Book description
In recent years, aggrieved groups around the world have routinely
portrayed themselves as victims of human rights abuses. Physically and
mentally disabled people, indigenous peoples, AIDS patients, and many
others have chosen to protect and promote their interests by advancing
new human rights norms before the United Nations and other
international bodies. Often, these claims have met strong resistance
from governments and corporations. More surprisingly, even apparent
allies, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other
nongovernmental organizations, have voiced misgivings, arguing that
rights "proliferation" will weaken efforts to protect their
traditional concerns: civil and political rights.
Why are certain global problems recognized as human rights
issues while others are not? How do local activists transform
long-standing problems into universal rights claims? When and why do
human rights groups, governments, and international organizations
endorse new rights? The International Struggle for New Human
Rights is the first book to address these issues.
Focusing on activists who advance new rights, the book
introduces a framework for understanding critical strategies and
conflicts involved in the struggle to persuade the human rights
movement to move beyond traditional problems and embrace pressing new ones.
Essays in the volume consider rights activism by such groups as
the South Asian Dalits, sexual minorities, and children of wartime
rape victims, while others explore new issues such as health rights,
economic rights, and the right to water. Examining both the successes
and failures of such campaigns, The International Struggle for New
Human Rights will be a key resource not only for scholars but
also for those on the front lines of human rights work.
"The International Struggle for New Human Rights moves
beyond the assumption that only the most in need, oppressed, and
marginalized groups have the ability to internationalize their
grievances through civil society organizing. Specifically, the volume
highlights groups that have recently and successfully utilized human
rights framing and rhetoric to gain international support for their
cause and traces the why and how of this process."-Human
Rights Quarterly
Clifford Bob is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duquesne
University and is the author of The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents,
Media, and International Activism.
