From Human Rights to Sovereignty Bindingness: A Historical Test-Case (1945-2005)

Acronyme: HuriSobi

Research Project 2020 - SAB

This collective research project, referred to as “HuriSobi”, aims at measuring how the political reference to human rights (HR), their incorporation into law, their impact on diplomacy, and their recognition by international institutions, have impacted (or not) sovereignty, understood here as the precedence of domestic over international law in case of conflict between the two. While it is located in history of international relations (HIR), it includes a collaboration with international law (IL) specialists. Even though those two fields share numerous thematic concerns, and in many ways a common genealogy, they have progressively parted ways and nowadays often ignore each other. In the present case, whereas HIR focuses on human rights (HR) and how they have affected post-1945 international relations, IL tends to discuss “bindingness” – “the expression of the validity of a rule and its membership to the international legal order” (D’Aspremont, 2015) –  and the consequences of international conventions on the exercise, protection and reaffirmation of sovereignty. Our aim is to refocus HIR issues by moving human rights from the foreground to the background, and by testing instead the relevance of the concept of “bindingness”, imported from IL, to reinterpret major issues of international relations from the mid-20th century to the present. 

• [2020-2024] 28 months
• Keywords: Human Rights 
• Project directed by Mario Del Pero (Sciences Po, CHSP) et Paul-André Rosental (Sciences Po, CHSP), in partnership with Jean d'Aspremont, Loïc Azoulay & Régis Bismuth (Sciences Po, Law School), and with Luisa Dolza (historian).