CALL FOR PAPERS

The United States and Global Human Rights

11-13 November 2004
Rothermere American Institute.

The Rothermere American Institute invites single paper and panel proposals for a two-day conference examining the role of the United States in promoting and/or weakening human rights around the globe. Despite – or perhaps because of – its strong rights tradition, the USA has recently come under fire from the international community for abrogating human rights in its wide-ranging anti-terrorist campaign. The question of America’s historic relationship to global human rights is one full of ambiguities and ambivalence and thus merits close examination. What are human rights in the U.S. view? Have they been redefined since 9/11? What impact has recent American foreign policy had on its ability to promote an external human rights policy? Does the US preference for unilateralist action weaken its ability to promote an external human rights policy and to contribute to the further development of the international human rights regime? Or do rights properly belong under the protection of nations rather than international institutions?

The RAI welcomes proposals examining the legal, historical, cultural, and political relationship of the United States to the emergence of the human rights norm in the twentieth century. Papers and panels should relate to one or more of the following themes:

• The Rights Tradition in the United States
• U.S. Contributions to the origins and development of the international Human Rights Regime
• U.S. Human Rights policy-making
• America and the International Criminal Court
• Civil Rights and Human Rights within the United States
• Human Rights case studies – U.S. policy toward specific countries and under specific presidencies.
• The role of American NGOs in the global Human Rights Regime
• The United States and the United Nations
• American Sovereignty and Human Rights

Please send one-page proposals with a brief C.V. by Friday 2 July 2004 to: