"We Had Been Fooled into Thinking that the UN Watches over the Entire World": Human Rights, UN Trust Territories, and Africa's Decolonization

Terretta, Meredith

doi:10.1353/hrq.2012.0022

Cited by 45 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Burke's argument about the productive role of anticolonial and decolonization struggles in twentieth-century human rights discourse also appears in recent texts by Fabian Klose (2013Klose ( [2009) and Meredith Terretta (2012), all of whom intentionally seek to fill a vacuum in the literature. While Burke and Klose focus on anticolonial leaders and colonial administrators who openly engaged in human rights debates, Terretta focuses on an "anti--colonial activists who did invoke human rights as a way of delegitimizing colonial rule" (Terretta, 2012: 331).…”

Section: Decolonization and The Coloniality Of Twentieth-century mentioning

confidence: 94%

On the Coloniality of Human Rights

Maldonado‐Torres¹

2017

rccs

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The universality of human rights is delimited by what is considered to effectively constitute the state of being human in the first place. In addition to a secular-line that separated the divine from the human, the hegemonic modern Western concept of the human emerged in relation to an onto-Manichean colonial line that often makes human rights discourse inefficient for addressing modern colonialism, or complicit with it. For any decolonization of human rights to occur, there needs to be a decolonization of the concept of the human. Frantz Fanon’s prayer to his body in Black Skin, White Masks offers a basis for building a decolonial humanism and humanities that counter the coloniality of human rights and serve as propaedeutics for any effort to make human rights relevant for decolonization.

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Section: Decolonization and The Coloniality Of Twentieth-century mentioning

confidence: 94%

On the Coloniality of Human Rights

Maldonado‐Torres¹

2017

rccs

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“…Similarly, future studies should begin with a more critical lens of UN operations, which have been uneven since the dawn of the independence era (Charbonneau, 2009; Mulinge, 2010; Terretta, 2012). The UN is a complex and multifaceted organization providing a tremendous amount of services across the globe, yet in key historical moments the conflicting interests of the dominant member states have produced failed interventions, cover for autocrats, and a general disregard to the human vulnerabilities they have pledged to protect.…”

Section: Accumulative Results and Future Inquirymentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty years of deleterious external engagement with sub‐Saharan African states

2020

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Since the end of the colonial era the majority of sub-Saharan African nations have stagnated or declined on key measures of stability and well-being. Despite numerous foreign interventions in the form of aid, trade, technical assistance, and military support, students and scholars of modern Africa must recognize that foreign powers have consistently failed in their efforts to prop up, stabilize, and maintain independent nation states. A holistic view of more than 50 years of support for dictatorships, inequitable trade deals, resource extraction, conflict intervention, debt entrapment, and attempts at regime change raises the question as to whether foreign interventions were intentionally disruptive. Modern African nations struggle at the bottom of demographic health and well-being indicators, and conflicting foreign involvements have often stymied the growth of institutions that serve the majority of citizens' democratic, legal, and financial needs for promoting equitable and sustainable growth.

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“…4For the former, see Mazower, Governing the World , 250–3; and Sayward, The United Nations in International History , 31–4. For the latter, see Moyn, The Last Utopia ; Ibhawoh, “Testing the Atlantic Charter”; Terretta, “We Had Been Fooled”; Burke, Decolonization ; Eckel, “Human Rights and Decolonization.”…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Republic at the Table, with Decolonisation on the Agenda: The United Nations Security Council and the Question of Indonesian Representation, 1946–1947

Foray¹

2021

Itinerario

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This article examines a formative episode in the history of both the United Nations Security Council and Indonesian decolonisation. In August of 1947, Council members authorised an ad hoc delegation from the Republic of Indonesia to participate in its discussions concerning the ongoing Dutch–Indonesian conflict. Focusing on the series of developments that led to the Indonesians taking their seats at the table, this article reveals how Security Council procedures and practices could be used to facilitate the decolonisation process. The Council's involvement in the Dutch–Indonesian conflict—and, in particular, the decision to allow the Indonesians to present their case in this international arena—demonstrates that Europeans’ claims of “domestic jurisdiction” over their colonial territories remained subject to negotiation, and that non-European actors could successfully contest these claims in Council chambers.

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"We Had Been Fooled into Thinking that the UN Watches over the Entire World": Human Rights, UN Trust Territories, and Africa's Decolonization

Cited by 45 publications

References 11 publications

On the Coloniality of Human Rights

On the Coloniality of Human Rights

Fifty years of deleterious external engagement with sub‐Saharan African states

The Republic at the Table, with Decolonisation on the Agenda: The United Nations Security Council and the Question of Indonesian Representation, 1946–1947

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