UN FORUM SERIES – a cartographer’s guide to measurement: mapping where we are, determining where we want to be and getting into the messy in-roads of legislation

This post was contributed by Michelle Staggs Kelsall, doctoral candidate in law at the University of Nottingham and former Deputy Director of the Human Rights Resource Centre (for ASEAN). When I think about measurement, it brings to mind for me a popular children’s song that depicts the meticulous workings of an inchworm. ‘Two and two are four,’ sings the inchworm, ‘four and four are eight’ she continues, to which the chorus of children replies: Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, You and your arithmetic, you’ll probably go far, Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, Seems to me, you’d stop and see, How beautiful they ar

Disordering International Law

This article examines critical approaches to liberal internationalism in international law. It argues that, despite ongoing disavowals of the liberal international legal order, most critical international lawyers are yet to let go of liberal vocabularies in order to re-imagine how order might be constituted anew. The article proposes a disordering critique of international law. Disordering international law comprises a process of reflective discernment. Through this process, norms, conventions and principles are determined with reference to a multiplicity of spatial and temporal orders and reframe any understanding of how legal order is constituted internationally. Drawing from the concept of non-duality proposed by Ratna Kapur and the writings of Justice Cançado Trindade, it then conceptualizes a disordering sensibility. Scholars embarking on international legal disordering would ask: how do I understand the arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other? How is ‘order’ determined as a result? What sequence, pattern or method am I imposing and how does that affect any characterization of ‘legal’ ordering? Whose knowledge is included, whose knowledge is excluded and why? The analysis, however, does not stop there. The further and final questions to ask are: how does this change any conception of legal ordering that remains central to the practice of international law? And how might we begin to conceptualize that order and practice differently? The return to practice provides a path towards change, which the article argues is urgently needed. I commence with some answers to these questions and hope to open a space for further disordering, premised on a turning away from dominant liberal frames

Horizontal Embeddedness, Business, and Human Rights: Fostering the Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights within the ASEAN Community

This chapter considers regional integration in one of the most contested areas of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Member States (AMS) commitments under the ASEAN Charter – the promotion and protection of human rights – as it relates to one of AMS’ most significant constituencies – the business community. In this context, ASEAN's approach to integration via cooperation and coordination at the inter-ministerial and inter-agency level – what Diane Desierto has aptly described as a system of 'horizontal embeddedness' – stands to become an important example of how the corporate responsibility to respect human rights can be integrated into the regulation of the private sector in Asia. The historic establishment of the ASEAN Community in 2015 brings with it an opportunity to strengthen corporate social responsibility in ASEAN, and in particular, to concretize the corporate responsibility to respect human rights within the ASEAN business community

Symbolic, shambolic or simply sui generis? Reflections from the Field on Cambodia's Extraordinary Chambers

Although it has achieved significant milestones since it was established in 2006, debates about the legitimacy of Cambodia's Extraordinary Chambers continue to rage. These debates tend to centre on the extent to which the tribunal is continuing to comply with international fair trial standards while at the same time achieving justice for the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. This article asserts that there are essentially three different ways to conceptualise the institutional form the CEC has taken: either it is symbolic, shambolic or simply 'sui generis'. In doing so, it challenges prevailing orthodoxies about the Court's ability to create a monumental spectacle for victims or promote a 'rule of law' agenda. It concludes that, while we may be disappointed that the tribunal has failed to achieve certain of its stated aims, it may yet prove to have instituted a valuable process in Cambodia

The new ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights : toothless tiger or tentative first step?

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/In late 2008 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) committed to creating a human rights body, which emerged as the Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), the terms of reference (TOR) for which have since been adopted. Although the TOR for the commission currently outlines a primarily advisory rather than an enforcement role, the very existence of the ICHR has the potential to act as a trigger to further discussion on human rights issues in member states and open avenues for further action. To take maximum advantage of this opportunity to further the human rights agenda in ASEAN member states, it is essential that critical early decisions are made carefully so as to leave the most latitude for future action. While some observers are concerned that the ICHR lacks teeth, the fact that all ten ASEAN governments have agreed to implement a human rights commission is remarkable and is an essential first step toward ASEAN's stated goal of respecting and protecting human rights

From a stark utopia to everyday utopias

This article considers the emergence of the Business and Human Rights agenda at the United Nations. It argues that the agenda can be seen as an example of the UN Human Rights Council attempting to institutionalise everyday utopias within an emerging global public domain. Utilising the concept of embedded pragmatism and tracing the underlying rationale for the emergence of the agenda to the work of Karl Polanyi, the article argues that the Business and Human Rights agenda seeks to institutionalise human rights due diligence processes within transnational corporations in order to create a pragmatic alternative to the stark utopia of laissez-faire liberal markets. It then provides an analytical account of the implications of human rights due diligence for the modes and techniques business utilises to assess human rights harm. It argues that due to the constraints imposed by the concept of embedded pragmatism and the normative indeterminacy of human rights, the Business and Human Rights agenda risks instituting human rights within the corporation through modes and techniques that maintain human rights as a language of crisis, rather than creating the space for novel, everyday utopias to emerge