The International Human Rights Movement Today
Maryland Journal of International Law, Vol. 24, p. 56, 2009
Posted: 8 Mar 2012
Date Written: 2009
Abstract
I begin by asking: is there such a thing as an International Human Rights Movement? I would like to raise that as an issue that we need to address, whether there is one movement or multiple movements within the human rights tradition, and whether there are in fact movements that might be part of the human rights tradition but nevertheless do not use or rely on the discourse of international human rights. In other words, diversity and contradiction within the Human Rights Movement is a theme that I think we need to focus on and problematize. And we should also start by recognizing that "international human rights" is a language, a language of both power and resistance. It is a language of hegemony and counter-hegemony, and we need to recognize the multiple uses to which it is put and the fact that it is a terrain of contestation, as I have argued before, for multiple deployments of both power and resistance.
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