Skewed Vision Human Rights in War through the Eyes in Peace

This paper draws on the insights from standpoint theory to critique international human rights law (IHRL) as it is applied in war but adjudicated in fora situated in peace, as a common phenomenon in the current enforcement system of IHRL. Because of the inherent fluidity and open-endedness of the idea of human rights, this system has enabled the reading of the human rights ‘situation’ in a distant political community precisely ‘out of situation’ of that political community. This has skewed the vision of human rights towards the sense and taste of the political community where the human rights situation is ‘read’, rather than the material conditions where the experience of these human rights is ‘situated’. It warns of the dangerous tendency for the current IHRL enforcement system to degrade wartime human rights standards victimized by foreign aggression, de-legitimize human rights institutions as a potential force for good and depresses the human rights situations worldwide when occasional compromises of standards are generalized through cross-fertilization.