Samuel Moyn and the new history of human rights

Performing nationalism: The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and Sri Lankan Tamil diasporic politics in Switzerland

“…While the UN as a humanitarian institution upholds the rights of the global peoples, within the human rights ethical project it is clearly regulated within a legal regime governed by texts, procedures and committees. Further, Moyn argues that self‐determination is not a human right, although since the 1940s UN institutions have considered it to be one (Weitz, 2013). The practical efficacy of human rights interventions is something that has over the years been questioned and discussed: some believe that these doubts have steered human rights practitioners to constantly try new avenues (Kelly, 2011), others consider the promised liberation by proponents of rights to be a form of imperialist or colonial domination (Alston, 2013), that human rights is “systematic ineffectiveness” (Hopgood, 2013, p. 7) and that it has been unable to better the well‐being of people (Posner, 2014).…”

“…The practical efficacy of human rights interventions is something that has over the years been questioned and discussed: some believe that these doubts have steered human rights practitioners to constantly try new avenues (Kelly, 2011), others consider the promised liberation by proponents of rights to be a form of imperialist or colonial domination (Alston, 2013), that human rights is “systematic ineffectiveness” (Hopgood, 2013, p. 7) and that it has been unable to better the well‐being of people (Posner, 2014). Many pro‐nationalist Tamil groups have considered the UN as an instrument that could affect change on questions of accountability and self‐determination, a belief shared by many social movements and civil society organisations around the world, as evident in terms of the rights of the indigenous peoples (Hays & Bellier, 2017; Mueller, 2018; Weitz, 2013).…”