event
Global Governance Colloquium
Monday
08
April
Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, Lecturer of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki

‘Movement In The Right Direction’: An Ethnography Of A Human Rights Report

Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, Lecturer of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki
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Room S9 - Interpetal, Maison de la paix

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How can we understand the non-stop reporting cycles that characterize human rights monitoring – and what do these cycles tell us of the contemporary human rights phenomenon and the role of human rights in the current world order? This presentation, based on an ongoing book project, asks these questions from the vantage point of one human rights report’s lifecycle submitted to a high-profile UN body – namely Finland’s 6th state report on its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) processed by the UN Human Rights Committee in 2013.  By focusing in particular on the movement accompanying reporting, this presentation asks: what kind of ideological motivations both sustain and legitimate this movement? What roles does this movement have in our paradoxical world order structured around geographically immobile states, the facilitated move of capital and goods and the disciplined move of people? The presentation will conclude by arguing, somewhat provocatively, that whereas the explicit purpose of human rights is to instigate change, the non-stop movement of human rights artefacts, expertise and people in fact solidifies and legitimizes the status quo.

Speaker

 

Discussant

  • Fuad Zarbiyev,  Associate Professor in International Law at the Graduate Institute

 

A light sandwich lunch will be served from 12.15

This event is part of the Global Governance Colloquium series.