Towards a Theory of Human Rights in Practice: The Role of Plastic Human Rights and International Human Rights Obligations in the UN’s Approach to Cholera in Haiti
Bringing together field-based interviews in Haiti and New York and international law analysis, this dissertation contributes a socio-legal perspective on human rights in practice. The dissertation examines how and why the UN’s international human rights obligations did not gain traction in the reality of the peace operation in Haiti and the organisation’s response to the cholera crisis. The analysis examines how the UN’s approach to cholera in Haiti and its international human rights obligations were at odds and offers three potential explanations: (1) ambiguities under international law on the status of the UN’s human rights obligations; (2) the UN’s resistance to recognising its obligations in practice; and (3) the sidelining of human rights in civil society advocacy on behalf of cholera victims. The dissertation offers a legal account of the UN’s international human rights obligations and of their relationship to the UN’s immunities from legal process, and legal analysis of how the UN’s human rights obligations were engaged at every stage of the cholera epidemic in Haiti. Socio-legal analysis of the Haiti context also offers an insight into the relationship between human rights on paper and in practice more generally. The dissertation identifies a key distinction between human rights that are based in the law and human rights articulated by actors in practice, who ground these articulations in non-binding and flexible norms. The latter are described as ‘plastic’ human rights, due to the non-binding, malleable, and ad hoc ways in which they are formulated. The distinction between law-based and plastic human rights supports an understanding of how the UN’s international human rights obligations did not gain traction in the context of the cholera outbreak in Haiti. Recognising plastic human rights as distinct from law-based human rights allows a fuller understanding of the limited impact of law-based human rights, and is relevant to understanding the relationship between human rights in theory and in practice more widely. Insights from the dissertation inform the scholarly discourse around the UN’s approach to cholera in Haiti, as well as a wider inquiry on the impact of the law in practice, and on the role of practitioners in how and why human rights under international law do and do not gain traction.
international law, human rights, human rights theory, empirical legal research, United Nations, UN immunities, peace operations, Haiti, right to remedy, cholera, epidemic and human rights, anthropology and law
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