Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:05:04.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Human Rights Rituals: Masking Neoliberalism and Inequality, and Marginalizing Alternative World Views

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2017

Emma Larking
Emma Larking*
Affiliation:
Research FellowSchool of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) Australian National [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The role played by ritual in the field of human rights has not been widely remarked or analysed. Here I argue that the triumph of human rights as the predominant language for making social justice claims in the international sphere is partly attributable to the power of certain linguistic and embodied rituals. I suggest that these rituals veil the material factors at stake when human rights are invoked internationally, obscuring the relationship between neoliberalism, material inequality, and human rights. I compare the vision of justice propounded through the rituals of human rights with that proposed by the peasants’ movement, Vía Campesina. Vía Campesina’s vision is grounded in material realities and confronts neoliberal policies head on. I consider how it unsettles the rituals of human rights, and whether it can be preserved in the form of a UN Declaration on the rights of peasants.

Résumé

Le rôle des rites dans le domaine des droits de la personne a rarement été relevé ou analysé. Dans cet article, nous affirmons que le triomphe des droits de la personne comme langage prédominant des revendications de justice sociale dans l’arène internationale se doit, en partie, au pouvoir de certains rites linguistiques et corporels. Nous postulons que ces rites voilent les facteurs matériels en jeu lorsque les droits de la personne sont invoqués dans l’arène internationale, masquant le lien entre néolibéralisme, inégalité matérielle et droits de la personne. Nous comparons la vision de la justice présentée par l’entremise des rites de droits de la personne et celle proposée par le mouvement paysan, Vía Campesina. La vision de Vía Campesina s’ancre dans les réalités matérielles et affronte les politiques néolibérales de front. Nous examinons comment elle perturbe les rites des droits de la personne, et si elle pourrait être préservée sous forme d’une déclaration des Nations Unies sur les droits des paysans.

Keywords

Human rightsinequalityneoliberalismritualVía CampesinaDroits de la personneinégaliténéolibéralismerituelVía Campesina
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

2 Preamble, ICESCR: instead of “human,” ICESCR says “economic, social and cultural rights, as well as…civil and political rights.” The ICCPR uses the same phrasing but in reverse order. The ICCPR also inserts the phrase “civil and political freedom and” before “freedom from fear and want.”

3 Vía Campesina, “La Vía Campesina demands an end to the WTO,” Letter from Vía Campesina to the members of “Our World is Not For Sale,” 6 December 2013. Available at http://www.viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/10-years-of-wto-is-enough-mainmenu-35/1538-la-via-campesina-demands-an-end-to-the-wto-peasants-believe-that-the-wto-cannot-be-reformed-or-turned-around, accessed 14 March 2017.

4 See, for example, Joseph Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 2, and Sally Engle Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 2, 4. Karen Engle notes that despite initial wariness of international human rights, in the 1980s and 1990s many indigenous campaigners began expressing their claims in this language (“On Fragile Architecture: The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Context of Human Rights,” The European Journal of International Law 22, no. 1 (2011) 141–163, 142).

5 Susan Marks, “Human Rights and Root Causes,” The Modern Law Review 74, no. 1 (2011) 57–78; Slavoj Žižek, “Human Rights and its Discontents,” Lecture at Bard College, 15 November 1999, available at http://www.lacan.com/zizek-human.htm, accessed 14 March 2017.

6 Two recent works were the outcome of a project developed by Hilary Charlesworth: Human Rights and the Universal Periodic Review: Rituals and Ritualism (ed. Hilary Charlesworth and Emma Larking, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and a forthcoming edition of the journal Humanity on the rituals of human rights. More generally, interesting work has been done on the role of ritual in transitional justice mechanisms and truth commissions. See Danielle Celermajer, “Mere Ritual? Displacing the Myth of Sincerity in Transitional Justice Rituals,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 7 (2013) 286–305 and Anne Orford, “Ritual, Mediation and the International Laws of the South,” Griffith Law Review 16, no. 2 (2007) 353–374.

