Human rights and the development of a twenty-first century peace architecture: unintended consequences?

ABSTRACT

The ‘long peace’ of the last twenty-five years has linked various forms of intervention—from development to peacebuilding and humanitarian intervention—with human rights. This ‘interventionary system/order’ model has premised its legitimate authority on expanded versions of human rights, connected to liberal frameworks of democracy, rule of law, and capitalism in order to connect peace more closely with justice. Human rights offer a tactical way forward for those interested in conflict resolution, but this has led to unintended consequences. Unless conceptions of rights are continually expanded as new power structures and inequalities are uncovered and challenged, philosophical and material matters of distributive and historical justice will remain.

KEYWORDS:

• Peace
• liberal peace
• human rights
• global justice

Acknowledgements

I would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Professor Nick Rengger of the University of St Andrews, and Professor Chandra Sriram of the University of East London, both of whom contributed to my thinking about these topics enormously. Thanks also to several anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. All errors are the author’s responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Oliver Richmond is a Research Professor in IR, Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manchester and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. He is also International Professor, College of International Studies, Kyung Hee University, Korea, and Visiting Professor at the University of Tromso. His publications include Peace Formation and Post-Conflict Political Order, (Oxford University Press, 2016), Failed Statebuilding vs Peace Formation (Yale University Press, 2014). He is editor of the Palgrave book series, Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies, and co-editor of the Journal, Peacebuilding.

Notes

1 By this I mean a system predicated on multiple and continual forms of intervention, from developmental, economic, political, and military, rather than on territorial sovereignty in which intervention is exceptional.

2 See various UN Treaties: https://treaties.un.org/

3 Confidential Sources, Personal Interviews. UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, New York, 31 March 2014.

4 Confidential Source, Personal Interview, UNDPKO, New York, 7th December 2017.