Misappropriation of Human Rights: Elements, Fora, Actors and Critiques - Hardcover

by Cathérine Van de Graaf (Volume Editor), Júlia Miklasová (Volume Editor), Paula Rhein-Fischer (Volume Editor)

Human rights are increasingly invoked to justify policies that restrict freedom, exclude minorities, or evade accountability, in ways that undermine the human rights project as such. How does this happen and how can we tell misuse from legitimate contestation? This edited volume tackles these questions head-on. Building on and critically testing the concept of human rights misappropriation, it brings together leading scholars from law and the social sciences to examine the strategies, actors, and fora through which rights language is distorted from within. Through rich case studies spanning diverse contexts, the book reveals how human rights become a battleground of power, ideology, and resistance and why understanding this phenomenon is essential to the future of human rights protection.

Author Biography

Cathérine Van de Graaf conducts empirical legal research on discrimination, freedom of religion and procedural justice before the ECtHR and national equality bodies at Ghent University and University of Cologne. She regularly contributes to third party interventions before the ECtHR and is a Strasbourg Observers editor.

Júlia Miklasová is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cologne. She obtained her PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute Geneva (2021). Her research focuses on general international law, especially the law of statehood, and its intersection with European human rights law.

Paula Rhein-Fischer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy for European Human Rights Protection of the University of Cologne. She works in the fields of constitutional and public international law, in particular on the relationship between law and time, memory laws, and militant democracy.