Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’
- Introduction
- 1 Order, Rights and Threats: Terrorism and Global Justice
- 2 Liberal Security
- 3 The Human Rights Case for the War in Iraq: A Consequentialist View
- 4 Human Rights as an Ethics of Power
- 5 How Not to Promote Democracy and Human Rights
- 6 War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention
- 7 The Tension between Combating Terrorism and Protecting Civil Liberties
- 8 Fair Trials for Terrorists?
- 9 Nationalizing the Local: Comparative Notes on the Recent Restructuring of Political Space
- 10 The Impact of Counter Terror on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: A Global Perspective
- 11 Human Rights: A Descending Spiral
- 12 Eight Fallacies About Liberty and Security
- 13 Our Privacy, Ourselves in the Age of Technological Intrusions
- 14 Are Human Rights Universal in an Age of Terrorism?
- 15 Connecting Human Rights, Human Development, and Human Security
- 16 Human Rights and Civil Society in a New Age of American Exceptionalism
- Index
- References
4 - Human Rights as an Ethics of Power
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2009
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’
- Introduction
- 1 Order, Rights and Threats: Terrorism and Global Justice
- 2 Liberal Security
- 3 The Human Rights Case for the War in Iraq: A Consequentialist View
- 4 Human Rights as an Ethics of Power
- 5 How Not to Promote Democracy and Human Rights
- 6 War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention
- 7 The Tension between Combating Terrorism and Protecting Civil Liberties
- 8 Fair Trials for Terrorists?
- 9 Nationalizing the Local: Comparative Notes on the Recent Restructuring of Political Space
- 10 The Impact of Counter Terror on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: A Global Perspective
- 11 Human Rights: A Descending Spiral
- 12 Eight Fallacies About Liberty and Security
- 13 Our Privacy, Ourselves in the Age of Technological Intrusions
- 14 Are Human Rights Universal in an Age of Terrorism?
- 15 Connecting Human Rights, Human Development, and Human Security
- 16 Human Rights and Civil Society in a New Age of American Exceptionalism
- Index
- References
Summary
From the time of their association with natural rights in eighteenth-century America and France to their encoding by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the idea and practice of human rights have possessed constitutively ambiguous and paradoxical – if not contradictory – political features. On the one hand, they would constrain the actions of institutional political actors within a universal ethical framework that coincides with international law. In this vein, they presumptively operate outside of both domestic and international politics. On the other hand, the actualization of human rights amounts to a comprehensive moral charge for social change, which requires political action by individuals and institutions. This suggests that human rights can be powerful and legitimate but only when they are enforced by an invisible hand – a political deux ex machina. In other words, the practical integrity of human rights depends on their being simultaneously political and non-political, a sign of immutable morality and a practical tool of particular political actors.
This constitutive political ambiguity of human rights has belonged to the discourse of human rights since its origins, but only recently has “human rights” factored seriously in the justification of political action by powerful states. Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the emergence of the European Union as a political actor, and the consolidation of the global hegemony of the United States – the discourse of human rights has become dramatically more significant in the language of international relations and the politics of states.
- Type
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- Information
- Human Rights in the 'War on Terror' , pp. 108 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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