Luis Eslava
I am Professor of International Law at La Trobe Law School, La Trobe University (Australia), and Honorary Professor of International Law at Kent Law School, the University of Kent (UK).
My research interests are located at the intersection between international law, development and global governance. Bringing together insights from anthropology, history and legal and social theory, my work focuses on the multiple ways in which international norms, aspirations and institutional practices, both old and new, come to shape and become part of our everyday life, arguing that closer critical attention needs to be paid to this co-constitutive relationship between international law ‘up there’ and life ‘down here’. In this spirit, my publications advance a series of new methodological parameters and applied case studies that aim to shed light on the simultaneously ideological and material, ground-level work that is done, each day, by international law, inviting us, in turn, to question what our response to it should be.
In recent years I have been especially interested in the emergence of local jurisdictions (e.g. cities and municipalities) on the international scene using an ethnographic approach. My fieldwork and writing in this area interrogates the rationale and contradictions that have accompanied such trend, using different locations in the Global South as case study. This line of work has taken me to Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and most recently to Cali and Tumaco, Colombia.
Over the last years I have also studied the long-standing relation between international law and imperialism; the evolution of the developmental state; the emergence and expansion of the discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility; new forms of international intervention in the Global South; the reach and limits of human rights; and the changing nature of the global political economy, the international legal order, and their impact on questions of sacrality, universality, resistance, revolution and Third World engagements with international law.
Other activities:
- Co-Director of the Collaborative Research Network on International Law and Politics, Law and Society Association (LSA): http://www.lawandsociety.org/crn.html#23
- Editorial board member:
○ Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/499
○ Latin American Law Review: https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/journal/lar
○ Contexto: Revista de Derecho Económico: https://revistas.uexternado.edu.co/index.php/contexto
My research interests are located at the intersection between international law, development and global governance. Bringing together insights from anthropology, history and legal and social theory, my work focuses on the multiple ways in which international norms, aspirations and institutional practices, both old and new, come to shape and become part of our everyday life, arguing that closer critical attention needs to be paid to this co-constitutive relationship between international law ‘up there’ and life ‘down here’. In this spirit, my publications advance a series of new methodological parameters and applied case studies that aim to shed light on the simultaneously ideological and material, ground-level work that is done, each day, by international law, inviting us, in turn, to question what our response to it should be.
In recent years I have been especially interested in the emergence of local jurisdictions (e.g. cities and municipalities) on the international scene using an ethnographic approach. My fieldwork and writing in this area interrogates the rationale and contradictions that have accompanied such trend, using different locations in the Global South as case study. This line of work has taken me to Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and most recently to Cali and Tumaco, Colombia.
Over the last years I have also studied the long-standing relation between international law and imperialism; the evolution of the developmental state; the emergence and expansion of the discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility; new forms of international intervention in the Global South; the reach and limits of human rights; and the changing nature of the global political economy, the international legal order, and their impact on questions of sacrality, universality, resistance, revolution and Third World engagements with international law.
Other activities:
- Co-Director of the Collaborative Research Network on International Law and Politics, Law and Society Association (LSA): http://www.lawandsociety.org/crn.html#23
- Editorial board member:
○ Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/499
○ Latin American Law Review: https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/journal/lar
○ Contexto: Revista de Derecho Económico: https://revistas.uexternado.edu.co/index.php/contexto
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Books by Luis Eslava
1. Antony Anghie, 'The evolution of international Law: colonial and postcolonial realities' (2006) 27(5) Third World Quarterly 739.
2. Martti Koskenniemi, 'Empire and international law: the real Spanish contribution' (2011), 61 University of Toronto Law Journal 1.
3. Anne Orford, ‘The past as law or history? The relevance of imperialism for modern international law’ in Mark Toufayan, Emmanuelle Jouannet and Hélène Ruiz Fabri, Droit international et nouvelles approches sur le tiers-monde: entre répétition et renouveau (Société de Législation Comparée, 2013), también publicado en la serie: NYU Institute for International Law and Justice Working Papers, No. 2012/2.
