The Human Rights Paradox: Universality And Its Discontents

274 Pages·2014·1.147 MB·English

by  Steve J. Stern, Scott Straus

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The Human Rights Paradox
Critical Human Rights
Series Editors
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Steve J. Stern Scott Straus
Books in the series Critical Human Rights emphasize research that opens
new ways to think about and understand human rights. The series values
in particular empirically grounded and intellectually open research that
eschews simplified accounts of human rights events and processes.
Human rights are both always and never universal. Advocates assert that
fundamental rights belong to everyone, no matter who they are and regardless
of context or extenuating circumstance. Yet people can only realize their rights
by asserting them in particular places and attending to specific contexts of
struggle, alliance, and conflict. The Human Rights Paradox is the first book
to embrace fully this contradiction—and to draw out the consequences for
human rights as historical experience and origins story, as contemporary social
advocacy and mobilization, and as future horizon of emerging environmen-
tal and intergenerational rights. Through theory as well as case studies from
Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and the United States, the
authors demonstrate that the imperative of human rights is a product of rela-
tionships by social actors who entangle the global and the local so profoundly
that one domain cannot exist apart from the other.
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The Human
Rights Paradox
Universality and Its Discontents
Edited by Steve J. Stern
and Scott Straus
The University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
uwpress.wisc.edu
3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
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Copyright © 2014
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission
of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical
articles and reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The human rights paradox : universality and its discontents / edited by Steve J.
Stern and Scott Straus.
pages cm — (Critical human rights)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN978-0-299-29974-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN978-0-299-29973-6 (e-book)
1. Human rights. 2. Human rights—History. 3. Human rights advocacy.
I. Stern, Steve J., 1951–, editor of compilation. II. Straus, Scott, 1970–, editor of compilation.
III. Series: Critical human rights.
JC571.H769684 2014
323—dc23
2013027992
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Contents
introduction
Embracing Paradox: Human Rights in the Global Age 3
Steve J. Stern and Scott Straus
Part I. Who Makes Human Rights?
1 Human Rights History from the Ground Up:
The Case of East Timor 31
Geoffrey Robinson
2 Rights on Display:
Museums and Human Rights Claims 61
Bridget Conley-Zilkic
3 Civilian Agency in Times of Crisis:
Lessons from Burundi 81
Meghan Foster Lynch
Part II. Interrogating Classic Concepts
4 Consulting Survivors:
Evidence from Cambodia, Northern Uganda,
and Other Countries Affected by Mass Violence 107
Patrick Vinck and Phuong N. Pham
5 “Memoria, Verdad y Justicia”:
The Terrain of Post-Dictatorship Social Reconstruction
and the Struggle for Human Rights in Argentina 125
Noa Vaisman
v
6 The Paradoxes of Accountability:
Transitional Justice in Peru 148
Jo-Marie Burt
Part III. New Horizons
7 The Aporias of New Technologies for
Human Rights Activism 177
Fuyuki Kurasawa
8 The Human Right to Water in Rural India:
Promises and Challenges 204
Philippe Cullet
9 A Very Promising Species:
From Hobbes to the Human Right to Water 224
Richard P. Hiskes
Acknowledgments 247
Contributors 249
Index 253
vi Contents
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The Human Rights Paradox

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Introduction
Embracing Paradox
Human Rights in the
Global Age
Steve J. Stern and Scott Straus
Human rights are paradoxical. On the one hand, human
rights are transcendent. Human rights gain power and
purchase because they are said to belong to all people no matter who they are
or where they are. On the other hand, the idea of human rights conferred on
us all by virtue of being human is a convenient fiction. Humans realize their
rights only in particular places with particular instruments and with particular
protections.
Many scholars recognize elements of this paradox. One of the most con-
sistent themes in the literature on human rights is the absence of international
enforcement mechanisms. The human rights of people all over the world may
be declared or even promised in law. But the mechanisms by which to enforce
those declarations and promises are woefully weak. In the end, universal human
rights are achieved in specific states with institutions that enjoy mechanisms
to protect rights or through specific transnational networks of civil society
actors who pressure governments to change (Hafner-Burton and Tsusui 2005;
Hathaway 2002; Ignatieff2001; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Simmons 2009).
3