ABSTRACT
This book has organized its main set of discussions around the general categories of theory, method and substance. Its substantive discussion on the content of human rights was based less on debates within extant normative theory, and more on the accumulation of international human rights law, which in many ways has established an agreed set of international standards to which it is hoped all countries aspire in their efforts to promote and protect human rights. Rather than being mired in debates about the metaphysical basis for the existence of human rights or the debates between strict legal positivists and legal proceduralists on the origins and functions of international law, the book started from a more pragmatic and sociological stance by focusing on real-world observable practices of state and non-state actors that the international community has defined as ‘violations’ to an increasing set of agreed international standards. This orientation is pragmatic since it sidesteps the ongoing philosophical debates on human rights and sees their protection as important means to obtaining the fundamental human ends of freedom, autonomy, and dignity (see Mendus 1995). It is sociological since it is grounded in the idea that we now speak about human rights precisely because over the centuries, as human communities have struggled against all forms of oppression, they have increasingly framed those struggles using the discourse of rights (see Marshall 1963; Bobbio 1996; Foweraker and Landman 1997; Woodiwiss 2005).
