A Contentious World: Politics of Human Rights at the United Nations General Assembly

• In Event: Sociology of Human Rights Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

How and why do states divide over human rights issues? This paper addresses this question through describing the structure of contentious human rights politics at the United Nations General Assembly. It deploys social network tools and content analysis to visually map and explain how states form distinct communities vis-à-vis different categories of human rights issues. It demonstrates that although neither fixed nor homogenous groupings, Global North and Global South countries have utilized the language of human rights in distinct ways. Specifically, Global North countries have deployed human rights to foreground the distinction between a liberal-democratic “West” and an authoritarian “rest” towards the end of maintaining the primacy of liberal norms and the existing global capitalist system. Global South countries, on the other hand, have appropriated the language of human rights to critique European colonial rule and to resist an unequal and undemocratic international order. The findings indicate the importance of situating international human rights politics in relational and dialogical frameworks that are attuned to global inequalities and attendant struggles over international norms.

Author

• Sadia Saeed, University of San Francisco