Abigail B. Bakan – författare

This book considers the complex and contradictory role of the United Nations when it comes to human rights around the world. It depicts the United Nations as a global arena in which state and non-state actors continuously contest issues around human rights. This ongoing contestation simultaneously produces both advances and setbacks when it comes to the rights of stateless populations, women, Indigenous peoples, and racialized people, as well as rights related to health and the environment.Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and throughout various subsequent expansions, conventions and declarations, the United Nations has been central to the development and advancement of human rights as a primary, stated goal of global governance. However, there are various inherent contradictory tensions and challenges embedded in the United Nations promise for human rights. This timely collection investigates the United Nations’ role as knowledge producer, its relation to non-state actors, and the United Nations’ role as a system for grouping sovereign states, where there is uneven buy-in within non-binding agreements and tensions between national sovereignty and human rights. At a time when the world faces existential challenges from climate change to pandemics which disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable populations, this book addresses future challenges and possibilities for the United Nations.Human Rights and the United Nations: Paradox and Promise will be an important read for researchers and students across the fields of human rights, political science, international relations, and global development, as well as for United Nations and governmental policy analysts and advisors.

As the situation in Israel/Palestine seems to become ever more intractable and protracted, the need for new ways of looking at recent developments and their historical roots is more pressing than ever. Bearing this in mind, Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail B. Bakan discuss the historic and contemporary dynamics in Israel/Palestine, and their international reverberations, from the unique vantage point of 'race', racialization, racism and anti-racism. They therefore offer close analysis of the 'idea' of Israel and the 'absence' of Palestine by examining the concepts of race and identity in the region. With fresh coverage of themes relating to gender, Idigeneity, the environment , surveillance and the war on terror, Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race will appeal to scholars in political science, sociology and Middle East studies.