Human rights

Makau Mutua

Chapter 26 in Research Handbook on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), 2025, pp 302-312 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter locates the human rights corpus, its contributions, and deficits in the vortex of the struggle for human emancipation and oppression. TWAIL sits uncomfortably with human rights, in spite of its widespread assimilation by states and cultures and veneration by thinkers across the globe. The chapter argues that many of liberalism's strengths are also its weaknesses. It excavates cleavages of disagreement and nuance about the human rights project. It does so by looking at the construction and origins of human rights, the fashioning of human rights discourses and narratives, and the uses of human rights. It takes issue with human rights normativity and questions the empirical application of human rights. It does so using the multiple lenses of TWAIL thought including geopolitics, culture, political hegemony, and power. Ultimately, it argues that human rights—a normatively and historically Eurocentric quest for human dignity—lacks the moral plateau bestowed upon it.

Keywords: Liberalism; Third World; Powerlessness; Human rights corpus; Deficits; Participation; Normative incompleteness; Political hegemony; Eurocentrism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781789901511
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