Volume 3 Number 2 June 2004

DANIEL LEVY and NATAN SZNAIDER examine the impact that perceptions of the Holocaust have had on the initial articulation of human rights principles after World War II and their subsequent proliferation in the post-Cold War period. The diffusion of human rights norms during the last six decades is understood as the distillation of changing modes of Holocaust memory. The authors analyze how different representations of the Holocaust have been inscribed in war crimes trials and international conventions, shaping what they refer to as `cosmopolitan memories'. Cosmopolitanism, not unlike human rights itself, is frequently viewed as a realization of the Enlightenment project. On this view, both are universalistic aspirations predicated on a rather narrow continental European understanding. As much as enlightened thinking is important for the philosophical underpinnings of human rights, it remained confined to the European context of intellectual cosmopolitanism. Rather than confining cosmopolitanism to its continental Enlightenment articulations, the authors make a distinction between its universal aspirations and a more localized manifestation of cosmopolitanism. This is made possible by understanding the Holocaust as an event that has been dislocated from space and time precisely because it can be used to dramatize any act of injustice, racism, or crime perpetrated anywhere on the planet.

VALÉRIE ROSOUX addresses the issue of how officials use memory in order to cope with actual or potential conflicts among states or nations. She analyzes whether an adjustment regarding diverging interpretations of the past may function as a long-term confidence-building measure. In order to address this issue, the reflection is divided into four parts. The first part of the paper briefly describes the concept of official memory. The second part of the paper explores the role of memory in the framework of international negotiations and tries to ascertain whether and when the work of memory seems appropriate to resolving the problems at hand. The analysis considers the role of memory in the framework of conflict management. In this frame, negotiators aim at moving conflict from a violent to a political expression. The third part addresses the same question in the context of conflict resolution. In that arena, negotiators not only seek to limit and contain violent conflict, they attempt to settle issues as well. Finally, the fourth part describes the role of memory in the long run, when negotiators aim at building long-term positive relations between the parties (conflict transformation).

JOHN TORPEY explores the history of the movement for reparations for black Americans. He argues that the campaign for reparations for blacks must be understood above all as an effort to pursue greater economic equality for blacks in a political climate that is hostile to economic redistribution generally, but in which other precedents suggest that a struggle for 'reparations' for human rights violations may be a promising route to enhanced equality. Employing the legalistic language of reparations in this case, however, offers both advantages and disadvantages. The precedents set by reparations paid to Jews for their Holocaust related suffering, as well as to persons of Japanese descent for their unjust internment during World War 11, raise questions about why blacks might not similarly demand compensation for the wrongs to which they have been subjected and for their uncompensated contributions to the wealth of the contemporary United States. Payments to Holocaust survivors and interned Japanese Americans are a different matter than compensation to those who are ('merely') the descendants of slaves, rather than themselves the victims of atrocities. The point here is that the focus has to be shifted from perpetrators to beneficiaries; the time difference, as well as the fact that no living blacks themselves were enslaved, makes a big difference in how these different cases are viewed.

ARIEL COLONOMOS notes that the end of the Cold War has led to an increase in the use of multilateral and unilateral economic sanctions in international relations. During the 1990s, embargoes have led to very poor if not disastrous results. This paper discusses the role of the various groups and networks that have sought (and achieved) to criticize the politics of sanctions at the UN and in the US. It explores the function of non-state actors in world politics and their normative function. In the construction of global norms, these entrepreneurs have an essential role to play; they are able to exert such a pressure on institutions, leaving them no choice but try to justify their policies. These claims for justification have led to a deep change in the regime of sanctions and to the reinvention of the norm of discrimination in the field of economic warfare.

ROBERT O'BRIEN examines the standstill of the global advance of workers' rights in relation to the progressive march of civil and political human rights. He attempts to explain the limited success of labor rights by examining the emergence and transformation of labor rights, the transnational process of norm diffusion, and the relationship between labor rights and cosmopolitan visions of human rights. The article concludes by reflecting upon the obstacles to, and possibilities for, deepening the labor human rights norm. At base, the relative weakness of labor norms against work-related exploitation inevitably returns to issues of power in the global system.

DAVID JACOBSON examines the dispute between the United States and the European Union over the International Criminal Court and the underlying conflict, as yet not full articulated, over the future of human rights and democracy. For the Europeans, human rights are transnational and to be enforced through judicial mechanisms, like the ICC or through national courts claiming universal jurisdiction. This judicial gaze recognizes national jurisdiction only on a conditional basis, limiting self-government. In contrast, the American tradition views human rights as reinforcing, not superseding, the democratic nation-state. These competing cosmopolitan visions render the 'universal' (and, conversely, the 'particular' or national) aspects of human rights in distinct ways, ways that are at the normative heart of this struggle. In examining the concepts of 'universal' and 'particular' and their social and legal implications, we can more clearly bring to light the challenge that transnational human rights and global judicialism pose for the future of democracy and republicanism.

RUTI G. TEITEL offers and interpretive account of contemporary evolution of international humanitarian law, and seeks to illuminate the significance of the expansion of this regime, contend that this norm is of particular relevance in a transitional globalizing order.

GEORGE M. THOMAS argues that the contention over religious rights is part of the construction of a world civil society. He first describes the importance of religious conversion to modern cultural definitions of individual and collective identities. He then draws on debates within the United Nations to analyze the contentious discourse about conversion and proselytizing, documenting two propositions. First, within the United Nations, religious rights are framed in terms of tolerance and anti-discrimination, and within this frame actors' discourse about conversion and proselytizing reflects underlying cultural assumptions about individualistic or collectivistic, objectivist or subjectivist definitions of religion. Second, transnational voluntary associations, legitimated in the stateless world polity as moral, knowledge entrepreneurs, are increasingly important actors in this contention. The article concludes with a summary of the implications for religion, human rights, and emerging world civil society.

MARIE TÖRNQUIST-CHESNIER examines how non-state actors such as non-governmental organizations, which are traditionally excluded from the law making process, increasingly take part in it at various stages. This participation is due in great part to their legal and/or scientific expertise and generates an ethical trend in international relations through the promotion of common values.