Hope without Evidence: Reading Sikkink’s Evidence for Hope in China

Abstract

Sikkink offers some clear and much-needed correctives to narratives of international human rights law as western imposition. Despite these great merits, the value of her assessment that 'overall, there is less violence and fewer human rights violations in the world than there were in the past' is questionable, especially when we consider that making the harms resulting from human rights violations visible is harder in closed than in open societies, and that the world is currently experiencing a wave of autocratisation. It is all the more important for human rights defenders to remember that hope does not require evidence to be sustained.