Special Issue: The Future of Human Rights

Abstract

What may the future hold for human rights? The Nordic Journal of Human Rights (NJHR) – a leading forum for interdisciplinary exchanges on human rights in the Nordic region and beyond – is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Its Editorial Office decided to honour the occasion with a special issue on ‘The Future of Human Rights’. In our call for papers, we invited submissions that provide insights on the future development of human rights and that are theoretically informed, empirically grounded, and methodologically rigorous in their ambitions to advance not only the academic study of human rights, but also its relevance to reflective practice in the real world. These papers would eventually set agendas and advance new potential lines of inquiry. True to the multiand inter-disciplinary approach of both the journal and the subject of human rights, we encouraged and welcomed contributions drawing from different disciplines. Looking back at the past 40 years of the existence of our journal, it is evident that human rights – as a legal, political, and social practice – have experienced significant achievements and successes, some notable setbacks and failures, and numerous unprecedented and unforeseen events and developments. Likewise, the academic study of human rights has matured and become increasingly specialised. Part of that development is also expressed in the articles and special issues published by the journal. From its establishment in 1982 as the Scandinavian-language journal Mennesker og Rettigheter, to its eventual consolidation as the Englishlanguage Nordic Journal of Human Rights in 2010, the journal has become one of the leading publications and fora for academic discourse in the field. Yet, rather than retrospectively summarising these 40 years, we use(d) the occasion to invite scholars and practitioners to prospectively conjecture about what the coming decades may hold for human rights, to discern where current trends are likely to lead, and to make sense of the future they herald. Speculating about the future, let alone predicting it, is a daunting task for academic researchers and practitioners alike. Human rights seem to be permanently at a crossroads and are frequently subjected to scepticism, even harsh criticism. According to some scholars, the idea of human rights has failed to deliver on its radical promise of emancipation. Some even argue that human rights are instruments for dominating and oppressing the very populations they are meant to protect – that the powers-that-be can use the discourse of human rights to justify colonialism, warfare, and attacks on civilians. Yet the ideal of human rights continues to inspire not only academic criticism, but also real-world activism to