7 See Moore and Myerhoff’s list of the formal properties of collective ritual (Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, “Introduction: Secular Ritual: Forms and Meanings,” in Secular Ritual, ed. Sally F Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff (Assen/Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1977) 3–24, 7–8). See also Steven Lukes, “Political Ritual and Social Integration,” Sociology 9 (1975) 289–308, 290–91 and Oscar G. Chase, Law, Culture, and Ritual: Disputing System in Cross-Cultural Context (New York and London: New York University Press, 2005) 114–116.

8 Moore and Myerhoff, Secular Ritual.

9 Lukes, “Political Ritual and Social Integration,” 301.

10 Hilary Charlesworth and Emma Larking, “Introduction: The Regulatory Power of the UPR,” in Human Rights and the Universal Periodic Review, 1–21, 9; Moore and Myerhoff, “Introduction: Secular Ritual,” 5; Lukes, “Political Ritual,” 301–302.

11 Charlesworth and Larking, “Introduction: The Regulatory Power of the UPR,” 9.

12 Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

13 Ban Ki Moon, “Foreword” to the 60th Anniversary Edition of the UDHR, 2008.

14 Preamble, UDHR. See also the Vienna Declaration, repeating that the UDHR “constitutes a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations” (preamble).

15 Art. 1.

16 The “dignity and worth of the human person” is recognized in the preambles to the UN Charter, the UDHR, the Vienna Declaration (“recalling” the UN Charter), and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (citing the UN Charter). The preambles to the UDHR, ICCPR and ICESCR tell us that all human share “equal and inalienable rights” – and, in the case of ICCPR and ICESCR, that these rights “derive from the inherent dignity of the human person” (see also the preamble to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CAT”)). The statement that “[h]uman rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings” is repeated in the preamble and arts. 4, 6, and 8 of the Vienna Declaration, and the preambles to the UN Charter, UDHR, International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and CAT.

17 The UN Charter “reaffirm[s] faith” not only in human rights but also “in the equal rights…of nations large and small” (preamble), and the UN itself is “based on the sovereign equality of all its Members” (art. 2 (1)) and see art. 1 (2) – the purposes of the UN include the development of “friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” ICESCR and ICCPR share the same first article, specifying that “[a]ll peoples have the right of self-determination” (art. 1(1), ICESCR and ICCPR).

18 For a fascinating historical account of how the drafting of the UDHR was influenced by the desire among some states to ensure that recognition of individual rights would not impinge on state sovereignty, and also to sideline recognition of minority rights, see Mark Mazower, “The Strange Triumph of Human Rights, 1933–1950,” The Historical Journal, 47, no. 2 (2004), 379–398.

19 UN Charter preamble and art. 4 (1)

20 UN Charter, preamble; art. 1(1); Vienna Declaration, preamble, “recalling the Charter.” See also Charter art. 2(3) “All members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.” UDHR, preamble: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

21 See Shane Chalmers, “The Beginning of Human Rights: The Ritual of the Preamble to Law,” forthcoming in Humanity.

22 Preamble, UDHR.

23 Preamble, UN Charter.

24 Sundhya Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 10–43. For a discussion of the influence of the Great Powers, see also Mazower, “The Strange Triumph of Human Rights.”

25 The Vienna Declaration, for example, the product of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, claims to provide “a comprehensive analysis of the international human rights system and of the machinery for the protection of human rights” and thereby “to enhance and thus promote a fuller observance of those rights, in a just and balanced manner” (UN General Assembly, A/CONF.157/23, preamble).

26 Walter Kälin, “Ritual and Ritualism at the Universal Periodic Review: A preliminary appraisal,” in Human Rights and the Universal Periodic Review, 25–41, 25.

27 See Kelly, “Two Cheers for Ritual,” forthcoming in Humanity; see also the analysis of the rituals of the Universal Periodic Review in Charlesworth and Larking, “The Regulatory Power of the Universal Periodic Review”; Jane Cowan, “The Universal Periodic Review as a Public Audit Ritual,” and Julie Billaud, “Keepers of the Truth,” both in Human Rights and the Universal Periodic Review, 42–62 and 63–84.

