asylum seekers and arguing for their civic and social integration into host societies. On the other hand, there are growing calls for a tougher stance on immigration, and powerful populist politicians and governments have emerged in many developed countries. How can the idea of universal human rights survive exclusionist nationalism that uses a populist, unscrupulous approach to its advantage? The contributors to this book explore the meaning of, and possible solutions to, this dilemma using a wide range of approaches and seek appropriate ways of dealing with these normative predicaments shared by many developed societies. Scholars and students of human rights, migration, nationalism and multiculturalism will find this a very valuable resource.

The SAGE Handbook of Human Rights will comprise a two volume set consisting of more than 50 original chapters that clarify and analyze human rights issues of both contemporary and future importance. The Handbook will take an inter-disciplinary approach, combining work in such traditional fields as law, political science and philosophy with such non-traditional subjects as climate change, demography, economics, geography, urban studies, mass communication, and business and marketing. In addition, one of the aspects of mainstreaming is the manner in which human rights has come to play a prominent role in popular culture, and there will be a section on human rights in art, film, music and literature. Not only will the Handbook provide a state of the art analysis of the discipline that addresses the history and development of human rights standards and its movements, mechanisms and institutions, but it will seek to go beyond this and produce a book that will help lead to prospective thinking.

What are the limits of human rights, and what do these limits mean? This volume engages critically and constructively with this question to provide a distinct contribution to the contemporary discussion on human rights. Fassbender and Traisbach, along with a group of leading experts in the field, examine the issue from multiple disciplinary perspectives, analysing the limits of our current discourse of human rights. It does so in an original way, and without attempting to deconstruct, or deny, human rights. Each contribution is supplemented by an engaging comment which furthers this important discussion. This combination of perspectives paves the way for further thought for scholars, practitioners, students, and the wider public. Ultimately, this volume provides an exceptionally rich spectrum of viewpoints and arguments across disciplines to offer fresh insights into human rights and its limitations.

Sovereignty, Knowledge, Law investigates the notion of sovereignty from three different, but related perspectives: as a legal question in relation to the sovereign state, as a political question in relation to sovereign power, and as a metaphysical question in relation to sovereign self-knowledge. The varied and interchangeable uses of legal sovereignty, political sovereignty and metaphysical sovereignty in contemporary debates have resulted in a situation where the word ‘sovereignty’ itself has become something of a non-concept. Panu Minkkinen shows here how these three perspectives have informed one another, by addressing their shared relationship to law, and to the ‘autocephalous’ function of sovereignty; that is, the attempt to provide a single source and foundation for law, power, and self-knowledge. Through an effort to domesticate the intrinsically ‘heterocephalous’ nature of power, the juridical and jurisprudential aim has been to confine power within the closed vertical hierarchy of traditional legal thinking. Sovereignty, Knowledge, Law thus elaborates this heterocephaly, proposing new understandings of sovereignty, as well as of law and of legal scholarship.

At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals. In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights--generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices--are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies. Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that 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 reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.

Sovereignty as Value is one of the first books to examine sovereignty using solely a normative approach. Through fourteen original essays, the book seeks to understand its viability in a globalized world, thus taking into account the inclusion of a language of rights, limitation and legitimacy. The authors’ focus is on whether sovereignty as a normative concept might be understood as a criterion of legitimate power and authority; as a foundational concept of public ethics applied to political and legal institutions. How should notions of legitimacy be linked with the notion of sovereignty? In what manner is sovereignty challenged by territoriality and territorial control? How does sovereignty relate to political legitimacy? Are all the forms of sovereign authority legitimate? Does the project of advancing human rights globally conflict with the logic of exclusion inherent in the classic notion of national sovereignty? These are some of the questions that will be assessed in this collective volume.