human rights review
The thesis of this article was that reform of the human rights order around the world requires not only a liberational approach to human life but also a focus on global justice and quantifiable recompense between the North and Southern Hemispheres. The researcher mainly highlights the limitations and opportunities to create a global human rights order which fully encompasses human dignity, including all human rights ranging from socioeconomic to political rights. In his conclusion, the researcher contends that human rights practices around the world have to shift focus from the oft misused and abused human rights language, to a more inclusive yet liberational philology of human dignity.
The researcher reviewed five books to test his hypothesis. Notably, the five books were written by a historian, Renouard Joe; political theorist Gregg Benjamin; and empirically-oriented political scientists, Kinzelbach Katrin, Greenhill Brain, and Erickson Jennifer. The review of these excellent scholarly works was used to answer the question posed by the researcher when starting the research i.e., how and under what conditions can IR practitioners hope to reform human rights on a global scale? The article was divided into two functional parts. In the first part, the researcher defines human rights, the thesis, and principal arguments in each book being reviewed. In the second part, the scholar presents a summary reflection on the limitation of human rights orders around the world and puts forth suggested reforms relating to human dignity and social justice. Gregg’s book, The Human Rights State, was used by the researcher to highlight the philosophical shortcomings in our current understanding of human rights while the remaining four books accentuate the dynamic interactions of local and transnational factors influencing human rights outcomes globally. Specifically, Gregg does not believe in a universal concept of human rights but instead advocates the use of a ‘human rights state’ made up of local communities and volunteer individuals. They are then tasked with constructing the substantive elements of human rights within the specific community using dialogue. Kizenlbach reveals the counterproductive discussions that the EU is continuously engaging with China. Renouard insists that US human rights policies are governed by complex interactions involving different international actors and may be beyond the US government. Erickson contends that international arms trade does not entirely depend on social reputation. Greenhill is the only author reviewed that had an optimistic outlook by mainly highlighting the role of Intergovernmental organizations to expose abusive states using compliance pressure.
The author put forth a compelling argument as to why the understanding of human rights has to shift from rights to dignity. This is because, as highlighted in the paper, human dignity encompasses all forms of human rights policies, including economic rights, political rights, physical integrity rights, cultural rights, political rights, among numerous others. The notion of dignity will avoid the political tension between global entities that areunnecessarily brought about by the use of human rights. The researcher also wonderfully pointed out that the use of dignity will almost guarantee an identical normative value for both political and social rights, often dismissed by Asian and Persian countries and socioeconomic rights, which are perceived as less important by American and European nations. This will then shift the debate from differences in ideology to a conversation on the actual policies and structures of governance. In line with this thought, the researcher also clearly demonstrated the second part of the hypothesis which is the need to push the determination of scope and implementation of human rights to local communities. This is instead of the unconditional use of a global human rights order that is often not as meaningful to local and micro-political levels. The question asked and answered in this publication I have just reviewed is very important in today’s global politics. Human rights are always under threat with the rise of authoritarian leaders in power throughout the global north and south, and hence, it is imperative to come up with human rights order, which takes into account this change.