Introduction: Ways of Knowing about Human Rights in Asia

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Acknowledgments

This essay draws on research conducted as part of my Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project, ‘From Human Rights to Human Security: Changing Paradigms for Dealing with Inequality in the Asia-Pacific Region’ (FT0992328). Several of the essays here draw on papers presented at the Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Adelaide in 2010, and the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Hawai‘i in 2011. We are indebted to the audiences on those occasions, the anonymous reviewers for Asian Studies Review and the Editors-in-Chief of Asian Studies Review, Peter Jackson and Michael Barr, for feedback and advice.

Notes

1. The major treaties are: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD, 1966), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979), the Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT, 1984), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989), the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006).

2. It could also be said, however, that Kinsey’s research in the US (1948), which focused on behaviour, without getting into questions of individual identity, had a similar deconstructive effect.