1.Antony Anghie, 'The evolution of international Law: colonial and postcolonial realities' (2006) 27(5) Third World Quarterly 739. 2.
2.Martti Koskenniemi, 'Empire and international law: the real Spanish contribution' (2011), 61 University of Toronto Law Journal 1. 3.
3. Anne Orford, ‘The past as law or history? The relevance of imperialism for modern international law’ in Mark Toufayan, Emmanuelle Jouannet and Hélène Ruiz Fabri,
Droit international et nouvelles approches sur le tiers-monde: entre répétition et renouveau (Société de Législation Comparée, 2013), también publicado en la serie: NYU Institute for International Law and Justice Working Papers, No. 2012/2
------------------------------------------------
The first collection in Spanish on imperialism and international law. The book will be part of the Nuevo Pensamiento Jurídico series (Ediciones Uniandes & Siglo del Hombre Editores).
Papers & Book Chapters by Luis Eslava
South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet, as in any other human affair, with the outbreak of each round of news, and the mobilisation of new groups supporting Palestine from Colombia to Egypt to Norway, the question of what we talk about when we talk about Palestine solidarity—as the American novelist Raymond Carver once asked about love—has become trickier to answer. And this is because the Palestinian cause is today as much
about the ongoing denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination as about deeply entrenched power asymmetries in the international order.
1. Antony Anghie, 'The evolution of international Law: colonial and postcolonial realities' (2006) 27(5) Third World Quarterly 739.
2. Martti Koskenniemi, 'Empire and international law: the real Spanish contribution' (2011), 61 University of Toronto Law Journal 1.
3. Anne Orford, ‘The past as law or history? The relevance of imperialism for modern international law’ in Mark Toufayan, Emmanuelle Jouannet and Hélène Ruiz Fabri, Droit international et nouvelles approches sur le tiers-monde: entre répétition et renouveau (Société de Législation Comparée, 2013), también publicado en la serie: NYU Institute for International Law and Justice Working Papers, No. 2012/2.
1.Antony Anghie, 'The evolution of international Law: colonial and postcolonial realities' (2006) 27(5) Third World Quarterly 739. 2.
2.Martti Koskenniemi, 'Empire and international law: the real Spanish contribution' (2011), 61 University of Toronto Law Journal 1. 3.
3. Anne Orford, ‘The past as law or history? The relevance of imperialism for modern international law’ in Mark Toufayan, Emmanuelle Jouannet and Hélène Ruiz Fabri,
Droit international et nouvelles approches sur le tiers-monde: entre répétition et renouveau (Société de Législation Comparée, 2013), también publicado en la serie: NYU Institute for International Law and Justice Working Papers, No. 2012/2
------------------------------------------------
The first collection in Spanish on imperialism and international law. The book will be part of the Nuevo Pensamiento Jurídico series (Ediciones Uniandes & Siglo del Hombre Editores).
South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet, as in any other human affair, with the outbreak of each round of news, and the mobilisation of new groups supporting Palestine from Colombia to Egypt to Norway, the question of what we talk about when we talk about Palestine solidarity—as the American novelist Raymond Carver once asked about love—has become trickier to answer. And this is because the Palestinian cause is today as much
about the ongoing denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination as about deeply entrenched power asymmetries in the international order.
The resurgence of the city as a locus of international discourse has created a dynamic interaction between international and local urban laws and development policies, which we identify in this chapter as ‘international urban law’. Our analysis points, however, not only to hegemonic forces in this interaction between the international and the local but also to the counter-hegemonic voices of resistance that have always punctuated debates about colonialism, decolonisation and cities in international law.
As we demonstrate through a series of case studies, from Bogotá to Rio de Janeiro, and from Ulaanbaatar to Nairobi, today’s development programmes revive the colonial typology of cities as key nodes in global governance networks through euphemistically diverse yet still quite standardised patterns of disciplining. These case studies illuminate the socio-political (dis)arrangements underlying the present impetus towards making urban life legible and amenable to international prescriptions and the global economic order. Here we show how this reinvented brand of localised disciplining, and the resistance to it, are part and parcel of a post-colonial normative order that struggles to leave its imperial origins behind.
