Preparation (45 pages):

• David Kennedy, “International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?” (2002) 15 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 101
• Fareed Zakaria & Lee Kuan Yew, “Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew” (1994) 73:2 Foreign Affairs 109-126
• “Human Rights: A Precious Tree and the Soil to Grow it in” carried by Vietnamese radio and excerpts from Quan Doi Nhan Dan
• Seyla Benhabib, “The Legitimacy of Human Rights”, (2008) Daedalus 94

Questions:

• What is the nature of the critique of human rights? Is it a hostility, an ambivalence or an agnosticism about rights?
• What should we make of the importance of culture in relation to rights? How do international human rights mediate in practice between the international and the local?
• Can you think of concrete examples where David Kennedy’s critique woud apply?
• Does it matter who makes the critique?

Further readings:

• C. Brown, “Universal human rights: a critique” (1997) 1:2 The International Journal of Human Rights 41-65
• K. Engle, “Calling in the Troops: The Uneasy Relationship among Women’s Rights, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Intervention” (2007) 20 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 189
• Hilary Charlesworth, “The Mid-Life Crisis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1998) 55 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 781
• David Kennedy. The dark sides of virtue : reassessing international humanitarianism, ed (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)
• M. Koskenniemi, “The effect of rights on political culture” in The EU and Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 1999) 99-116
• Martti Koskenniemi, “Human Rights Mainstreaming as a Strategy for Institutional Power” (2010) 1:1 Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 47-58
• Mutua, M. Human rights: A political and cultural critique (ed. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)
• J. H. H. Weiler, “Human rights, constitutionalism and integration: iconography and fetishism” (2001) 3 Int’l LFD Int’l 227

Exercise