Human Rights Flashcards
three paradoxes of human rights in the 20th century
rights as an empowering discourse –> creates as atomised, individualistic society
useful for decolonising states and right to self determination –> neo-colonial states and assertion of ‘western values’ on the world
human rights boom in language, legislation, campaigns and politics –> brutality, oppression and genocide of the 20th century
Early modern human rights declarations
Bill of Rights in England 1689
US Constitution 1776 and first 10 amendments 1791
Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen in France 1789
John Locke Two Treatises of Government 1689
human rights are…
‘the moral language of our times’
‘values for a godless age’
‘the only political, moral ideal that has received universal acceptance’
problematic UDHR articles Article 17 Article 18 Article 21 Article 25
17 - everyone has the right to own property (liberal western and capitalist value)
18 - right to freedom of religion
21 - everyone has the right to take part in government
25 - Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being
Lynn Hunt, 2006
argues human rights gained currency in 18th and 19th centuries because of new experiences and cultural practices which allowed imagined empathy between humans, new psychology and political order stresses that people are similar because they have similar inner feelings
new works of literature tell the internal monologues of their protagonists, such as Rousseau’s ‘Julie or the New Heloise’ in 1761, tells the stories of passion and virtue, emotional accounts of characters, encourages reader to identify with the characters and empathise across class, gender and national lines
this new emotional framework in the 18th and 19th centuries translates into politics and activism with campaigns against torture, abolition etc.
Jay Winter, 2006
argues René Cassin, one of the drafters of the UDHR, was expressly inspired by and was writing in response to the end of the Second World War
Elizabeth Borgwardt, 2005
argues human rights became significant as an extension of the American New Deal politics in the 1930s
Mark Mazower, 2012
argues the Atlantic Charter in 1941 and UDHR in 1948 meant the language of human rights came to occupy such a prominent part in international diplomacy that the new world order would be built on a commitment to the advancement of human rights
Samuel Moyn, 2010, human rights events in 1970s
argues the 1970s are the most significant era of human rights, Amnesty International founded in 1961 but does not become transnational phenomenon until 1970s, growth of solidarity movements in Eastern Europe bloc in resistance to Soviet Union
significance in international politics and geopolitical spheres such as the Helsinki Accords 1975 which include human rights meaning any future discussion between the US and USSR has to include human rights, Jimmy Carter labelled ‘human rights president’
Samuel Moyn, 2014, loss of faith in other ideologies
argues the 1970s saw a collapse of other forms of idealism and utopian thinking, for example communism falls out of favour, the capability of liberal capitalism to address problems in society collapses under pressure of economic strain, financial recession 1973-75, loss of faith in the nation state and the slow progress of decolonisation
Moyn and Jan Eckel argue that therefore human rights takes form and becomes new key moral reference point
Samuel Moyn, 2014, contrast with 1940s
far-flung geography of events is the single most striking feature of human rights in the 1970s compared to the 1940s which was concentrated in negotiations of diplomats in San Fransisco and Paris, but the 1970s is a world of decolonised grassroots agents making claims, a global community with no centre to developments
Samuel Moyn, 2014, rights as tool of state and people
in the Soviet Union ‘it was only in the 1980s that the language of human rights, which had worked for a while to stave off dissent, served dissenters as an even more powerful weapon’
previously the state was an ‘incubator for rights claims’ but in the 1970s human rights are ‘geographically dispersed in the anti-colonialist imagination’ where human rights are understood as a ‘subversive instrument against imperial rule’ as a form of liberation
first human rights intervention in 1990s
1999 NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo allegedly to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Yugoslavia, first military intervention made directly in the name of human rights
British abuses of human rights in 20th century
in Kenya 1950s British government confides 1.5 million Kenyans to detention camps
British government found guilty of huge violations fo human rights in Northern Ireland 1970s
British Anti-Apartheid Movement
active in 1970s campaigning to enforce Britain and the UN’s arms embargo against South Africa
joined with other groups to form the Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society to support political activists and prisoners facing arrest and torture, such as the campaign in 1979 to overturn the death sentence on Soloman Mahlangu, a young freedom fighter
