Book Review
The Future of Human Rights ( Brysk, Alison, Polity Press, 2018)It would be unwise to regard human rights issues as past or contemporary issues. The variable element in the equation is not the human rights issue itself, but the context that calls it into question. The lack of right to education, for instance, has always been an issue in some parts of the world, and will continue to be one. Just because a particular context to do with the human right to education may be highlighted and tackled does not mean that the human rights issue itself is tackled; it just means that the context has shifted onto another one. On the other hand, thinking about the future of human rights critically could potentially lead to realistic solutions for human rights breaches. Alison Brysk, an American political scientist specialising in international human rights, and a Stanford graduate, does exactly this in her book, The Future of Human Rights, published for the first time in 2018.
The Future of Human Rights serves as a handbook on human rights which not only provides an explanatory aspect, but offers suggestions, and the author’s own opinions on certain matters with regard to the future. The main intention of the book comes across as informatory and persistently solution-based regarding the underlying issues undermining human rights. Despite the interdependence of various issues under the umbrella of human rights which Brysk takes into account, she manages to establish a clear structure free from dull repetitions. Alternatively, the book provides useful repetitions in terms of concepts, such as the concept of ‘people out of place’, indicating ‘second-class citizens and those oppressed by authorities above and below the state’. It can be observed that the term ‘people out of place’ is used as an alternative perspective throughout multiple chapters. The use of the same wordings, such as ‘people out of place’, facilitates the understanding of the book, and allows comprehensibility by a larger audience.
Another aspect that facilitates the reading of the book is its simplistic approach to complex questions. This can be exemplified by the question on the citizenship gap, the gap of access to human rights between citizens and ‘people out of place’. Brysk relates this concept to the questions of ‘who is human?’, ‘what is right?’, and ‘who is responsible?’, which are rather simple questions at a first glance, but get more complex the more one thinks about them. Particularly this example provides a rational perspective on the detrimental question of the citizenship gap, and emphasises the treatment of ‘people out of place’ by States. Brysk continues to elaborate on this issue stating that “full recognition still depends on membership in an institutional community”. Different kinds of ‘people out of place’ are explored in the continuation of this chapter, such as the case of refugees and indigenous people. An improvement can be made regarding the number of examples given, especially in the context of the indigenous people. Indeed, mostly developing countries, such as Asian and Latin American countries, are exemplified in this context, whereas the legal and political treatment of indigenous peoples in first-world countries is not explored.
In my personal opinion, it would have been interesting to have the stance of developing countries on one side, and on the other, countries like Australia or Canada. Particularly as , indigenous people are still not legally recognised in the Australian Constitution and the disappointingly recent coverage of indigenous peoples in the Canadian Constitution in 1983.
Brysk uses her own personal experiences to create a contrast between a story-telling language and a more academic language in the book. I found myself looking forward to starting a new chapter in order to read Brysk’s experiences kept in small sections; from familial examples, to young activists she met during a workshop in Vienna. Her own opinions and beliefs prevail in these sections, adapting a more positive language about the future based on contemporary examples, such as the Black Lives Movement. These small parts give the book a more hopeful tone, separate from the academic approach complying with a more realistic outlook on the future of human rights.
The text provides a great deal of statistics and quotes from academic articles. The author’s choice to use secondary sources for the areas of human rights covered in the book allows an interpretative perspective into the issues discussed. For example, her use of different criticisms from renowned political scientists such as David Forsythe in the context of the historical exclusions of human rights intrigues the reader to challenge and further investigate fundamental human rights questions. Not only does Brysk explore various criticisms, but she does not fail to reflect on them through a critical analysis comparing these different views.
Moreover, she uses case studies. the subsection titled Deadly Democracies: The case of Mexico. She gives a good number of figures to emphasise the severity of Mexico’s case, pointing out that over 180,000 Mexicans have been violently killed by either the state, a parastate, or criminal perpetrators. Following this case study, the Repairing the Security Gap? section offers solutions to the issues acknowledged in Mexico.
Finally, in her concluding chapter, Brysk explores ways of reconstructing rights in a post-liberal world, where she goes back to the human rights issues she mentioned, and comes to her final message. She answers her questions on the citizenship gap mentioned earlier in this review rationally and realistically, and again in a simple language. Her final sentence answers directly the question hidden in the title of the book itself. She writes, “The future of human rights is not fixed, but we can chart its movement and shape its motion - because the future of human rights is in our hands.”, and creates a full circle to the start of the book. Overall, she presents a book that is informative, explanatory, exemplary, emphasised, and suggestive