28 As Kelly notes in relation to the Committee against Torture (“Two Cheers for Ritual”).

29 Jane Cowan, “The Universal Periodic Review as a public audit ritual,” 60; Kelly, “Two Cheers for Ritual.”

30 Representative of the Union of South Africa, in a debate surrounding the draft Universal Declaration, quoted in Philip Alston and Gerard Quinn, “The Nature and Scope of States Parties’ Obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1987) 156–299, 181.

31 165 ratifications by comparison with the ICCPR’s 169: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Status of Ratification: Interactive Dashboard,” http://indicators.ohchr.org/, accessed 14 March 2017. The Optional Protocol to ICESCR was adopted in December 2008 and came into force in May 2013.

32 22 countries have ratified the Optional Protocol.

33 David Kennedy, “The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15 (2002) 101–125, 113; Marks, “Human Rights and Root Causes,” 71. Along similar lines, B.S. Chimni characterizes human rights as grounded in “methodological individualism” and “methodological nationalism” (“The Rituals of Human Rights Bodies: A View from the Global South,” paper delivered at “The Rituals of Human Rights” Workshop, Australian National University, 26 June 2014, 1, 5 and 6, available at http://regnet.anu.edu.au/research/publications/6120/rituals-human-rights-workshop-working-paper-no-6-rituals-human-rights, accessed 14 March 2017).

34 Kennedy, “The International Human Rights Movement,” 109–110, and see Samuel Moyn’s discussion, “A Powerless Companion: Human Rights in the Age of Neoliberalism,” Law and Contemporary Problems 77 (2014) 147–169, 164–167. Regarding the weak influence of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, endorsed by the Human Rights Council in 2011, see Hans Morten Haugen, “Trade and Investment Agreements: What Role for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in International Economic Law?,” in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in International Law, ed. Eibe Riedel, Gilles Giacca, and Christophe Golay, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014), 227–259, 241. In 2014, a UN Working Group was mandated to draft “an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights” (UN Doc. A/HRC/26/L.22/Rev.1, 25 June 2014). Negotiations within the Working Group are continuing. See Jolyon Ford, “The Risk of Regulatory Ritualism: Proposals for a Treaty on Business and Human Rights,” CEG Working Paper 118, Global Economic Governance Program, University of Oxford, April 2016.

35 Mutua describes human rights as “the moral guardians of global capitalism” (in Ben Golder, “Beyond Redemption? Problematising the critique of human rights in contemporary international legal thought,” London Review of International Law 2, no. 1 (2014) 77–114, 101). Golder suggests more cautiously that human rights are “coincident in crucial respects with neoliberal discourse…and function…within the logic of capital” (105, emphasis in original). While Moyn suggests that human rights and neoliberalism have shared a “kindred trajectory,” he rejects claims that human rights have played a causal role in “abetting the free market victory of the neoliberal age.” In his view, the most apt characterization of the relationship is of human rights as a rather “powerless companion” that has proved inadequate to the task of “civilising” neoliberalism (“A Powerless Companion,” 156, 151 and generally).

36 Moyn points out that this is “a basic and rarely made point: in their legalized forms, human rights do not purport to provide an egalitarian agenda.” (“A Powerless Companion,” 161).

37 See Philip Alston, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/HRC/29/31, 27 May 2015, para. 50.

38 I do not deal with cultural rights in this analysis.

39 Art. 2(1).

40 General Comment #3, “The nature of States parties obligations” (1990) para. 10. The Committee also argues that the obligation on states to take steps towards realization of economic, social, and cultural rights imposes immediate obligations to take “deliberate, concrete and targeted” action towards rights realization (General Comment #3, para. 2, and see paras 1 and 9).

41 General Comment #3, para. 10.

42 In relation to securing the right to social security (art. 9), the Committee has said that “community-based or mutual schemes” are “acceptable” (General Comment #19, “The right to social security” (2008) para. 5, and see paras 45 and 46), and it also emphasizes that “non-contributory” schemes are necessary – in other words, schemes that cover even those who are unable to contribute to social insurance (paras 4 (b), 23 and 50).

