International Perspectives on Human Rights

Catalog description

We are constantly reminded by current events that the assumption about Man being endowed with the unalienable rights to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" is far from self-evident for a large number of people. Humans still experience refugee crises, forced migration, war crimes, genocide, indiscriminate prison regimes, forms of contemporary slavery, torture, censorship, violation of privacy and free speech, discrimination based on individual attributes such as education, income, gender, race and disabilities in spite of two hundred and fifty years of Universal Rights discourse. Yet would we be able to identify these plights of Man in the absence of universal human rights principles? And to what extent the universalistic scope of these rights is the result of a common ground among different cultures or is a beacon of domination? This course focuses on Human Rights in principle and the current international Human Rights regime that is being criticised for its apparent ineffectiveness in handling humanitarian crisis. The course aims to familiarize the students with the mechanisms by which Human Rights emerge, are advocated, implemented, enforced, and criticised highlighting open questions as to the future of the current international Human Rights regime. The underlying ambition of the course is to provide the students with a critical framework to address Human Rights from the perspective of the Social Sciences rather than the dominant legalist frame on this topic.