Human Rights and the United Nations

“Indispensable for understanding the contributions and disappointments arising from the UN’s treatment of human rights. This carefully edited book depicts both the structural underpinnings of the UN double identity when it comes to human rights and its concrete experience with the realization of specific rights as analyzed by a gathering of talented experts.”

Richard Falk,Professor of International Law emeritus, Princeton University

“Both study and the operation of the United Nations have been too often stifled by legal and bureaucratic technocracy. This volume reinvigorates the topic by treating this unique institution in a properly political manner. Here, the UN and its related Human Rights apparatus are addressed as sites of contestation, contradiction, and struggle, where the stakes are high and the challenges daunting. The collection is moreover exemplary in examining the UN 'from below'. Sweeping aside the bureaucrats and diplomats, we listen here to the cries, demands, ideas, and dreams of Indigenous movements, feminisms of the Global South, stateless peoples, migrant workers, and others who toil to transform these institutions into tools of emancipation. A vital contribution.”

Robert Nichols,Professor of History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz

“This edited volume provides readers with a critical take on the work of the UN in the area of human rights from the standpoint of international relations and political science. Its added value is to examine the subject from more than just a state-centric point of view, introducing new perspectives to the debate over whether the Organization is fit for purpose today.”

Ardi Imseis, Professor of International Law, Queen’s University

“This edited volume offers a deeply critical examination of the foundational paradox embodied by the UN as a knowledge producer constructed by and for sovereign states actors, while seeking to uphold the promise of universal human rights. Through ten insightful chapters expertly framed by editors Abigail B. Bakan and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, the book highlights the enduring tensions of a UN caught between promise and practice. By addressing this profound paradox, each contribution compels the reader to face the inequities unravelling through and within the UN, while centering vulnerable non-state actors such as stateless populations, women, indigenous and racialized communities. A highly timely read for practitioners and students of human rights and the UN, as the latter enters its 8th decade amidst complex, intersectional, global crises.”

W. R. Nadège Compaoré,Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Toronto