About the subject: Public International Law is a complex and dynamic field of law, and an extremely important site through which to think about – and act upon – the current global order. After all, the international legal order is everywhere – as you will have noticed every time you switch on the news. The past few years alone have witnessed the attempt to realise the right of peoples to ‘external’ self-determination via collective recognition at the UN (Palestine); a dispute over the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in respect of ‘non-state’ parties to a civil conflict (Colombia); a Security Council-authorised ‘humanitarian’ military intervention into a ‘sovereign’ state (Libya) by the ‘international community’ (in the guise of NATO); a systematic round of interventions by the International Monetary Fund into the Global North in a manner previously reserved for the Global South (Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal); an extremely paradoxical – and extremely violent – rejection/embrace of International Law by a self-proclaimed and yet largely unrecognised ‘state’ (ISIS); the annexation of part of a state (Ukraine) by its neighbour (Russia), supposedly – as a permanent member of the Security Council (Russia) – one of the guardians of the international legal order, and many other global crises in which International Law has played a central role.
In this intensive course, we will be thinking about how the international legal order has shaped situations such as these, as well (apparently) as far more mundane interactions between economic, social, political and cultural actors. In order to focus our attention in this way, the module is organized around four key themes in Public International Law: Subjects, Sources, Jurisdiction and Responsibility, and Force and Violence.
At the most general level, this course will take you step-by-step through the fundamental elements of the discipline of Public International Law. The course will provide you, in this sense, with a detailed understanding of the norms, doctrines and institutions of the international legal order, giving you a relevant and rigorous language and set of techniques with which to analyse and assess world politics, world economics and world history through the lens of International Law.
Importantly, just as you will learn to bring international norms and institutions to bear on politics, economics and history, you will also be encouraged to reverse this relationship, bringing politics, economics and history to bear on international norms and institutions, in order to think more critically about the discipline and its effects. Is International Law always a force for good, or is it possible that it might have contributed to the construction and sustenance of the very problems it is called upon to solve?
Finally, in order to equip you with the tools to apply the knowledge gained in this course critically and broadly, we will be paying special attention to the question of how the doctrine, norms and institutions associated with ‘the international’ influence not only international relations but also our daily life.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
About the Subject: Law has always been central to debates about international development but this is becoming increasingly and markedly the case. In this course we will critically explore what development means, its history, its key role in the international political, social and economic order, and the many ways in which law is entangled in this central and controversial concept.
The first half of the module (Weeks 1-6) will provide students with detailed knowledge and understanding of the idea of development; the international development project; the main international development institutions; the national effects of the development project; and the movement of Law and Development.