43 The Committee has targeted “land grabbing” as a problem, but Rolf Künnemann and Sofia Monsalve Suárez point to the fact that the concept of land grabbing has been restrictively defined – “many definitions of land grabbing only recognize areas upwards of 5,000 hectares” (“International Human Rights and Governing Land Grabbing: A View from Global Civil Society,” Globalizations 10, no. 1 (2013) 123–139, 128).

44 Art. 11(1).

45 Art. 6(2).

46 Art. 11(2)(a).

47 Art. 15(1)(b).

48 Hilary Charlesworth, “The Public/Private Distinction and the Right to Development in International Law,” Australian Year Book of International Law 12 (1988–9) 190–204, 196–197, and see the discussion that follows.

49 See the historical overview in United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Realizing the Right to Development: Essays in Commemoration of 25 Years of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development (New York and Geneva: OHCHR, 2013).

50 This dominance is theorized by David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1–4.

51 Christoph Golay, “The Rights of Peasants” (CETIM Critical Report No. 5, Issue: Right to Food (Geneva: Europe – Third World Centre, September 2009), 4–5, available at http://cetim.ch/en/publications_cahiers.php, accessed 13 October 2015; Jean Ziegler, Christophe Golay, Claire Mahon, and Sally-Anne Way, The Fight for the Right to Food: Lessons Learned (Great Britain: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011) 38 and 147–149. For an analysis of how the World Bank, along with other development banks and international organizations, have influenced agrarian reform in the aftermath of the 2008 world food crisis, pushing market-based models that increase the vulnerability of small scale farmers, see Philip McMichael and Mindi Schneider, “Food Security Politics and the Millennium Development Goals,” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2011), 119–139.

52 Christoph Golay, “The Rights of Peasants,” 4–5; Jean Ziegler, Christophe Golay, Claire Mahon and Sally-Anne Way, The Fight for the Right to Food, 38 and 147–9.

53 See General Comment #2, “International technical assistance measures” (1990) para. 7, recognizing that some forms of development can be counter-productive in human rights terms.

54 The Committee describes development as itself a human right: General Comment #3, para. 8.

55 “Comment” on “Human rights and development,” para. 1 (found at the end of its “Statement on Globalisation and its impact on the enjoyment of ESC rights” (1998), at 94 of the report of its 18th session).

56 In relation to food, see Ziegler et al. The Fight for the Right to Food, 3, citing the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Against the idea that we need to produce more food in order to feed the world’s hungry, Mark Bittman suggests, “[c]laiming that increasing yield would feed the poor is a bit like saying that producing more cars or private jets would guarantee that everyone had one.” (“Don’t Ask How to Feed the 9 Billion,” Opinion, The New York Times, 11 November 2014.)

57 Art. 2(1). See Olivier De Schutter et al. concerning the continuing controversy over whether the obligation of international assistance is legally binding (“Commentary on the Maastricht Principles on extraterritorial obligations of States in the area of economic, social and cultural rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 34 (2012): 1084–1169 at 1094).

58 “Statement in the context of the Rio+20 Conference” (2012), para. 6 (a).

59 Regarding economic inequalities, see Alston, “Report of the Special Rapporteur,” paras 8–9 (income inequality), para 10 (wealth inequality), and Oxfam International, “An Economy for the 1%: How Privilege and Power in the Economy Drive Extreme Inequality and How This can be Stopped,” Oxfam Briefing Paper, 18 January 2016. Regarding the impact of economic inequalities on civil and political rights, see Alston, “Report of the Special Rapporteur,” para 21.

60 Maria Elena Martinez-Torres and Peter M. Rosset, “La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 37, no. 1 (2010) 149–175, 151–157.

61 “The International Peasants’ Voice,” Vía Campesina website, “Organization” page, published 9 February 2011, http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/organisation-mainmenu-44, accessed 14 March 2017.

62 “The International Peasants’ Voice.”

