When Might Becomes Human Right

Janne Haaland Mátlary has devoted her life to questions of ethics and politics.This preoccupation has become extraordinarily relevant to many of the issues that dominate the contemporary political agenda; particularly in Europe where the debate over relativism, human rights and majority tyranny has become a vital concern to very many of its citizens. Combining academic research with an active political life as a diplomat serving both her native Norway and the Holy See, Janne Haaland Mátlary is able to offer us profound insights into the importance of human dignity and human rights in current politics. This book is essential reading for all who are concerned with issues of rationality, law, human rights, politics and religious freedom in European democracy today. As an academic, studying political science, her work has concentrated on security and foreign policy. She makes a strong case that foundations for human rights can be found through human reason, specifically, through retrieving and reanimating the classical tradition of rationalism that was once the pride of western civilization . She builds her analysis of politics with far more promising materials than the instrumental rationality and the radically individualistic concept of the person that have prevented the human rights movement thus far from reaching its full potential. Mary Anne Glendon, Harvard University Janne Haaland Matláry is Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science of the University of Oslo, Norway, and Senior Adjunct Researcher in Security Policy at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. She was State Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Deputy Foreign Minister) of Norway 1997-2000, representing the Christian Democratic Party in the Bondevik government. Her main academic fields are the European Union and international security policy. She has published very widely and played significant roles in a number of international and consultative bodies. In April 2007 she was awarded Il Premio San Benedetto. Her biographical narrative of conversion to the Catholic Church, Faith Through Reason, is also published by Gracewing.

(unseen), $12.95. Donnelly explicates and defends an account of human rights as universal rights. Considering the competing claims of the universality, particularity, and relativity of human rights, he argues that the historical contingency and particularity of human rights is completely compatible with a conception of human rights as universal moral rights, and thus does not require the acceptance of claims of cultural relativism. The book moves between theoretical argument and historical practice. Rigorous and tightly-reasoned, material and perspectives from many disciplines are incorporated. Paper edition Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An accessible, comprehensive, and high quality companion to legal philosophy written by a stellar cast of international contributors.

"This book explores the legal, ethical, and other policy consequences of three core structural features of international human rights law: the focus on individual rights instead of duties; the division of rights into substantive and nondiscrimination categories; and the use of positive and negative right paradigms."--Book jacket.

The Global Citizenship Commission was convened, under the leadership of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the auspices of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study, to re-examine the spirit and stirring words of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The result – this volume – offers a 21st-century commentary on the original document, furthering the work of human rights and illuminating the ideal of global citizenship. What does it mean for each of us to be members of a global community? Since 1948, the Declaration has stood as a beacon and a standard for a better world. Yet the work of making its ideals real is far from over. Hideous and systemic human rights abuses continue to be perpetrated at an alarming rate around the world. Too many people, particularly those in power, are hostile to human rights or indifferent to their claims. Meanwhile, our global interdependence deepens. Bringing together world leaders and thinkers in the fields of politics, ethics, and philosophy, the Commission set out to develop a common understanding of the meaning of global citizenship – one that arises from basic human rights and empowers every individual in the world. This landmark report affirms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seeks to renew the 1948 enterprise, and the very ideal of the human family, for our day and generation.

"We are living through the endtimes of the civilizing mission. The ineffectual International Criminal Court and its disastrous first prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, along with the failure in Syria of the Responsibility to Protect are the latest pieces of evidence not of transient misfortunes but of fatal structural defects in international humanism. Whether it is the increase in deadly attacks on aid workers, the torture and 'disappearing' of al-Qaeda suspects by American officials, the flouting of international law by states such as Sri Lanka and Sudan, or the shambles of the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh, the prospect of one world under secular human rights law is receding. What seemed like a dawn is in fact a sunset. The foundations of universal liberal norms and global governance are crumbling."—from The Endtimes of Human Rights In a book that is at once passionate and provocative, Stephen Hopgood argues, against the conventional wisdom, that the idea of universal human rights has become not only ill adapted to current realities but also overambitious and unresponsive. A shift in the global balance of power away from the United States further undermines the foundations on which the global human rights regime is based. American decline exposes the contradictions, hypocrisies and weaknesses behind the attempt to enforce this regime around the world and opens the way for resurgent religious and sovereign actors to challenge human rights. Historically, Hopgood writes, universal humanist norms inspired a sense of secular religiosity among the new middle classes of a rapidly modernizing Europe. Human rights were the product of a particular worldview (Western European and Christian) and specific historical moments (humanitarianism in the nineteenth century, the aftermath of the Holocaust). They were an antidote to a troubling contradiction—the coexistence of a belief in progress with horrifying violence and growing inequality. The obsolescence of that founding purpose in the modern globalized world has, Hopgood asserts, transformed the institutions created to perform it, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and recently the International Criminal Court, into self-perpetuating structures of intermittent power and authority that mask their lack of democratic legitimacy and systematic ineffectiveness. At their best, they provide relief in extraordinary situations of great distress; otherwise they are serving up a mixture of false hope and unaccountability sustained by “human rights” as a global brand. The Endtimes of Human Rights is sure to be controversial. Hopgood makes a plea for a new understanding of where hope lies for human rights, a plea that mourns the promise but rejects the reality of universalism in favor of a less predictable encounter with the diverse realities of today’s multipolar world.

In this 2006 book, Conor Gearty confronts the challenges that may destroy the language of human rights for future generations.