Law Commons^™

The Ideology Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua

Makau Mutua

This piece argues that although human rights is an ideology although it presents itself as non-ideological, non-partisan, and universal. It contends that the human rights corpus, taken as a whole, as a document of ideals and values, particularly the positive law of human rights, requires the construction of states to reflect the structures and values of governance that derive from Western liberalism, especially the contemporary variations of liberal democracy practiced in Western democracies. Viewed from this perspective, the human rights regime has serious and dramatic implications for questions of cultural diversity, the sovereignty of states, and the universality of human …

Savages, Victims, And Saviors: The Metaphor Of Human Rights, Makau Mutua

Makau Mutua

This article critically looks at the human rights project as a damning three-dimensional metaphor that exposes multiple complexes. It argues that the grand narrative of human rights contains a subtext which depicts an epochal contest pitting savages, on the one hand, against victims and saviors, on the other. The savages-victims-saviors (SVS) construction lays bare some of the hypocrisies of the human rights project and asks human rights thinkers and advocates to become more self-reflective. The piece questions the universality and cultural neutrality of the human rights project. It calls for the construction of a truly universal human rights corpus, one …

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

Makau Mutua

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 …