The second half of the module (Weeks 7-11) will examine contemporary topics in law and international development, including human rights and development; decentralization and local development; sustainability and development; legal empowerment of the poor; and the intersection between security and developmental concerns and discourses.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
About the Subject: This course will take you step by step through the fundamental elements of International Law, understood in its broadest sense to encompass public international law, private international and international economic law. It will provide you with a detailed understanding of the norms, doctrines and institutions of international law, giving you a relevant and rigorous language and set of techniques with which to analyse and assess world politics, world economics and world history. However, just as you will learn to bring international law to bear on politics, economics history, you will also be encouraged, at the same time, to reverse this relationship, bringing politics, economics and history to bear on international law, in order to think more critically about the discipline and its effects. Is international law always a force for good, or is it possible that international law might have contributed to the construction and sustenance of the very problems it is called upon to solve? In order to equip you with a doctrinal, normative and institutional understanding of international law, and with the tools to apply this knowledge critically, we will be paying special attention to the question of how the doctrine, norms and institutions of international law influence not only international relations but also our daily domestic life.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
About the Subject: Public International Law is a complex and dynamic field of law, and an extremely important site through which to think about – and act upon – the current global order. After all, the international legal order is everywhere – as you will have noticed every time you switch on the news. The past few years alone have witnessed the attempt to realise the right of peoples to self-determination via collective recognition at the UN level and through local referendums (Palestine and Catalunya); a dispute over the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in respect of ‘non-state’ parties to a civil conflict (Colombia); a Security Council-authorised ‘humanitarian’ military intervention into a ‘sovereign’ state (Libya) by the ‘international community’ (in the guise of NATO); attempts to delivery ‘international humanitarian aid’ by the ‘international community’ into the territory of a ‘sovereign’ state (Venezuela); a systematic round of interventions by the International Monetary Fund into the Global North in a manner previously reserved for the Global South (Greece, Spain and Portugal); an extremely paradoxical – and extremely violent – rejection/embrace of International Law by a self-proclaimed and yet largely unrecognised ‘state’ (ISIS); attempts to use international law instruments and institutions to curve the current collapse of the global environment (Paris Agreement); the annexation of part of a state (Ukraine) by its neighbour, a permanent member of the Security Council Russia; allegation of international responsibility of state officials and institutions for the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (China), and many other global crises in which Public International Law (commonly referred to as PIL or simply as international law) has played a central role.
In this module, we will be thinking about how the international legal order has shaped ‘international’ situations such as these, as well as (apparently) far more ‘mundane’ or ‘local’ interactions between economic, social, political and cultural actors.
In order to equip you with a normative and doctrinal understanding of PIL, and to give you the tools to critically apply this knowledge to a broad array of international and more local situations, the course will pay special attention to how the history, doctrine, norms and institutions of PIL influence not only international relations, but also our daily domestic life.
The course will provide you, in this sense, with a detailed understanding of the fundamental elements of the international legal order, giving you a relevant and rigorous language and set of techniques with which to analyse and assess the global order through the lens of the discipline of Public International Law.
Finally, just as you will learn to bring international norms and institutions to bear on politics, economics and history, you will also be encouraged to reverse this relationship, bringing politics, economics and history to bear on international norms and institutions, in order to think more critically about the discipline, its effects and its multiple interactions with other realms of life and intellectual activity.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
About the Subject: Human rights occupy an extremely important place in contemporary discussions about law, justice and politics at both the domestic and the international level. Across all spheres of government, bodies of law and, pretty much, in every single social mobilization, human rights are invoked and debated. Just pay attention to the legal arguments underpinning or being mobilized in the news tonight. From access to drinking water and the protection of environmental resources in developed and developing countries, to contestations about the importance of more direct forms of citizens’ participation in the running of national and international affairs, to the challenging of gender stereotypes across the world, to battles around how to create a less unequal world, human rights have become an important language to advance all sorts of agendas. In doing so, human rights have become the horizon of what’s desirable and, at the same time, of what seems possible today. As such, human rights are giving a particular shape to our individual and collectives lives.
This module approaches this key place occupied by human rights in the contemporary world from an international perspective. In placing our focus at the international level, the module aims to link the international human rights norms and human rights systems, with the actual practice and operation of human rights across the globe. Particular attention is paid in the module to the value, as well as the limits of human rights when they approach, or try to address the problems and the aspirations of six important ‘subjects’ – ‘subjects’ (human and non-human) which human rights have themselves helped to constitute in their current form: the Citizen, the Corporation, the Refugee, the Woman, the Non-Human Entity, and the Poor.
The module is organized around lectures and seminars delivered by the convenor, as well as lectures given by invited guest speaker. Guest speakers are Kent Law School and external scholars with expertise in different areas of human rights. They will explore in their lectures how they have approached in their research and practice the six ‘subjects’ mentioned above (i.e. the Citizen, the Corporation, the Refugee, the Woman, the Non-Human Entity, and the Poor).
The objective of inviting guest speakers to the module is to give you the opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge of different areas of human rights (in particular in terms of how human rights come to deal with the needs of specific subjects), and to familiarize you with different ways to think, theorize and use human rights today.
