A PROBLEM OF UTOPIA: Human Rights and Transitional Justice

This chapter discusses the interrelation between human rights and transitional justice. It starts by highlighting that human rights are deeply political even though advocates sought to distance it from politics due to its birth in the vortex of the cold war. Moreover, human rights are inextricably and inherently tied with the larger project of Western political democracy and the free market norms that underline liberalism. The idea and practice of transitional justice became a religion within the human rights community, which is decidedly interventionist. The chapter explains how human rights and transitional justice are presented as a doctrine of emancipation.