SF-H1196 Honors Human Rights in the 21st Century

Are universal human rights still relevant in the 21st Century? In the aftermath of World War II, human rights advocacy and human rights law has been central to international politics. However, the pressures of economic globalization, war on terror, and climate change along with the resur-gence of authoritarianism and anti-liberal regimes have raised new questions on whether the in-ternational human rights framework is still capable of addressing issues of justice and freedom in the modern world. In this course, we will review the theory and practice of human rights as well as the challenges of enforcing these rights in a complex and often hostile international environment. In the first section, we cover the historical and philosophical foundations of human rights and the international regime of human rights. What are human rights and who decides? Are they enforceable? Rights for whom? Can and do states protect citizens' human rights? In the second section, we follow the debates over the universality of human rights and cultural relativist critiques of human rights. Are human rights a Western and neo-colonialist institution? As such, does the discourse of human rights create victims and saviors and reinforce racialized structures of inequality? In the third section, we examine the framework of human rights in the context of contemporary experiences of war, genocide, trafficking, and other human rights violations. We will focus on 3-4 case studies that the students select and that the student will work in groups to research and present to others.