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HUQUQ–UNIVERSAL RIGHTS

Expanding Rights and Expanding Powers: Assessing and Contextualizing Human Rights Abuses in an Emerging Multipolar World

Research Assistants HUQUQ, Journal, Research Notes Globalism, Multipolarity 0

By Anthea Rose Abstract Since the fall of the Soviet Union to the Ukrainian crisis, the world order has been characterized as a unipolar one, wherein the United States monopolized power. A facet of world order acutely affected by this monopoly of administering justice and world dominance is within human rights practices–– a primary interest of this paper. As unipolarity becomes stretched thin, challenged in a geopolitical context by newly empowered contestants asserting individuality from international hegemonic structures, it is necessary to consider the protection and violation of ‘universal’ human rights and their implementation in a multiplicity of spheres–– including international enforcement, domestic monitoring, and the continuing effects of historical human rights abuses within enacted systems. The redistribution of world powers demands an expansion of the conceptualization of human rights to better define and safeguard rights protections in a transformed political landscape of the international and domestic hemisphere. This paper examines the interconnectedness of world polarity- its impact on human rights abuses, the geopolitical climate and its responsiveness to competing states. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this essay will demonstrate the potential of multipolarity in lessening human rights abuses. ________________ Keywords: human rights, multipolarity, unipolarity, social rights, globalism _____________ Defining Human Rights Traditional Approaches to Human Rights As both paradigm and practice, human rights are implemented within a delicate definition of their purpose and protections. Human rights are indicative of the relationship between an individual and the state, determining patterns of governance and punishment. Human rights can be loosely defined as […]

How the War between Ideals and Practices in the West is Exposing Supremacism as the Force behind All Rights Abuses

Prof. Souaiaia HUQUQ, Journal Islam in Europe, Muslims in Europe 0

By Ahmed E. Souaiaia * When school started in France this fall, Muslim children who wished to wear an abaya (for girls) or a qamis (for boys) had to choose between the dress and education. They were compelled to make the difficult choice because the French government banned Islamic attire that offends secularism. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, defended the ban, stressing that it aims to defend secularism and the principles of the republic, but also went further to connect Islamic dress to terrorism: “We also live in our society with a minority, with people who change the direction of a religion and come to challenge the Republic and secularism… Sometimes the worst happened. We cannot act as if there had been no terrorist attack and there was no Samuel Paty.” This statement is an explicit confirmation that the ban is not an instrument that applies to all to preserve the “neutral space” that secularism allegedly creates. It is a ban that targets a specific social group, Muslims. Moreover, the ban is targeting Muslims, according to Macron, because Islamic practices, including wearing a traditional dress, produces terrorism. These are the values, the reasoning, and the principles of the “enlightened world” that must be universalized, again, as per Macron’s recent instructions to his diplomatic core. The right to education that is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was produced by the Western world at the conclusion of the European wars, and that was used thereafter as a political […]