Religion and International Relations Theory: The Case of “New” Historiography of Human Rights

International relations theory (IRT) often ignores or has difficulty accounting for religion. Thus, the choice of “new” historians of human rights to focus on religious actors in the lead-up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a noteworthy development. One important finding of this stream of scholarship is the crucial role played by Christian personalists in the cultivation of “human rights” discourse in the 1930s and 1940s. However, new school historiography carries assumptions consistent with IRT liberalism that weaken its analysis of religion in the origins of human rights. Most problematic is its dichotomous framework that pits liberal secularism against reactionary religion, which tends to minimize interpretive possibilities. By contrast, IRT constructivism is attuned to the emergence and socialization of norms as different cultures, religious traditions, and value systems interact. Various actors and social networks create, inter-subjectively, pragmatic consensus from positions of fundamental ideological difference. As such, this paper, following a constructivist impulse, uses the case of new school historiography of human rights to better understand the weakness and the promise of IRT in explaining the role of religion in international relations.

The Challenge of Taliban Ideology for International Politics: Religious Competition, Counterterrorism, and the Search for Legitimacy

This paper examines the Taliban vision of an Islamic polity posing a challenge to neighboring Central and South Asian states as well as more distant ones in Eurasia and the Middle East. As a potential magnet for militants across these regions, Taliban Islam represents an alternative to forms of piety and legal practice in states that have signifi cant Muslim populations and where each government claims some degree of religious legitimation and control over Islamic authority and interpretation. Author claims the Taliban ideology poses a dilemma to regional actors, too, in that it makes all parties who might cooperate with the movement vulnerable to criticism based on human rights discourse. At the same time, the presence of the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP) has permitted the movement the opportunity to seek to reframe its international standing and its relationship to violence. The Taliban have adapted their critique of ISKP to the claim that they share a counterterrorism mission with other governments, an assertion that allows the movement and its partners to defl ect criticism from various quarters and normalize relations with other states. Author concludes that, seeking international support, the Taliban have adapted their ideological claims to position the movement simultaneously as a competitor to other visions of militant jihadist politics and as a counterterrorist force laying the groundwork for the legitimation of their place in a rapidly evolving global order.

THE SOCIAL REALITY OF THE WOMAN CHARACTER IN THE SHORT STORY “KA-MANAKAH TERBANGNYA SI BURONG SENJA” FROM THE LENS OF TAKLIF

This paper will highlight the creative work ‘Ka-mana Terbangnya Si Burong Senja’ by A. Samad Said which features the issue of moral collapse. The short story of the study is seen as a human rights discourse that can provide awareness to society regarding human rights in the formation of social and cultural dynamics through the display of character and characterization of a fully significant immoral society. The work of A. Samad Said needs to be appreciated in terms of its inner meaning. The Taklif framework will be used to discuss the findings of the study because, in the Islamic view, in principle, the universe belongs to the One True God. By using a text analysis approach, the study will turn inward and bring the reader to be more open-minded in reading the author's message from the lens of Islam, which is back to the creator in the process of personality formation.

Transnational Dimensions of a ‘German Case’: The Expatriation of Wolf Biermann and the Politics of Solidarity in the 1970s

In November 1976, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) announced the expatriation of the dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, preventing his return from a concert tour in West Germany. This step attracted widespread press coverage and sparked a substantial expression of solidarity by East German intellectuals. This article proposes an alternative perspective on this well-known episode in German history by highlighting its transnational dimensions and its international contexts. Biermann’s work interacted with broader cultural currents of the period, while his political engagement with events in Chile and Spain testified to the importance of transnational solidarity for left-wing mobilizations. Moreover, the article points to two important international factors that are crucial for understanding the events of 1976: the role of Eurocommunism within left-wing debate on the one hand, and the resonance of human rights discourse during the 1970s on the other.

