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In the Land of the International

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2016

Samera Esmeir
Samera Esmeir*
Affiliation:
Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.; e-mail: samera@berkeley.edu
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Extract

The preamble to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes a peculiar hierarchy between rebellion and human rights. The preamble affirms that “whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” According to the declaration, rebellion against oppression and tyranny is an act that individuals can only be compelled to pursue, and only once other choices are exhausted. Rebellion descends upon the oppressed “man” from without and he cannot refuse it. It is a force that takes over desperate men. Human rights, in turn, police against rebellion by prevailing in the law. They are the preferred weapon against two extremes: oppression and rebellion. And if rebellion is the space of compelled political action, human rights is the space of uncompelled, free, and authentic action against oppression and tyranny.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 362 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

NOTES

1 United Nations, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” 10 December 1948, http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

2 This question is obviously indebted to Talal Asad's work on the powers of human rights, the human, and the secular. Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

3 Arendt, Hannah, Imperialism: Part Two of the Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), 178–79Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 177–78.

5 Wheaton, Henry, Elements of International Law (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1866)Google Scholar.

6 Lyons, F. S. L., Internationalism in Europe: 1815–1914 (Leiden: Sythoff, 1963)Google Scholar.

7 Anghie, Anthony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 133Google Scholar. On the proliferation of international governing institutions, see Rajagopal, Balakrishnan, International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See “Map of OHCHR Field Presences,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, accessed 21 December 2015, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/Pages/MapOfficesIndex.aspx.

9 The reference here is to the International Workingmen Association and to the different Internationals that followed it.

10 Bentham, Jeremy, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2007)Google Scholar.

11 Bull, Hadley and Watson, Adam, The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

12 Scott, David, Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014), 37Google Scholar.

13 “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

14 See Esmeir, Samera, Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

15 Grotius, Hugo, The Free Sea, ed. Armitage, David (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 2004)Google Scholar.

16 Scott, James, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 293–94Google ScholarPubMed.