Chapter 18
Critical Perspectives
Part F: Current Topics
The preceding chapters of this book have underscored many of the major challenges faced by the international human rights regime (IHRR). Before surveying responses to those challenges, it is helpful to acknowledge that, when we talk about ‘human rights’ or even about the ‘regime’ or the ‘movement’, we are generally not focusing on the totality of the multi-faceted system, but we do not then specify exactly what it is we are talking about.
We might be referring to conceptions based on broad philosophical or religious ideas, to local culturally-derived values, to a system that falls under the rubric of human rights in national law, to the specific normative framework embodied in something we call international human rights law, to the interpretations of rights adopted by leading courts and other bodies, or to the institutional framework that has been established at the international or regional levels. This lack of specificity has been a major problem when it comes to some of the sweeping overall assessments published over the past couple of decades, which have too often focused on human rights tout court and found ‘them’ inadequate, ineffectual, problematic, counter-productive, or even destructive.