The Politics of Exclusion

This chapter focuses on political exile, a mechanism of institutionalized exclusion of immense national and transnational impact across Latin America. It draws attention to the significance of forced territorial displacement as derived from the format of exclusionary citizenship and stresses the transnational implications of its recurrent presence and changing significance since early independent times and through the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Tracing the importance of exile in several respects—including its historical use, its role in the construction of transnational networks of solidarity and advocacy, and its contribution to the human rights discourse—the chapter suggests that the study of Latin American exile offers a unique perspective on processes of redefinition of collective identities and political visions. The study of exile also refocuses traditional readings of national histories on more regional, transnational, or even continental scales of analysis, as it is closely related to understanding the connection between state politics and struggles over citizenship that transcend the borders of individual nation-states.

“Droit européen“ à la liberté religieuse et paradigmes des relations État- religions dans l’Europe contemporaine: une cacophonie épineuse

SOMMAIRE: 1. Introduction: paradigmes de relations et droit à la liberté religieuse, de l’identité à la tension - 2. Des paradigmes des relations État-Églises au droit à la liberté religieuse - 3. La force attractive des paradigmes dans le scénario européen contemporain - 4. Les paradigmes des relations État-Églises dans la nouvelle arène internationale - 5. Conclusion: une citoyenneté inachevée. The “European Right” to Religious Freedom and Paradigms of State-Religion Relations in Contemporary Europe: a thorny cacophony ABSTRACT: The article examines the dialectic between European national models of religious freedom and the paradigm of religious freedom shaped in the international order and in particular by the human rights discourse. The analysis of the relationship between the modern - national-centered - and the contemporary - individual-centered - paradigm of religious freedom reveals, on the one hand, the difficult but inevitable osmosis between legal systems in a multilevel system of rights protection and, on the other hand, the deep transformation of religious freedom in contemporary Europe.

Review of Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice by Zakiya Luna (New York University Press)

Zakiya Luna’s rich study combines comprehensive discourse analysis of political rhetoric and archival documents with her own ethnographic experiences within the reproductive justice movement. This book is an entry point into this often-marginalized arena, presenting a unique perspective informed by years of participant observation and thorough research which has produced additional projects, attesting to Luna’s expertise in this field of study. As a woman of color, Luna’s work is symbolically significant, and her intersectional lens renders this study broadly applicable to scholars of law, sociology, and gender studies, to policymakers and activists, and, indeed, to all women, who the reproductive justice movement indirectly or directly impacts. In tracing the way that reproductive justice has been framed as a “human right,” Luna addresses the potential for the human rights discourse to deliver on its intrinsic promise to secure freedom and equity for all.

Conclusion: An Intersectional Future for Human Rights

Intersectionality has changed the way we think about human rights. It offers a complex, comprehensive, and nuanced approach that redounds to the benefit of victims seeking redress. It allows victims to articulate the multiple and intersecting forms of subordination that have negatively affected their lives. Intersectionality rejects the anemic and siloed approach to human rights that invariably fails to capture and remedy the complex, intersectional violations that characterize the lived experience of subordination for many people. Intersectionality has positively influenced human rights discourse ranging from the UN human rights treaty bodies to local human rights organizations that have incorporated the theory into their organizational missions. The theory is gaining ground in international human rights discourse, and it will continue to transform and expand our vision of appropriate remedies for human rights violations. Only by more accurately conceiving of intersectional human rights violations can we hope to provide meaningful and comprehensive remedies to those who have experienced violations of their rights.

Including Disability in Business and Human Rights Discourse and Corporate Practice

Despite significant progress in business and human rights (BHR) discourse and the practices of multinational corporations (MNCs), persons with disabilities and disability rights are absent from both the key instruments and practice of BHR. This lacuna exists despite the near-universal ratification of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as the fact that disabled persons constitute over 15 per cent of the global population and MNC operations impact them greatly and disproportionately. We argue that MNCs have a central role, responsibility and opportunity to foment change globally in fulfilling the human rights of persons with disabilities through their employment practices and by leveraging their economic power to fulfil other aspects of disability-based human rights. Doing so requires the development and self-enforcement of disability-specific human rights due diligence (HRDD) processes, and creating a general culture of diversity, equity and inclusion that encompasses disability.