63 The blurb for “The Jakarta Call” on the movement’s website states that the documentary “highlights the cultural diversity and the values of solidarity and unity converging in this political project.” “The Jakarta Call,” documentary featuring Vía Campesina’s 6th International Conference, Jakarta, June 2013 (Harare: La Vía Campesina, Zin TV and Alba TV, 10 April 2014).

64 As McMichael discusses in the context of trade protectionism (Philip McMichael, “Peasants Make Their Own History, But Not Just as They Please…,” Journal of Agrarian Change 8, nos 2 and 3 (April and July 2008), 205–228, 220), and see Emma Larking, “Mobilising for Food Sovereignty: The Pitfalls of International Human Rights Strategies and an Exploration of Alternatives,” forthcoming in The International Journal of Human Rights 21 (2017).

65 “The International Peasants’ Voice,” Vía Campesina website, “Organization” page, published 9 February, http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/organisation-mainmenu-44, accessed 14 March 2017.

66 Former Vía Campesina coordinator, Henry Saragih argues that fulfilment of food-related rights has traditionally been premised on securing “access to food,” “whereas the right to produce food is much more fundamental to fulfilling the rights to food” (in Marc Edelman and Carwil James, “Peasants’ rights and the UN system: Quixotic struggle? Or emancipatory idea whose time has come?” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38 no. 1, (2011): 81–108, 85, their emphasis). See also Priscilla Claeys, “The Creation of New Rights by the Food Sovereignty Movement: The Challenge of Institutionalizing Subversion,” Sociology 46, no. 5 (2012): 844–860, 848–849. In its campaign materials, Vía Campesina sometimes invokes the “right to food,” but it has been consistent in claiming that this right can only be realized on the basis of a major overhaul of the industrial food system and by empowering small-scale food producers.

67 Vía Campesina, “The International Peasants’ Voice.”

68 Vía Campesina, “Gaining support for the peasant’s way – La Vía Campesina at UN’s leading food security institutions,” Vía Campesina website, published 11 October 2013, https://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/food-sovereignty-and-trade-mainmenu-38/1501-gaining-support-for-the-peasant-s-way-la-via-campesina-at-un-s-leading-food-security-institutions, accessed 14 March 2017; and blurb to “The Jakarta Call.” For a detailed account of Vía Campesina’s food sovereignty activities, see Larking, “Mobilising for Food Sovereignty.”

69 “La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution,” 158.

70 “La Vía Campesina demands an end to the WTO.”

71 See Christoph Golay, “Legal reflections on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas” (Background paper prepared for the first session of the working group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, 15–19 July 2013, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights) 5, and Marc Edelman, “Linking the Rights of Peasants to the Right to Food in the United Nations,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 10, no. 2 (2014): 196–211, 198 and 203–208.

72 Vía Campesina was assisted in the drafting of its original Declaration by the UK-based “International Institute for Environment and Development.” In promoting the Declaration at the Human Rights Council, it has been assisted by FIAN (the Food First Information and Action Network), with international secretariats based in Hamburg and Geneva, and the Geneva-based Centre Europe Tiers-Monde. (Edelman and James, “Peasants’ rights and the UN system,” 93; Claeys, “The Creation of New Rights,” 853.)

73 Claeys, “The Creation of new rights,” 853; Edelman, “Linking the rights of peasants,” 205–206; and see Christophe Golay, “Negotiation of a United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas,” Academy In-Brief, No. 5, Geneva: Geneva Academy, January 2015, 4–5.

74 Engle, “On Fragile Architecture,” 142, and see Aileen Moreton-Robinson, “Virtuous Racial States,” Griffith Law Review 20, no. 3 (2011): 641–658. See also n. 96, below.

75 Vía Campesina’s original Declaration is available at http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/publications-mainmenu-30/1016-declaration-of-rights-of-peasants-women-and-men, accessed 14 March 2017. The Declaration is also annexed to the Human Rights Council’s “Preliminary study of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on discrimination in the context of the right to food” (22 February 2010, A/HRC/13/32, annex), but the introductory material has been omitted. Regarding the original presentation of the Declaration to the Council and General Assembly, see: Human Rights Council, “Final study of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on the advancement of the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas,” 24 February 2012, A/HRC/19/75, para 71.

