Muslim-Majority States in Human Rights Regimes: Prospects of Progress

Download

10450283.pdf

Date

2022-2

Author

Kaldırım, Efdal Emine

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

609
views

334
downloads

Popular perception disassociates human rights and Muslim-majority states resting on claims of incompatibility between Islam and human rights, relativist arguments put forward by leading Muslim-majority states and poor human rights records in these countries. However, human rights have progressed not in a linear manner but more in a discontinuous and fragmentary manner, and the status of advanced institutionalism is a 20th century development which did not leave Muslim-majority as outliers. They opted for joining the UN-centered human rights regime, participated in norms creation, acceded to major human rights instruments, and even took a step for forming a cross-regional regime within the OIC. Yet, such engagement has not been accompanied by an equal progress of human rights in each. Their engagement was assessed by major standpoints of realism, liberalism, and constructivism to understand the reasons of engagement but poor records. UN-centered regimes’ being a declaratory regime, Muslim majority states’ selective accession to treaties and ineffective regime created under the OIC suggest that Muslim-majority states did not participate in these regimes with a genuine persuasion on the moral appropriateness of human rights or due to the strength of the international system as liberalism would claim. Legitimacy power of human rights and the low cost associated with the participation in UN-centered regime were more determinant. Therefore, progress of human rights solely relying on superiority of human rights is not likely to happen while the emergence of underlying conditions suggested by realists and constructivist are more plausible for meaningful engagement to yield progress.

Subject Keywords

Human rights, Muslim-majority states, human rights regimes

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/96279

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Rethinking the historical basis for the protection of human rights: The role of universal norms, state power, and social struggles Zeyrek, Bilge Ece; Bedirhanoğlu Toker, Pınar; Department of International Relations (2022-8) The continuation of human rights crises at a time when human rights have become a common value in both international and local politics is a puzzle that needs to be questioned. This thesis searches for an answer to this question by critically overviewing the history of human rights, in which the idea and practice of universal human rights have developed by considering universal norms, state power, and social struggles. The 18th century, the post-1945 period, and the post-Cold War period are examined with th...
Institutionalization of human rights in Turkey : experiences and perceptions of women’s human rights activists and state officials Arıner, Hakkı Onur; Acar, Ayşe Feride; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2013) This thesis contends that human rights advocates’ dismissal of attempts by the state in Turkey to institutionalize human rights since the 1990s as insincere or as efforts to delimit and control human rights advocacy is informed by the dominant historical narrative that posits a center-periphery dichotomy as key to explaining Turkey’s democratization process, as well as the actual experiences of the state’s failure to tolerate autonomous human rights institutions. This dismissal is contested on theoretical a...
Assessing the human rights regime of the Council of Europe in terms of economic and social rights Milli, Ece; Okyayuz, Mehmet; Department of European Studies (2012) This thesis seeks to answer the question whether economic and social rights have the same status with civil and political rights under the human rights regime of the Council of Europe. To this end, the thesis examines the assumptions with regard to the nature of economic and social rights, on the one hand, and civil and political rights, on the other. Second, it seeks to find out whether the nature of economic and social rights is different from that of civil and political rights. Third, it examines how the...
Institutionalisation of human rights in Turkey in the context of international assessment mechanisms Çakır, Çağrı; Göksel, Asuman; Department of European Studies (2013) The thesis aims to analyse the process of institutionalization of human rights in Turkey, by assessing the nature of the institutions with the focus on the dynamics forcing Turkey to establish a totally new structure devoted to human rights. In line with this aim, firstly worldwide development of institutionalization in the area of human rights is examined. The process of accession to EU has been a strong impetus for Turkey to ensure the compliance with the Copenhagen political criteria and to undertake leg...
Discourse on human rights : representation of the idea in Turkish human right Duduhacıoğlu, Başak; Rittersberger Tılıç, Helga İda; Department of Sociology (2012) The main concern of this thesis is to analyze the transformation of domestic human rights discourse by looking at the shifting representations of the idea of human rights. The representation of the idea of human rights in ‘Turkey Human Rights Movement Conferences’ in different political contexts during the period 1998-2010 is evaluated with reference to three areas of literature on the idea of human rights and with a social constructionist perspective which begins with the proposition that ideas and practic...

Citation Formats

E. E. Kaldırım, “Muslim-Majority States in Human Rights Regimes: Prospects of Progress,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2022.