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A History of the International Human Rights Regime from the Arab-Islamic World

Project description

Universal Declaration of Human Rights – perspective of the Islamic World

The origins and the development of international human rights regimes can be traced to the period after the Second World War. The EU-funded UNIVERSALITY project will address one of the most crucial historical and social issues our multicultural European societies are confronting. The project will draw from a range of neglected sources to reconstruct the hidden history of the birth and contestation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Arab-speaking Islamic World. The findings will serve as an alternative story for today's world. UNIVERSALITY will offer new insight on how we can include non-Western epistemologies in understanding current globalisation and integration processes.

Objective

How universal is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? The question attracts more debate than one might expect. This research project—UNIVERSALITY—will break new ground in such debates by contributing an innovative Global History of the origins and development of the international Human Rights regime after the Second World War, from the perspective of the (Arabic-speaking) Islamic world. The Applicant is a junior academic—a graduate of the London School of Economics, Yale University and Harvard University—with unique professional experience as a diplomat beyond Europe, research fluency in the Arabic language, and experience in journalism communicating to non-specialist audiences, all of which this project leverages. The fellowship will be carried out at the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) under the supervision of Professor Sebastian Conrad, one of the foremost practitioners in the project field of Global History. The project deliverables address one of the most pressing historical and social needs for our contemporary multicultural Europe—namely, how we can contribute political histories of the twentieth century that place the agency, experiences and political thought of the non-Western world at the centre of historical action. Through innovative method and using a range of neglected sources, UNIVERSALITY will support this objective through reconstructing a hitherto hidden story of the birth and contestation over the UDHR that can also serve as an alternate origins story for our modern international world. And by foregrounding Arab and Islamic perspectives in debates over the international Human Rights regime, it will offer both academic and public new ways of thinking about how we can include non-Western epistemologies in understanding modern-day processes of globalization and integration.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2020

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Coordinator

FREIE UNIVERSITAET BERLIN
Net EU contribution
€ 162 806,40
Address
KAISERSWERTHER STRASSE 16-18
14195 Berlin
Germany
Region
Berlin Berlin Berlin
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 162 806,40