76 Marks, “Human Rights and Root Causes.” My analysis in this section was initially inspired by Marks’s critique of the language of human rights.

77 Human Rights Council, “Final study” A/HRC/19/75, annex.

78 “Draft Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas Presented by the Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group,” A/HRC/WG.15/3/2, 8 March 2016 (“Advanced draft”). The drafting process is conducted under a Human Rights Council resolution: “Resolution of the Human Rights Council on the promotion and protection of the human rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas,” UN Doc. A/HRC/RES/21/19, 11 October 2012.

79 A/HRC/30/L.19 (28 September 2015)

80 Preamble, para. 4.

81 Preamble, paras 4 and 9.

82 Marks, “Human Rights and Root Causes,” 59.

83 Art. 2(6).

84 Art. 2(7).

85 Art. 2(7)(e).

86 For a discussion of the gender focus within Vía Campesina, see Martinez-Torres and Rosset, “La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution,” 159 and 167.

87 Art. 4, “Gender equality’; art. 6, “Rural women’s rights.” The position of women is also mentioned in art. 8 “Rights to a nationality and legal existence,” art. 17(3), “Right to food,” and art. 19(2), “Right to land and other natural resources.”

88 Art. 4: (1) “States recognise that peasant women and other women working in rural areas often experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination’; (2) “States shall take all appropriate measures…’; (3) “States shall ensure that…’; Art. 6: (1) “States shall take into account the particular problems faced by peasant women…’; (2) “States shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against peasant women….”

89 Arts 3(3) and (4).

90 See Marks’s discussion of Žižek’s argument that in contemporary society the concept of racism operates to conceal the underlying problem of material and political exploitation (“Human Rights and Root Causes,” 72–73), as well as her claim that “[t]ransitive concepts such as exploitation, marginalisation, dispossession and displacement are generally more telling, because more basic to the understanding of social systems, than intransitive concepts” such as “discrimination” (76).

91 As Marks argues in “Human Rights and Root Causes” (72–73 and 76).

92 Art. 3.

93 Marks, “Human Rights and Root Causes,” 69, and see 76.

94 Marks, ibid.

95 Art. 4(5).

96 See Jackie Hartley, “Indigenous Peoples and FPIC: When does the “c” mean consent?” Regarding Rights blog, http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/regarding-rights/2014/03/21/indigenous-peoples-and-fpic-when-does-the-c-mean-consent/, accessed 14 March 2017; and in relation to the contested interpretation of “free, prior and informed consent,” Tara Ward, “The Right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent: Indigenous Peoples’ Participation Rights within International Law,” Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights 10, no. 2 (2011): 54–84. Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US originally opposed UNDRIP partly on the basis that the “free, prior and informed consent” article went too far and could constitute a veto power. Moreton-Robinson argues this objection was disingenuous as the prior consent requirement is qualified by article 46, providing that nothing in UNDRIP “may be interpreted as…authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States” and that “[i]n the exercise of the rights enunciated…human rights and fundamental freedoms of all [i.e., non-indigenous as well as indigenous people] shall be respected” (“Virtuous Racial States” at 644).

97 It appears in arts 2(4) (States’ obligations to include peasants in policy development and other decision making); 5(6)(b) (with reference to the exploitation of “natural resources” traditionally owned or used by peasants); and 20(5) (with reference to the storage or disposal of hazardous materials on peasants’ land).

98 Art. 19(4). Another feature of the Advanced draft is the inclusion of an “implementation” article providing, as in ICESCR, for progressive rather than immediate realization of the rights recognized (art. 2(1)).

99 Claeys, “The Creation of New Rights,” 848.

100 Engle, “On Fragile Architecture,” 142.

101 See Marks, “Human Rights and Root Causes,” 59.

102 Larking, “Mobilising for Food Sovereignty.”

103 “The Rituals of Human Rights Bodies,” 4.

104 McMichael, “Peasants Make Their Own History,” 225.