Title: Human rights fifty years on : a reappraisal /
Authors: Evans, Tony, 1944-
Publisher: Manchester University Press ; Distributed exclusively in the USA by St. Martin's Press,
Year: 1998
Subjects: Human rights History
Abstract: This book offers a critical reappraisal of the project for universal human rights. The twentieth, thirtieth and fortieth anniversaries of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were all marked by the publication of volumes that celebrated achievements in the field of human rights. Many of these took a self-congratulatory line that emphasized progress on the protection of human rights, ignoring the facts of torture, genocide, structural deprivation and the routine exclusion of some groups from political, economic and social participation. This book brings together some of the leading critics of the current project for universal human rights, including Noam Chomsky and Johan Galtung, as a counterweight to triumphalist approaches on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.--Publisher description.
Contents: The United States and the challenge of relativity / Noam Chomsky -- The limits of a rights-based approach to international ethics / Fiona Robinson -- Human rights, law and democracy in an unfree world / Norman Lewis -- International law and human rights / Christine Chinkin -- Are women human / V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi -- International financial institutions and social and economic human rights / Caroline Thomas -- Human rights in a global age / Anthony G. McGrew -- The third world and human rights in the post-1989 world order / Johan Galtung.