Freeman - Human Rights

1. Barbara Adam, Time
2. Alan Aldridge, Consumption
3. Alan Aldridge, The Market
4. Jakob Arnoldi, Risk
5. Will Atkinson, Class
6. Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer, Disability
7. Darin Barney, The Network Society
8. Mildred Blaxter, Health 2nd edition
9. Harriet Bradley, Gender 2nd edition
10. Harry Brighouse, Justice
11. Mnica Brito Vieira and David Runciman, Representation
12. Steve Bruce, Fundamentalism 2nd edition
13. Joan Busfield, Mental Illness
14. Margaret Canovan, The People
15. Andrew Jason Cohen, Toleration
16. Alejandro Cols, Empire
17. Mary Daly, Welfare
18. Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self 3rd edition
19. Steve Fenton, Ethnicity 2nd edition
20. Katrin Flikschuh, Freedom
21. Russell Hardin, Trust
22. Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality
23. Geoffrey Ingham, Capitalism
24. Fred Inglis, Culture
25. Robert H. Jackson, Sovereignty
26. Jennifer Jackson Preece, Minority Rights
27. Gill Jones, Youth
28. Paul Kelly, Liberalism
29. Anne Mette Kjr, Governance
30. Ruth Lister, Poverty
31. Jon Mandle, Global Justice
32. Cillian McBride, Recognition
33. Anthony Payne and Nicola Phillips, Development
34. Judith Phillips, Care
35. Chris Phillipson, Ageing
36. Robert Reiner, Crime
37. Michael Saward, Democracy
38. John Scott, Power
39. Timothy J. Sinclair, Global Governance
40. Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism 2nd edition
41. Deborah Stevenson, The City
42. Leslie Paul Thiele, Sustainability 2nd edition
43. Steven Peter Vallas, Work
44. Stuart White, Equality
45. Michael Wyness, Childhood

Copyright Michael Freeman 2017

The right of Michael Freeman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First edition published in 2002 by Polity Press

This edition published in 2017 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1027-6

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1028-3(pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Freeman, Michael, 1936- author.

Title: Human rights / Michael Freeman.

Description: Third edition. | Cambridge ; Malden, MA : Polity, 2017. | Series: Key concepts | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016055252 (print) | LCCN 2016058072 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509510276 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509510283 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509510306 (Mobi) | ISBN 9781509510313 (Epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Human rights. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom & Security / Human Rights.

Classification: LCC JC571 .F675 2017 (print) | LCC JC571 (ebook) | DDC 323dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016055252

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Each edition of this book has been written under the shadow of a human-rights dilemma. The first was completed in 2001, shortly after NATO had conducted a bombing campaign against Serbia to protect the human rights of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Since this action had not been authorized by the UN Security Council, it raised the question as to the conditions under which outside powers had the right, or the duty, to intervene militarily in the affairs of a sovereign state to protect the human rights of some of its citizens the so-called doctrine of the responsibility to protect.

The second was completed in 2010, after the election of Barack Obama as President of the USA, and the ambiguous ending of the global war on terror. The Obama presidency failed to resolve dilemmas about how to fight terrorism while defending human rights or the responsibility to protect.

This third edition, completed in 2016, was written under the shadow of the terrible civil war in Syria, and the challenge of massive refugee flows. These constitute a kind of crisis for the human rights movement. Crisis has been a theme of some recent academic writings on human rights: Michael Ignatieff (1999) has announced the midlife crisis of human rights; Stephen Hopgood (2013) their endtimes; and Eric Posner (2014) the twilight of human rights law. In the second half of 2016 human-rights supporters were alarmed by the rise of extreme nationalism in several Western democracies, as expressed, for example, in the referendum vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA, and the increasing influence of right-wing governments and parties in continental Europe. Despite these developments, this book offers a defiantly, though cautiously, optimistic alternative to this fashionable pessimism.

This edition updates, revises and hopefully improves the second edition. In particular, brings the story of climate change up to the Paris Conference of NovemberDecember 2015. There are also updates and revisions in the other chapters.

This edition is dedicated, with admiration, to the democrats of Syria; with respect to all those seeking to struggle for human rights in a sustainable environment; and with love to Atala, Emilio and Ada.

Michael Freeman

University of Essex

November 2016

One evening in the autumn of 1977, Nick Bunnin, then teaching in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Essex, invited me to accompany him to a meeting of Amnesty International in Colchester. I agreed, reluctantly (for no reason other than laziness), but ended that evening as Chairperson of the newly formed Colchester Group of Amnesty International. This book would never have been written were it not for Nick Bunnin and my colleagues local, national and international at Amnesty. I would like to remember particularly the late Peter Duffy, whose moral commitment and intellectual rigour made him an exemplary human-rights activist.