ABSTRACT
In several works in the last decade I have documented the disaggregation of citizenship rights, the emergence of an international human rights regime and the spread of cosmopolitan norms (Benhabib, 2001, 2002, 2004b). National citizenship is a legal and social status which combines some form of collectively shared identity with the entitlement to social and economic benefits and the privileges of political membership through the exercise of democratic rights. I have argued that in today’s world the civil and social rights of migrants, aliens and denizens are increasingly protected by international human rights documents.1 The establishment of the European Union has been accompanied by a Charter of Fundamental Rights and by the formation of a European Court of Justice. The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which encompasses states which are not members of the EU as well, permits the claims of citizens of adhering states to be heard by a European Court of Human Rights. Parallel developments can be seen on the American continent through the establishment of the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. African states accepted the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 1981 through the Organization of African Unity and to date it has been ratified by forty-nine states (Henkin et al., 2003, 147ff).
