Description
Book SynopsisIn recent years, aggrieved groups around the world have routinely portrayed themselves as victims of human rights abuses. Physically and mentally disabled people, indigenous peoples, AIDS patients, and many others have chosen to protect and promote their interests by advancing new human rights norms before the United Nations and other international bodies. Often, these claims have met strong resistance from governments and corporations. More surprisingly, even apparent allies, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other nongovernmental organizations, have voiced misgivings, arguing that rights proliferation will weaken efforts to protect their traditional concerns: civil and political rights.
Why are certain global problems recognized as human rights issues while others are not? How do local activists transform long-standing problems into universal rights claims? When and why do human rights groups, governments, and international organizations endorse new right
Trade Review
"A tremendously important book. At its core, it is much more than an assessment of the efficacy and difficulties associated with employing a rights-based approach or framework to a wide range of grievances. Rather, it is a book about the possible, a book about the individuals and organizations who have refused to be satisfied with the status quo, and who have had the courage to try to convince others to see rights violations in places where they never saw them before. From this, we should take inspiration." * H-Net *
"The International Struggle for New Human Rights moves beyond the assumption that only the most in need, oppressed, and marginalized groups have the ability to internationalize their grievances through civil society organizing. Specifically, the volume highlights groups that have recently and successfully utilized human rights framing and rhetoric to gain international support for their cause and traces the why and how of this process." * Human Rights Quarterly *
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Fighting for New Rights
—Clifford Bob
2. Orphaned Again? Children Born of Wartime Rape as a Nonissue for the Human Rights Movement
—R. Charli Carpenter
3. "Dalit Rights Are Human Rights": Untouchables, NGOs, and the Indian State
—Clifford Bob
4. Applying the Gatekeeper Model of Human Rights Activism: The U.S.-Based Movement for LGBT Rights
—Julie Mertus
5. From Resistance to Receptivity: Transforming the HIV/AIDS Crisis into a Human Rights Issue
—Jeremy Youde
6. Disability Rights and the Human Rights Mainstream: Reluctant Gate-Crashers?
—Janet E. Lord
7. New Rights for Private Wrongs: Female Genital Mutilation and Global Framing Dialogues
—Madeline Baer and Alison Brysk
8. Economic Rights and Extreme Poverty: Moving Toward Subsistence
—Daniel Chong
9. Local Claims, International Standards, and the Human Right to Water
—Paul J. Nelson
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
