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Translation, Power Hierarchy, And The Globalization Of The Concept “Human Rights”: Potential Contributions From Confucianism Missed By The Udhr, Sinkwan Cheng
Sinkwan Cheng
This essay strikes new paths for investigating the politics of translation and the (non-) universality of the concept of “human rights” by engaging them in a critical dialogue. Part I of my essay argues that a truly universal concept would have available linguistic equivalents in all languages. On this basis, I develop translation into a tool for disproving the claim that the concept human rights is universal. An inaccurate claim to universality could be made to look valid, however, if one culture dominates over others, and manages to impose its own concepts and exclude competitors. Part II explores how human …
African Origins Of International Law: Myth Or Reality?, Jeremy I. Levitt
African Origins Of International Law: Myth Or Reality?, Jeremy I. Levitt
Journal Publications
This Article reconsiders the prevalent ahistorical assumption that international law began with the Treaty of Westphalia. It gathers together considerable historical evidence to conclude that the ancient world, particularly the New Kingdom period in Egypt or Kemet from 1570-1070 BCE, deployed all three of what today we would call sources of international law. African states predating the modern European nation state by nearly 6000 years engaged in treaty relations (the Treaty of Kadesh), and applied rules of custom (the MA 'AT) and general principles of law (as enumerated in the Egyptian Bill of Rights). While Egyptologists and a few international …