Injustice, Memory and Faith in Human Rights

This multi-disciplinary collection interrogates the claimed redemptive role of human rights law in resolving historical conflicts. The volume draws on legal scholars, political scientists, anthropologists and political philosophers grappling with the weight of historical injustices arising from conflicts in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East and Australia. It questions the role of human rights as legal doctrine, rhetoric and policy in addressing the critical issue of justice in conflict resolution. The authors through the interrogation of human rights question its balm as a medium of transitional justice and consider the way in which faith in human rights can both prolong existing conflicts and freeze the past into a binary of perpetrators and victims. There are three themes forming discrete sections: theoretical foundations; memory and history; and justice and injustice. In each of these sections authors address the manner in which the conception of human rights affects the way in which the memory of past conflicts and injustices are represented and how discourses of contemporary justice operate. The different academic disciplines of the contributors enrich our understanding of these processes.

Kalliopi Chainoglou, University of Bolton, UK, Barry Collins, Michael Phillips and John Strawson, University of East London, UK