Making Human Rights a Reality (ebook)

Argumento de Making Human Rights a Reality (ebook)

In the last six decades, one of the most striking developments in international law is the emergence of a massive body of legal norms and procedures aimed at protecting human rights. In many countries, though, there is little relationship between international law and the actual protection of human rights on the ground. Making Human Rights a Reality takes a fresh look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.

Emilie Hafner-Burton argues that more progress is possible if human rights promoters work strategically with the group of states that have dedicated resources to human rights protection. These human rights "stewards" can focus their resources on places where the tangible benefits to human rights are greatest. Success will require setting priorities as well as engaging local stakeholders such as nongovernmental organizations and national human rights institutions.

To date, promoters of international human rights law have relied too heavily on setting universal goals and procedures and not enough on assessing what actually works and setting priorities. Hafner-Burton illustrates how, with a different strategy, human rights stewards can make international law more effective and also safeguard human rights for more of the world population.

"Making Human Rights a Reality is an important book for lawyers, political scientists, activists, and practitioners within the international human rights system. It manages to be unsentimental and committed at the same time, casting a cold eye on the present state of international human rights enforcement while offering a promising and innovative strategy for the future. In the best tradition of international law-international relations scholarship, Hafner-Burton understands and deploys both law and power."--Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University

"Hafner-Burton has developed an ambitious, thought-provoking, and sometimes controversial proposal for reforming the international monitoring mechanisms that protect the rights of individuals and groups. This book is an important contribution to the burgeoning interdisciplinary literature on international human rights law and institutions."--Laurence R. Helfer, Duke University

"Making Human Rights a Reality cogently sums up the case that the standard, dominant approach to human rights promotion is ineffective. More than any other single book, this one lays out the problems and proposes a clear, alternative, and incentive-driven strategy based on targeting carrots and sticks where they will have the greatest impact. Even those who might disagree with Hafner-Burton will profit from her diagnosis and strategic prescriptions."--Jack L. Snyder, Columbia University

"The book exemplifies exactly what I am training my doctoral students to do in their writing projects: instead of creating a research design of their own, to review existing scholarship to arrive at an empirically-informed argument relevant to policy-makers that challenges existing wisdom or weighs in constructively in a debate. . . . Hafner-Burton's call for human rights scholarship to be useful to steward states and for steward states to pay attention, resonates loud and clear."--Charli Carpenter, Duck of Minerva0Preface ix
Research xiii
Introduction xv
1 The Problem of Human Rights 1
Part I The Calculus of Abuse 19
2 Contexts 21
3 Rationales 29
Part II International Law 41
4 The International Human Rights Legal System 44
5 Scholarly Perspectives 67
6 Practitioner Perspectives 86
7 System Reform 116
Part III A Stewardship Strategy 135
8 The Status Quo 138
9 Nongovernmental Organizations 151
10 National Human Rights Institutions 164
11 Triage 176
12 Making More of Law and Power 193
Notes 199
Index 267