Feel free to use the syllabus with due acknowledgment, and please let us know if you are using it for your course or teaching for our own information.
About the Subject: Both trade and human rights are today understood as key elements of successful development policy. However, both the historical and conceptual foundations of this apparent convergence demand careful investigation. While mainstream economic thinking presumes that trade is beneficial for poor countries, critics have pointed out the terms of trade have long been weighted in favour of western, developed states. Similarly, while the emerging consensus that adherence to global human rights norms is necessary for the achievement of good development outcomes, in the past the goals of development and of human rights were often understood as at odds with one another. Utilising historical, discursive, and case study based methodologies, this subject will provide students with an opportunity to critically examine the convergence of trade and human rights with contemporary development policy and practice.
Feel free to use the syllabus with due acknowledgment, and please let us know if you are using it for your course or teaching for our own information.
About the Subject: The concept of development has been crucial to structuring international legal relations from the end of World War II to the present day. During that time, international law and institutions have taken on ‘development’ as a primary project. In both the public and economic domains, the vast majority of international institutions engage with the development project in some shape or form. This subject invites students to think about the nature and importance of development and its relation to international law. The history of development in relation to imperialism, decolonisation, the Cold War and globalisation means that this set of relations is complex and dynamic. Understanding it is crucial to understanding the place of international law, and the work development does in the contemporary world.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
Summary: The four sessions for this topic will sketch a general background to understand the longstanding relationship between law and the idea(l) of development, since colonial times to our present day. In doing so, these sessions will advance a description of international law able to encompass the way in which law and developmental aspirations and practices have functioned as an animating force behind the constitution of our world at all levels of government, and across the North and South divide.
At the end of these sessions, participants will have the tools to interrogate past and present instrumentalizations of law in the development project, as well as the manner in which particular understandings of development have been crystallized through the legal form. Participants will also have, at the end of these sessions, the methodological tools to confront the way in which seemingly "international" discourses of rule of law promotion ended up shaping people's "everyday" lives and local surroundings in significant, and often unexpected ways.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
About the Subject: Public International Law is a complex and dynamic field of law, and an extremely important site through which to think about – and act upon – the current global order. After all, the international legal order is everywhere – as you will have noticed every time you switch on the news. The past few years alone have witnessed the attempt to realise the right of peoples to self-determination via collective recognition at the UN level and through local referendums (Palestine and Catalunya); a dispute over the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in respect of ‘non-state’ parties to a civil conflict (Colombia); a Security Council-authorised ‘humanitarian’ military intervention into a ‘sovereign’ state (Libya) by the ‘international community’ (in the guise of NATO); attempts to delivery ‘international humanitarian aid’ by the ‘international community’ into the territory of a ‘sovereign’ state (Venezuela); a systematic round of interventions by the International Monetary Fund into the Global North in a manner previously reserved for the Global South (Greece, Spain and Portugal); an extremely paradoxical – and extremely violent – rejection/embrace of International Law by a self-proclaimed and yet largely unrecognised ‘state’ (ISIS); attempts to use international law instruments and institutions to curve the current collapse of the global environment (Paris Agreement); the annexation of part of a state (Ukraine) by its neighbour, a permanent member of the Security Council Russia; allegation of international responsibility of state officials and institutions for the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (China), and many other global crises in which Public International Law (commonly referred to as PIL or simply as international law) has played a central role.
In this module, we will be thinking about how the international legal order has shaped ‘international’ situations such as these, as well as (apparently) far more ‘mundane’ or ‘local’ interactions between economic, social, political and cultural actors.
In order to equip you with a normative and doctrinal understanding of PIL, and to give you the tools to critically apply this knowledge to a broad array of international and more local situations, the course will pay special attention to how the history, doctrine, norms and institutions of PIL influence not only international relations, but also our daily domestic life.
