The Future of Human Rights

This extensively revised and updated edition critically re-examines the contemporary discourses on the nature of ‘human rights’, their histories, and the myths that are embedded in them. It contributes an alternative reading of those histories by placing the concerns and interests of the ‘people in struggle and communities of resistance’ at center stage. The author’s abiding concern is the cold reality that despite the last century being justly described as the century of human rights, the ‘rightless and suffering peoples’ still remain; he thus analyses the gulf between the actuality and possibilities for the future. He goes on to examine the significance of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Further, he studies the more contemporary issues such as women’s struggle to feminize the understanding and practice of human rights, the post-modernist critique of the universal idion of human rights and, most pertinently for the current world scene, the impact of globalization on the human rights movement. the discussion provides a wide-ranging overview of scholarly work on the subject of human rights from Europe and America, as well as from Asia and Africa. The new edition includes a discussion of the proposed United nations norms regarding the human rights responsibilities of multinational corporations and other business entities. This volume is essential reading for scholars and students of human rights and law, political science, policymakers, activists, and NGOs.