FINAL_Billaud_Cowan_Between_Learning_and_Schooling_Cowan_and_Billaud_for_SRO.pdf (346.81 kB)
Between learning and schooling: the politics of human rights monitoring at the Universal Periodic Review
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 20:39 authored by Jane Cowan, Julie BillaudThis paper explores the politics of monitoring at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a new United Nations human rights monitoring mechanism which aims to promote a universal approach and equal treatment when reviewing each country’s human rights situation. To what extent are these laudable aims realised, and realisable, given entrenched representations of the West and the Rest as well as geopolitical and economic inequalities both historically and in the present? Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the UN in 2010–11, the final year of the UPR’s first cycle, we explore how these aims were both pursued and subverted, paying attention to two distinct ways of talking about the UPR: first, as a learning culture in which UN member states ‘share best practice’ and engage in constructive criticism; and second, as an exam which UN member states face as students with vastly differing attitudes and competences. Accounts and experiences of diplomats from states that are not placed in the ‘good students’ category offer valuable insights into the inherent contradictions of de-historicised and de-contextualised approaches to human rights.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Third World QuarterlyISSN
0143-6597Publisher
Taylor & FrancisExternal DOI
Issue
5Volume
36Page range
1175-1190Department affiliated with
- Anthropology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- No
Legacy Posted Date
2015-04-29First Open Access (FOA) Date
2017-02-01First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2015-04-29Usage metrics
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