This multi-disciplinary collection interrogates the role of human rights in addressing past injustices. The volume draws on legal scholars, political scientists, anthropologists and political philosophers grappling with the weight of the memory of historical injustices arising from conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Australasia. It examines the role of human rights as legal doctrine, rhetoric and policy as developed by states, international organizations, regional groups and non-governmental bodies. The authors question whether faith in human rights is justified as balm to heal past injustice or whether such faith nourishes both victimhood and self-justification. These issues are explored through three discrete sections: moments of memory and injustice, addressing injustice; and questions of faith. In each of these sections, authors address the manner in which memory of past conflicts and injustice haunt our contemporary understanding of human rights. The volume questions whether the expectation that human rights law can deal with past injustice has undermined the development of an emancipatory politics of human rights for our current world.
Kalliopi Chainoglou is a Lecturer in International and European Institutions at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki (Greece) and visiting Research Fellow at the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict, at the University of East London. She completed her PhD in International Law at King’s College London and is an Associate Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy. She works in the areas of human rights law, cultural rights and policies, and international peace and security. She is an expert of the Council of Europe/ERICarts Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe and has published extensively on human rights and international law. Her most recent publication is Culture and Human Rights: The Wroclaw Commentaries (de Gruyter, 2016).
Barry Collins is a Senior Lecturer at University of East London, where he is a member of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict. His research deals with themes of legal theory, international law, human rights and memory in post-conflict societies, with a particular focus on Ireland and the Middle East.
Michael Phillips is a banking lawyer and independent researcher. He has had an interest in the relationship between religion, politics and transitional justice since doing his PhD on the Aboriginal reconciliation process at the University of Sydney. He was formerly Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of East London.
John Strawson is honorary Professor of Law at the University of East London where he is a member of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict and a fellow of the Terrorism and Extremism Research Centre. He works in the areas Law and Middle East Studies focusing on colonial legal history and Islamic law. His publications include Partitioning Palestine: Legal Fundamentalism in the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict (2010) and he is the editor of Law after Ground Zero, re-issued in hardback by Routledge in 2016.
