Anthony J. Langlois

Special Issue: Not Such an International Human Rights Norm? Local Resistance to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights—Preliminary Comments

The issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights has loomed large in debates over human rights in recent years. In the domestic politics of Western countries, the headline issue has been same-sex marriage, which as of May 2014 is legal in 16 countries as well as a growing number of subnational jurisdictions including 19 US states (Lambda Legal 2014). Internationally, meanwhile, the focus has been on the decriminalization of homosexuality—homosexuality carries the death penalty in five countries and is criminalized in a further 70 countries (BBC News 2014)—and advocating for the recognition and observation of the basic human rights of LGBT people to be protected from violence and discrimination. Arguably, the clearest articulation of this stance was made by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a speech to mark International Human Rights Day on December 6, 2011. While acknowledging both the sensitivity of the issue and her own country’s imperfect record on LGBT rights, she presented a strong and cogent argument in favor of LGBT rights being included in international human rights norms and laws:

The Elusive Ontology of Human Rights

What are human rights? After looking at the reasons why the ontology of human rights should not be reduced to the human rights legal infrastructure, and noting that the origin of human rights in “natural law” is no longer a widely persuasive answer, I shall consider a number of recently popular alternatives. My purpose in examining these is to argue that the “what” of human rights resides in philosophical claims about the value of the human person. The particular approaches considered all depend upon a “high anthropology”. I argue that contemporary accounts take this high anthropology from historical sources they no longer think viable, without giving an alternative account of why it should be held. Such an account is necessary, however, for human rights to be an authoritative political doctrine.

Human rights: the globalisation and fragmentation of moral discourse

The language of human rights, along with much else in international relations, presently exhibits the features of globalisation and fragmentation. Globalisation in that human rights is used throughout the world at many levels to discuss moral approval and condemnation. Fragmentation in that human rights means different things to different people, and may well be used in contradictory ways by agents of social change. Yet most advocates of human rights wish to retain the adjective ‘universal’ along with a sense of the moral objectivity of human rights. This article suggests that a better way to ensure human rights universalism is to think of the concept as a tool , not an objectively existing moral standard or entity.

The narrative metaphysics of human rights

Abstract This article is about our understanding of an idea which has become one of the most internationally successful political doctrines of our day: the doctrine of human rights. This doctrines popular success has often been attributed to its moral universalism, which flows from the claim that we have human rights simply by virtue of being human. It is my contention, however, that neither human rights, their claim to universalism, nor their link to our putative humanity can be understood without the acceptance, implicitly or explicitly, of a narrative philosophical tradition which provides the substantive content to which we appeal when invoking these terms.

Political Research and Human Research Ethics Committees

Human Research Ethics Committees have become an established part of the institutional structure of research in the humanities and social sciences over the last two decades in Australia, a development which many in the political disciplines have regarded with ambiguity or outright hostility. My purpose is to consider some of the particular problems which arise for the political disciplines from the form of research ethics review which has become institutionalised in Australia, and to suggest some reforms which would significantly ameliorate these problems. My argument is that the conceptual framework on which research ethics review is built, and consequently the institutional model by which ethical review is applied within Australian universities, is not appropriate to some forms of political research, with serious detrimental consequences. These consequences may include, but are not limited to: research findings being potentially skewed; research going underground or being undertaken in ways which diverge from what has been approved by committees; self-censorship; disengagement from institutional research governance procedures; the generation of risk for researchers who are operating outside institutional approvals because they feel they ‘have to’; the construction of unnecessary prejudice against the legitimate aims of research ethics review procedures; and, finally, and most disturbingly, important and legitimate research not being undertaken. Raise the issue of research ethics with a politics researcher in the hallways of any Australian university, and you are likely to meet with a litany of complaints which match in some measure or another to my list above. Being a politics academic and – until recently – the chair of a university-wide Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC), has been an interesting experience; one which has led me to offer the following analysis and suggestions for reform.

Human rights and modern liberalism: a critique

The idea of human rights has become one of the central moral notions of both the theory and practice of international politics. While its foundation and future in the practice of politics looks bright, it is an idea that still causes great trouble at the theoretical level. What are human rights? Why do we have them? To what should we attribute the authority of their moral claims? The theorist Michael Freeman has suggested one theory that by addressing such questions may serve as a foundation for human rights. His theory, however, ends by begging the questions it set out to answer.

Human Rights and Cosmopolitan Liberalism

Abstract It may be suggested that much of what goes by the name of contemporary cosmopolitanism is liberalism envisioned at the global level. It has become a common claim that the liberalism which provides the ethical content for cosmopolitanism is not tolerant enough of diverse ways of living; that liberalism’s claim to be a just referee between competing conceptions of the good life in fact hides a failure to treat diverse forms of life with an egalitarian hand. This essay argues this is a correct observation that is in principle a good thing, not something to be derided. At least from the liberal point of view, part of the misunderstanding lies in the tendency to translate liberalism’s claim to be egalitarian towards all individuals into the claim that this means liberalism must be egalitarian towards all the conceptions of the good life that are held by these individuals. Such an extension of liberalism’s tolerance and egalitarianism would in fact undermine liberalism’s core values and render the cosmopolitan project a series of contradictions in terms.

Human Rights, “Orientation,” and ASEAN

This article will first look at the recent promulgation by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of its ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD). This development follows on from ASEANs official attempts since the development of the 2007 ASEAN Charter to promote a “people-oriented” ASEAN. This article explores the various criticisms that have arrived of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, and, in particular, considers the criticisms concerned with or relevant to sexual orientation and gender identity rights. Second, the article uses the context of the arrival of the AHRD and, indeed, the arrival of its auspicing institution, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), to ask broader and deeper questions about the cultural politics of making rights claims and the manner in which these claims may contribute to the development of a more democratic politics.

Human Rights in Crisis? A Critical Polemic Against Polemical Critics

Human Rights prosper as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century. Those proclaiming the “Age of Rights” seem to be correct. The term now has great political respectability and legitimacy; international human rights law makes great strides; institution building gathers pace; human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) thrive; and the study of human rights takes place in all the great centers of learning and is taken seriously by previously skeptical disciplines (philosophy, anthropology, international relations). But is all as it seems? Costas Douzinas, for one, thinks not. He is concerned about the end of human rights in a way which is consistent with their increased prominence and apparent efficacy. The attraction of human rights for many who speak in their name has been their revolutionary and emancipatory potential—their capacity to aid people in their claim to be treated with value, as equals. The fear is that human rights have become too successful, that they have been assimilated by the system, have become an appurtenance of the powerful, and now lie in wait to sabotage those who would use them to claim their equal

Charity and Justice in Global Poverty Relief

Peter Singers message in One World: The Ethics of Globalisation is that we must now consider the whole of the world and all of its peoples our home. The penultimate chapter ‘One Community’ argues that there are no good reasons why those individuals who have the means should not donate to organisations that address the problems of global poverty relief. This, however, is not an adequate ethic; it does not provide the foundation we need in order to construct a sustainably just world order. Singers recommendations may well lead to the construction of a world in which there is a significant reduction in the level of global poverty. However, Singers route to poverty reduction is via charity, not justice. Global justice is not the same as individualist practical ethics, even if the latter is applied on a global scale. Singers concerns for long-term global poverty relief will be better served by an agenda that promotes global institutional change, rather than one that is limited to hoping against donation fatigue among the worlds affluent.