I Book Review: The Politics of Human Rights: A Global Perspective
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410602400313 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
PART D: DOCUMENTATION
I BOOK REVIEWS
Tony Evans, The Politics of Human Rights: a Global Perspective,2
nd
edition, Pluto
Press, London, 2005, 162 + x p., ISBN: 0-7453-2373-1 (paperback), 0-7453-2374-X
(hardback)*
The Politics of Human Rights, written from the perspective of international relations
and politics, makes confronting reading for lawyers. It highlights the pervasive impact
of power relations on human rights, and questions the potential of human rights law
to bring about social change. Books like this often put human rights lawyers in a state
of flux: either they take the analysis seriously, with the inevitable consequence that they
can no longer continue their legal work without betraying their ideal of serving the
human rights cause, or they ignore the political analysis, at the risk of contributing to
the continuation of power relations that may run counter to the very human rights
ideals they nurture. Evans, a reader in Global Politics at the University of
Southampton in the UK, manages to critically analyse the politics of human rights
without rendering the human rights project futile. Rather, his work is a clarion call for
reformulating the human rights project. The task the author sets himself is that of
‘unmasking the weaknesses and inadequacies of the neoliberal approach’ (p. 5). He
challenges the myth of great progress in the field of human rights and wants to
provoke reflection and further analysis before the task of reformulating the human
rights project is embarked upon.
Two themes dominate the book. The first one is that the emphasis in human rights
discourse on civil and political rights, to the detriment of economic, social and cultural
rights, is not accidental, in that politics and power determine the dominant image of
rights. The second recurrent theme is the changed context human rights are to be
understood in, i.e. that of globalisation. In Evans’ view, the shift away from an
international order of States to a global order, is often neglected in human rights
theory and practice as the new context which universal human rights must be
embedded in (p. 9). In a global, as opposed to an international order of States, it has
become more difficult for States to take human rights seriously, for the authority of the
State in important economic areas has been diminishing (p. 90). The image of the
State as the primary defender of human rights can therefore no longer be sustained.
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 24/3, 537-548, 2006. 537
#Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Printed in the Netherlands.
* Wouter Vandenhole is a senior researcher at the Center for Transboundary Legal Development,
Tilburg University, the Netherlands.
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