Human Rights, Southern Voices

This anthology contains a variety of Southern perspectives on human rights and contemporary issues relating to Islam, African custom, constitution making and abuses of the language of human rights.

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A just international order and a healthy cosmopolitan discipline of law need to include perspectives that take account of the standpoints, interests, concerns and beliefs of non-Western people and traditions. The dominant scholarly and activist discourses about human rights have developed largely without reference to these other viewpoints. Claims about universality sit uneasily with ignorance of other traditions and parochial or ethnocentric tendencies. The object of the book is to make accessible the ideas of four jurists who present distinct 'Southern' perspectives on human rights.