Human Rights for and against Empire – Legal and Public Discourses in the Age of Decolonisation
In: Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit internationalSearch for other papers by Fabian Klose in
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Against the background of an ongoing debate about the role of human rights in the age of decolonisation this essay approaches the issue from two different angles. It concentrates on the paradoxical situation that anti-colonial movements as well as colonial powers instrumentalised international human rights documents such as the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and the European Conventions on Human Rights for achieving their political goals. In combining legal and public discourses in a significant way both sides accused each other of gross human rights violations while at the same time presenting themselves as respecting and even guaranteeing fundamental human rights. Especially during the course of the wars of decolonisation after 1945 this phenomenon became obvious in various diplomatic debates at the United Nations and made universal rights a diplomatic pawn in international debates.
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Samuel Moyn, ‘Chapter 3, Why Anticolonialism Wasn’t a Human Rights Movement’, in The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press 2010), 3, 84–119. For Jan Eckel’s essay review see: http://www.humanityjournal.org/humanity-volume-1-issue-1/human-rights-and-decolonization-new-perspectives-and-open-questions, Roland Burke’s response see: http://www.humanityjournal.net/blog/another-response-to-jan-eckel/ and my own response see: http://www.humanityjournal.net/blog/response-to-jan-eckel/. Additionally on this debate see: http://hhr.hypotheses.org/121 and http://imperialglobalexeter.com/2014/02/18/debating-human-rights-and-decolonization/.
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Dossier Algérie (1956), caom, 81 F1014. See also Dossier Algérie (1957), caom, 81 F1018.
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Mohammed Bedjaoui, ‘La révolution algérienne et le droit international humanitaire’, L’Humanitaire Maghreb 5 (2003), 24.
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91
Morris Greenspan, ‘International Law and Its Protection for Participants in Unconventional Warfare’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 341 (1962), 30–41.
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92
Richard Reeve Baxter, ‘Human Rights in War’, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 31 (1977), 4–13.
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Human Rights for and against Empire – Legal and Public Discourses in the Age of Decolonisation
In: Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit internationalSearch for other papers by Fabian Klose in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Against the background of an ongoing debate about the role of human rights in the age of decolonisation this essay approaches the issue from two different angles. It concentrates on the paradoxical situation that anti-colonial movements as well as colonial powers instrumentalised international human rights documents such as the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and the European Conventions on Human Rights for achieving their political goals. In combining legal and public discourses in a significant way both sides accused each other of gross human rights violations while at the same time presenting themselves as respecting and even guaranteeing fundamental human rights. Especially during the course of the wars of decolonisation after 1945 this phenomenon became obvious in various diplomatic debates at the United Nations and made universal rights a diplomatic pawn in international debates.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 720 | 126 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 376 | 43 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 338 | 107 | 8 |