Introduction to human rights on the edge: The future of international human rights law and practice

Abstract

We convened a conference funded by the National Science Foundation at Arizona State University in April 2021. The 40 papers presented at the conference, a subset of which form this special issue, together demonstrated that, far from collapsing in the face of duress, law is a malleable tool that is deployed in novel ways to promote human rights. Collectively, the conference participants illustrated that the power of human rights lies not in their essentialized transcendence of time, culture, and context, but in their enduring promise that a more just world can emerge from sustained and creative struggle through, against, and at the margins of states, laws, and institutions. Ultimately, the key questions to emerge are not whether human rights law and practice will survive, but rather, what are the forces that continue to sustain, revitalize, and transform them? And what are human rights in the process of becoming?

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Law and Social Science (2029490).

Notes on contributors

Tricia Redeker Hepner

Tricia Redeker Hepner is associate professor of anthropology at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on human rights, refugees and asylum seekers, and post-conflict justice in Eastern Africa. She has published four books and dozens of articles or chapters.

Heather Smith-Cannoy

Heather Smith-Cannoy is an associate professor of political science at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on international law, human rights, sex trafficking and gender. Her third book, Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses is co-authored and forthcoming on Georgetown University Press.