The course will provide you, in this sense, with a detailed understanding of the fundamental elements of the international legal order, giving you a relevant and rigorous language and set of techniques with which to analyse and assess the global order through the lens of the discipline of Public International Law.
Finally, just as you will learn to bring international norms and institutions to bear on politics, economics and history, you will also be encouraged to reverse this relationship, bringing politics, economics and history to bear on international norms and institutions, in order to think more critically about the discipline, its effects and its multiple interactions with other realms of life and intellectual activity.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
About the Subject: Human rights occupy an extremely important place in contemporary discussions about law, justice and politics at both the domestic and the international level. Across all spheres of government, bodies of law and, pretty much, in every single social mobilization, human rights are invoked and debated. Just pay attention to the legal arguments underpinning or being mobilized in the news tonight. From access to drinking water and the protection of environmental resources in developed and developing countries, to contestations about the importance of more direct forms of citizens’ participation in the running of national and international affairs, to the challenging of gender stereotypes across the world, to battles around how to create a less unequal world, human rights have become an important language to advance all sorts of agendas. In doing so, human rights have become the horizon of what’s desirable and, at the same time, of what seems possible today. As such, human rights are giving a particular shape to our individual and collectives lives.
This module approaches this key place occupied by human rights in the contemporary world from an international perspective. In placing our focus at the international level, the module aims to link the international human rights norms and human rights systems, with the actual practice and operation of human rights across the globe. Particular attention is paid in the module to the value, as well as the limits of human rights when they approach, or try to address the problems and the aspirations of six important ‘subjects’ – ‘subjects’ (human and non-human) which human rights have themselves helped to constitute in their current form: the Citizen, the Corporation, the Refugee, the Woman, the Non-Human Entity, and the Poor.
The module is organized around lectures and seminars delivered by the convenor, as well as lectures given by invited guest speaker. Guest speakers are Kent Law School and external scholars with expertise in different areas of human rights. They will explore in their lectures how they have approached in their research and practice the six ‘subjects’ mentioned above (i.e. the Citizen, the Corporation, the Refugee, the Woman, the Non-Human Entity, and the Poor).
The objective of inviting guest speakers to the module is to give you the opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge of different areas of human rights (in particular in terms of how human rights come to deal with the needs of specific subjects), and to familiarize you with different ways to think, theorize and use human rights today.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
About the Subject: Law has always been central to debates about international development but this is becoming increasingly and markedly the case. In this course we will critically explore what development means and its history, its key role in the international legal, political, social and economic order, and the many ways in which law is entangled in this central and controversial concept.
The first half of the module (Weeks 1-6) will provide students with detailed knowledge and understanding of the idea of development; the international development project; the main international development institutions and the context in which these institutions emerged; the national effects of the development project; and the field of Law and Development.
The second half of the module (Weeks 7-11) will examine contemporary topics in law and international development, including human rights and development; decentralization and local development; sustainability and development; law and the informal sector; rule of law promotion; and the intersection between security and developmental concerns and discourses.
Feel free to use it with due acknowledgment.
In this presentation, I will interrogate the rationale and discuss some of the contradictions involved in this emergence of localities in development discussions and the international normative scene using Bogotá - a city where the shift towards the local has facilitated a significant urban transformation while drastically changing the city’s approach to its illegal neighbourhoods - as a case study. Through an ethnographic exploration of how Bogotá’s local administration relates to its illegal neighbourhoods, I argue that closer critical attention should be paid to the ways in which international law takes root at the local everyday level, not only on the basis of the application of norms or policy instruments but also through the delineation of spaces, subjective formations, administrative arrangements and the functioning of apparently mundane artefacts of governance. In the case of Bogotá, once this full range of techniques of governance and administration are perceived in their totality, it is possible to appreciate how a special kind of global life is being fostered through the configuration of a particular form of local space. In the increasing capacity of international law to transmogrify into local formations, international law and its development disciplines should be examined as being part of a large project of global administration. "
The delegation of development responsibilities from the nation level to the local level is, according to my view, a key point to understand both the way the State, in all of its levels, is trying to respond to the displacees' requests and the manners used by displaced population to get their rights recognised by the same State.
