Human Rights, World Citizenship and the Cosmopolitan Question

Political Studies, 2003

Cosmopolitan international relations theorists envisage a process of expanding cosmopolitan democracy and global governance, in which for the first time there is the possibility of global issues being addressed on the basis of new forms of democracy, derived from the universal rights of global citizens. They suggest that, rather than focus attention on the territorially limited rights of the citizen at the level of the nation-state, more emphasis should be placed on extending democracy and human rights to the international sphere. This paper raises problems with extending the concept of rights beyond the bounds of the sovereign state, without a mechanism of making these new rights accountable to their subject. The emerging gap, between holders of cosmopolitan rights and those with duties, tends to create dependency rather than to empower. So while the new rights remain tenuous, there is a danger that the cosmopolitan framework can legitimise the abrogation of the existing rights of democracy and self-government preserved in the UN Charter framework.

A discussion over the issue of whether citizenship is a human right.

Journal of International Political Theory, 2008

A conception of global citizenship should not be viewed as separate from, or synonymous with, the cosmopolitan moral orientation, but as a primary component of it. Global citizenship is fundamentally concerned with individual moral requirements in the global frame. Such requirements, framed here as belonging to the category of individual cosmopolitanism, offer guidelines on right action in the context of global human community. They are complementary to the principles of moral cosmopolitanism-those to be used in assessing the justice of global institutions and practices-that have been emphasised by cosmopolitan political theorists. Considering principles of individual and moral cosmopolitanism together can help to provide greater clarity concerning individual duties in the absence of fully global institutions, as well as clarity on individual obligations of justice in relation to emerging and still-developing trans-state institutions.

Ethical Thought

What is a reasonable understanding of the relationship between human rights protection, on the one hand, and respect for people's sovereignty, on the other? In order to address this question this article utilizes the distinction between political cosmopolitanism on the one side, and moral cosmopolitanism on the other. Political cosmopolitanism implies that some form of global citizenship is needed for universal protection of human rights. Critics of this position stress the importance of self-governance and state sovereignty. In this article, it is claimed that rejection of political cosmopolitanism can be combined with embracement of moral cosmopolitanism, i.e. embracement a global moral community where respect for human dignity and therefore recognition of human rights of each individual is not limited by national citizenship and borders. In this article, I defend a non-violent form of moral cosmopolitanism. Such a cosmopolitanism demands a modification of universalism of human rights. I distinguish between descriptive and epistemological universalism on the one hand and pure normative universalism on the other. Descriptive and epistemological universalism, I demonstrate, are aggressive forms of universalism that tend to legitimize domination. Critical universalism, which is a form of pure normative universalism, is justified in that it inspires political liberation within different traditions without legitimizing cultural monopolism and violence of the Global North.

Transnational Social Review, 2018

The framework of human rights is becoming increasingly central to perceptions of global problems and to demands for transnational solidarity. At the same time, human rights are an object of criticism. In both cases, the term "human rights" is often used with a strong normative and essentialist bias. When viewed through the lens of a sociology of knowing, it proves to be based on implicit, unexamined assumptions. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct these assumptions and to clarify the social meaning of -and need for -human rights in a reflexive, cosmopolitan modernity; it investigates the construction and constitution of human beings as human rights subjects. What makes an individual a human being in the sense in which the term is used in the symbolic language of human rights? What conception of the human (and hence of the social) is inscribed in the patterns of thought, feeling and action underlying the framework of human rights? I argue that the human rights subject represents an ultimate status category and transnational figure of knowledge. It is a postheroic subject, determined and defined by cosmopolitan entitlements: the ontological state of vulnerability, the cultural primacy of dignity and the fragility of human existence.

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 2011

The paper investigates the relationship between citizenship, nation-state and globalization through the unconventional prism of human rights. Focusing on transformative effects of globalization processes, the author explores the challenges that the unprecedented level of transplanetary connectivity and supraterritorial relations pose to the international human rights regime founded on responsibility of territorially defined nation-states for protection and promotion of human rights. With discrepancy between the de facto state of the nation-state and the foundations of the present human rights regime as a point of departure, the paper looks into three main theoretical approaches that attempt to (re)establish theoretical and practical relevance of human rights in the globalized world. Distancing herself from the predominant legalistic human rights discourse, the author advocates revival of moral and ethical dimensions of human rights, complemented with lessons learnt from the tradition of citizenship rights as a strategy for securing room for human rights in the era of globalization.

The human rights crisis began with the experience of the 20th century, in which everyone who did not count as a citizen of a particular state was not only deprived of his civil rights but also of his human rights.If the nation-state, through citizenship, constitutes the only legal authority that recognizes and realizes human rights, this discourse becomes meaningless for those experiencing processes of expatriation, emigration, or any other type of resignation from membership of a political entity.In this respect, the reconceptualization of the "right to have rights" within the framework of a non-centralized state will be crucial in the period since the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, in which strictly international issues have been shifted towards cosmopolitan standards of justice.This article is based on the assumption that modern citizenship involves a dilemma that prevents the realization of human rights by confining this right to those who belong to an organized community.To this end, two moments of crisis of human rights mediated by the idea of human dignity, assumed as a political principle of universal legitimacy, are analyzed with the aim of tracking the possibilities afforded by cosmopolitan citizenship to overcome the aporia of human rights.

The paper investigates the relationship between citizenship, nation-state and globalization through the unconventional prism of human rights. Focusing on transformative effects of globalization processes, the author explores the challenges that the unprecedented level of transplanetary connectivity and supraterritorial relations pose to the international human rights regime founded on responsibility of territorially defined nation-states for protection and promotion of human rights. With discrepancy between the de facto state of the nation-state and the foundations of the present human rights regime as a point of departure, the paper looks into three main theoretical approaches that attempt to (re)establish theoretical and practical relevance of human rights in the globalized world. Distancing herself from the predominant legalistic human rights discourse, the author advocates revival of moral and ethical dimensions of human rights, complemented with lessons learnt from the tradition of citizenship rights as a strategy for securing room for human rights in the era of globalization.