This book challenges traditional accounts of the Third World's contribution to international human rights. It demonstrates that diplomats from Third World countries helped both to radicalize the UN human rights agenda in the heyday of decolonization and to undermine that agenda by advancing cultural relativism as an excuse for abuses in the 1970s.

Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights

Roland Burke

2010 | 240 pages | Cloth $55.00 | Paper $24.95
Political Science
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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Politics of Decolonization and the Evolution of the International Human Rights Project
1. Human Rights and the Birth of the Third World: The Bandung Conference
2. "Transforming the End into the Means": The Third World and the Right to Self-Determination
3. Putting the Stamps Back On: Apartheid, Anticolonialism, and the Accidental Birth of a Universal Right to Petition
4. "It Is Very Fitting": Celebrating Freedom in the Shah's Iran, the First World Conference on Human Rights,Tehran 1968
5. "According to Their Own Norms of Civilization": The Rise of Cultural Relativism and the Decline of Human Rights
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments