Bringing human rights home: refugees, reparation, and the responsibility to protect

Human rights, it is often observed, have become a common global language for making moral claims. One consequence of this is that there is a huge range of ways in which states, organisations and other actors draw on, invoke and mobilise human rights in different locations and contexts. The vast array of campaigns, treaties, laws and policies which fall under the umbrella of human rights means that human rights talk will be continually contested and, to some extent, fragmented, contradictory, and inconsistent. In Richard Wilson’s phrase, human rights discourse will remain strongly marked by ‘ideological promiscuity’ (Wilson 2006). Given that human rights talk and practice are partly shaped by power, these inconsistencies will inevitably, at least to some degree, reflect power relations and dominant interests within and across states.