Human Rights Studies

Big Swedish encyclopedia

This monograph critically examines the contemporary discourses on the nature of 'human rights', their histories, the myths that are embedded in them, and contributes an alternative reading of those histories by placing the concerns and interests of the 'people in struggle and communities of resistance' at centre stage. It examines the cold reality that despite the last century being justly being describe as the century of human rights, the 'rightless and suffering peoples' still remain; it analyzes the gulf between the actuality and possibilities for the future. It analyzes the significance of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and goes on to study 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 idiom of human rights and, most pertinently for the current world scene, it analyzes the impact of globalization on the human rights movement.

In this book feminist scholars from a range of areas including international law, rights, citizenship, queer theory, constitutional law and migration studies bring fresh perspectives to gender and human rights. By relating women's international human rights to broader debates about feminism, rights and international society, this collection of essays both provides a sophisticated introduction to gender and human rights and offers a variety of fresh theoretical perspectives and methods.