Regional rights projects and decolonization in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The chapter argues for the relevance of regions for the defining, claiming and using of rights. It examines rights discourses and practices broadly, including human, political, social, economic, collective, developmental rights and rights of self-determination. It does so in three settings across Latin-America, Africa and Europe in the twentieth century: in pan-movements; regional organisations, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin American, the European Economic Community and the Organisation of African Unity; and regional human rights regimes.

Regional rights projects influenced the emergence of global norms while regional and local actors used global precedents to claim rights. Moving up and down scales, the chapter charts the connections between them and the spill-over between regions. Instead of a unilinear progression of rights discourses the chapter offers a more complex history, refracted through multiple lenses and experiences in different regions, although all were impacted by processes of decolonization.