<http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_6.1-2/Commissiong.htm>Link
--Posted By johannes to <http://www.monochrom.at/english/2008/06/history-of-human-rights-from-ancient.htm>monochrom at 6/24/2008 04:36:00 PM
Review of "The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the
Globalization Era" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004;
written by Micheline Ishay). Rreviewed by Anand Bertrand Commissiong.
Judging by the queries about the book from usually indifferent New
York City Subway riders, The History of Human Rights certainly has an
interested audience outside the academy. To be sure, considering the
"slaughter bench of history," and the twentieth century's innovations
of mass murder, the development and institutionalization of human
rights the book charts represent remarkable achievements. But
institutionalization is not the same as compliance. Thus what may
account for my fellow travelers' interest is that, as immigrants from
developing countries, they are probably well aware that the
mid-twentieth century's human rights victories proved incapable of
halting atrocities perpetrated after their ratification. For while an
acknowledged genocide in western Sudan rages, economic disparities
continue to increase globally as the richest, most powerful nation on
earth is engaged in an ill conceived war initiated on the most flimsy
pretexts. Speaking in this context, Micheline Ishay provides a
necessary and refreshingly accessible study.
