The International Human Rights Narrative Revisited: A Critical Appraisal of an Interplay of Law/Institution, Power and Violence

Abstract

This article examines the politics of the dominant narrative of international human rights law. It portrays the genealogy of the international human rights which, originally initiated as a response to the horrors of the West, in fact serves as a critical tool to pursue the modern form of the “civilizing mission”. The legal/positivist approach employed by mainstream scholars and policymaking elites effectively helps mask the underlying premises of the ever-growing global regime for the protection of human rights. A whole panoply of international bodies established under the regime carves the unfailing legitimacy in otherwise heavily politicized human rights endeavors. The United Nations has played a key role in constructing and preserving the global order hegemonized by the West.

As a human rights lawyer, I have no intention whatsoever to take issues with an idea that the protection of human rights is a prerequisite for global peace. Not a small hope is pinned on the workings of human rights bodies. My view, however, is that the dynamic potentiality for social reform impregnated in international human rights may not be materialized without critiquing the politics of truth so as to expose the interests maintained by the re/production of knowledge in contemporary human rights academy and practice. What counts is not unconditionally advancing faith in the regime: it should be to sincerely suspect that there is no guarantee that human rights necessarily conveys universal good.

The article proposes as an alternative a narrative away from a “gossip”(telling each other about “them”without listening to what “they”have to say), but based on a dialogue. It also proposes the deeliticization of the narrative, learning from newly emerging social movements which have been pushed aside to the invisible periphery of the dominant international human rights discourse.