During several month I had the opportunity to share the daily life of a group of Colombian internally displaced people from afrocolombian, indigenous, and mestizo backgrounds. Escaping from the war that Colombia's army, guerrilla and paramilitaries groups and narcotic gangs have been fighting in the last decades and brought to Bogotá by the city's development capacity crystallized in more job opportunities, better infrastructure and a more responsive administration, this group of displaced people have constantly found during their time protesting a State that is increasingly resilient to attend their requests. Instead of an open neglection of their rights which could ignite an equally open contestation from them, this group of protesters have instead found an erratic State due to its current fragmentation in multiple jurisdictional, administrative and responsibility levels.
The presentation argues thus that finding the place, the jurisdiction, the administrative level, to fight for rights has become a crucial pedagogical quest in order to be recognized as citizen by the State in Colombia – as well as in the rest of developing countries where the decentralization of development has become a common theme in the last few decades.
"
Speakers: Joseph Slaughter (Columbia University), Visiting Fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Jessica Whyte (Western Sydney University), Visiting Fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.
Followed by a panel discussion with Lori Allen (SOAS, University of London); Başak Ertür (Birkbeck, University of London); Luis Eslava (University of Kent); Robert Knox (University of Liverpool).
When 22 November 2018, 18:00 — 19:00
Venue Birkbeck Main Building, B34
Free: Tickets available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/are-human-rights-neoliberal-tickets-52350554919?aff=ebapi
In recent years, scholars have sought to understand the simultaneous rise, from the 1970s, of neoliberalism and an individualistic, NGO-driven, politics of human rights. However, most of that scholarship maintains a narrow Eurocentric perspective. This event explores the relationship between human rights and neoliberalism by looking at the broader international context in which both movements came to prominence. We will consider 1) how anti-colonialists mobilised the language of human rights to support national liberation struggles, demands for economic restructuring, and social and cultural security; and 2) how neoliberal thinkers and politicians themselves marshalled the language of human rights to counter-attack those struggles for political and economic self-determination.
Lecture #1: "Hijacking Human Rights: Neoliberalism, the New Historiography, and the End of the Third World." By Joseph Slaughter (Columbia University), Fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
The North Atlantic perspective of the “new historiography” of human rights, which identifies the 1970s as the period when human rights discourse gained traction globally, generally relegates struggles outside the U.S. and Europe to minor, inconsequential, or irrelevant uses of the languages of human rights. However, the West’s late rediscovery and reduction of human rights to a limited set of individual civil and political protections should be understood as part of the larger roll back of a Third Wordlist agenda that included more expansive visions of human rights: postcolonial self-determination, economic redistribution, and social and cultural security. If the 70s became the decade of human rights, it was also the decade of hijackings and a dramatic reversal in the meaning of “terrorism.” Many airliner hijackings were undertaken precisely in the name of human rights struggles to decolonize the international order, but none of those were as effective as the neo-liberal hijacking of human rights.
Lecture #2: "Powerless Companions or Fellow Travellers? Human Rights, Neoliberalism and Postcolonial Economic Justice." By Jessica Whyte (Western Sydney University), Fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.
To date, much discussion of the relation of human rights and neoliberalism has focused on Latin America, where human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International came to prominence for contesting the torture, murder and disappearance that accompanied neoliberal ‘shock therapy’— while generally turning their attention away from its economic effects. This paper shifts this focus by examining the foundation Liberté sans Frontières (LSF), established in 1985 by the French leadership of Médecins sans Frontières. Far from simply vacating the economic field, LSF mobilised human rights explicitly against Third Worldist demands for post-colonial economic redistribution. Its leading figures criticised Third Worldism for promoting “simplistic” theses that blamed under-development on the looting of the third world by the West, the deterioration of the terms of trade, and the power of multinationals. LSF's human rights warriors were not powerless companions of the rising neoliberalism, but enthusiastic fellow travellers.