Do the Nordics warrant the label 'global good Samaritans' in human rights promotion? Is the Nordic welfare state a close to perfect realisation of human rights norms? Alternatively, do Nordic international and domestic human rights policies constitute a peculiar 'Nordic human rights paradox' where norms are supported internationally while not being implemented at home? In what is the first collection of articles on Nordic human rights history, we take issue with previous scholarship, finding it often to be unsubstantiated and lacking a basis in historical contexts and relevant source materials. This also includes the stream of historical studies in the past decade, where, until recently, the Nordic countries have represented something of a blind spot. However, the lack of prior interest in the region means there are several promising avenues for historical investigations of both the Nordic countries in human rights history and the role of human rights in the history of the region.
In 1986, the International Labour Organization (ILO) started a process aimed at revising its 1957 Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention (C107). This process was completed in 1989 with the adoption of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (C169). Simultaneously, national legal and political processes in many Western states addressed the rights of their own indigenous populations. These states voted in favour of C169, but only Norway chose to ratify it – indeed, as the first country in the world, in June 1990. This article details the internal political processes within the Norwegian government, to shed light on the significance of the domestic situation in Norway for its support for C169. We find that a low degree of perceived need for domestic changes may enable states to take a leading role in creating new human rights conventions. Furthermore, the participation of government officials in international horizontal and vertical policy networks may shape the policies of their ministries and thereby those of the state.
Leadership in human rights was added to the 'engagement policy' in Norway's foreign policy from the late 1970s, and the country emerged as a supporter of initiatives to draft new human rights treaties. This paper compares Norwegian participation in the drafting of three key human rights treaties in the 1980s in order to examine the significance of its dualist legal system in contributions to these efforts. Based on parliamentary negotiations, archival materials of the ministries involved, and private papers, the article argues that Norway's dualist legal system, as practiced at the time, enabled the government to ratify human rights treaties quickly and also informed the state's disposition towards different human rights projects long before any ratification took place. In other words, it facilitated impulses to pursue ideologically and politically desirable projects under the rubric of international legal norms. 1 The authors wish to thank anonymous reviewers and the participants at the conferences and workshops named in the introduction to this special issue for valuable feedback. We also thank Anders G. Hamre for research assistance in the early phase of preparing this article. Norwegian language sources that appear as quotes and concepts in the text and footnotes in English have been translated by the authors. Titles of books and sources in the footnotes appear in the original languages.
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