Law Commons^™

A Critique Of Rights In Transitional Justice: The African Experience, Makau Wa Mutua

Contributions to Books

Published in Rethinking Transitions: Equality and Social Justice in Societies Emerging from Conflict, Gaby Oré Aguilar & Felipe Gómez Isa, eds.

This chapter interrogates the concept and application of transitional justice as a medium for the reclamation of post-conflict states in Africa. While it argues that transitional justice is an important – often indispensable – process in reconstructing post-despotic and battered societies, it nevertheless casts a jaundiced eye at traditionalist human rights approaches. It contends that individualist, non-collective, or non-community, approaches to transitional justice have serious limitations. It posits that the Nuremberg model, on which the ICTR and ICTY were …

From Paradox To Subsidiarity: The United States And Human Rights Treaty Bodies, Tara J. Melish

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 8 in The Sword and the Scales: The United States and International Courts and Tribunals, Cesare P.R. Romano, ed.

It is frequently said that the United States has a paradoxical human rights policy. This Article takes a closer look at this vision from the perspective of U.S. engagement with international human rights treaty bodies, the quasi-adjudicatory expert committees or commissions that exercise supervisory jurisdiction over the U.S. human rights record. Contrary to popular perception that the U.S. thumbs its nose at these bodies, the U.S. in fact engages quite actively with their human rights procedures.

To untangle …

African Human Rights Organizations: Questions Of Context And Legitimacy, Makau Wa Mutua

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 13 in Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa, Gaby Oré Aguilar & Felipe Gómez Isa, eds.

The human rights movement is largely the product of the horrors of World War II. The development of its normative content and structure is the direct result of the abominations committed by the Third Reich during that war. Drawing on the Western liberal tradition, the human rights movement arose primarily to control and contain state action against the individual. It is ironic that it was the victors of the war, most of whom held colonies in Africa, …

Human Rights International Ngos: A Critical Evaluation, Makau Wa Mutua

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 7 in NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance, Claude E. Welch, Jr., ed.

The Human rights movement can be seen in a variety of guises. It can be seen as a movement for international justice or as a cultural project for “civilizing savage” cultures. In this chapter, I discuss a part of that movement as a crusade for a political project. International nongovernmental human rights organizations (INGOs), the small and elite collection of human rights groups based in the most powerful cultural and political capitals of the West, have arguably been the most influential component of …