Human Rights Elephants in an Era of Globalisation

Although human rights have been heralded as the great hope for contemporary pursuits of equality and justice, they are increasingly challenged by present-day globalisation developments. This includes the outsourcing of control to private actors and third states as well as the redrawing of membership categories through ‘crimmigration’ strategies. Looking at migration detention and imprisonment, this book examines to what extent human rights can remain of relevance as a protection framework where such globalisation trends occur. It does so, inter alia, by focusing on macro-level developments as well as on two case studies concerning Australia/Nauru and Norway/the Netherlands. Likening human rights to elephants, both being majestic yet critically endangered, the book argues that an interdisciplinary approach to human rights is long-overdue. Based on analysis of globalisation developments and the veracity and resilience of international human rights law instruments, including the ECHR and ICCPR, it presents an innovative multidimensional framework of protection that incorporates not only the value of human rights law, but also that of human rights morality, protest, and discourse. The book therewith positions human rights analysis squarely at the crossroads of law and social science, giving rise to both hope and concern for the future of the human rights project.

This is a volume in the series of the Meijer s Research Institute and Graduate School of the Leiden Law School of Leiden University. This study is part of the Law School’s research programme ‘Criminal Justice: Legitimacy, Accountability and Effectivity’.