Miia Halme-Tuomisaari – författare

Did the history of human rights begin decades, centuries or even millennia ago? What constitutes this history? And what can we really learn from 'the textbook narrative' - the unilinear, forward-looking tale of progress and inevitable triumph authored primarily by Western philosophers, politicians and activists? Does such a distinguishable entity as 'the history of human rights' even exist, or are efforts to read evidence in past events of the later 'evolution' of human rights mere ideology? This book explores these questions through a collective effort by scholars of history, law, theology and anthropology. Rather than entities with an absolute, predefined 'essence', this book conceptualizes human rights as open-ended and ambiguous. It taps into recent 'revisionist' debates and asks: what do we really know of the history of human rights?

Did the history of human rights begin decades, centuries or even millennia ago? What constitutes this history? And what can we really learn from 'the textbook narrative' - the unilinear, forward-looking tale of progress and inevitable triumph authored primarily by Western philosophers, politicians and activists? Does such a distinguishable entity as 'the history of human rights' even exist, or are efforts to read evidence in past events of the later 'evolution' of human rights mere ideology? This book explores these questions through a collective effort by scholars of history, law, theology and anthropology. Rather than entities with an absolute, predefined 'essence', this book conceptualizes human rights as open-ended and ambiguous. It taps into recent 'revisionist' debates and asks: what do we really know of the history of human rights?

Pioneering ethnography of the UN Human Rights Committee that is essential for scholars, students, and practitionersWhat takes place during the monitoring cycles of UN treaty bodies, and what impact do these cycles have both locally and globally? Movement in the Rights Direction explores these questions through the lens of the UN Human Rights Committee, the treaty body responsible for overseeing state compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), often considered the UN's most authoritative and lawlike human rights monitoring mechanism.Drawing on extensive multi-sited ethnographic practices, along with thorough documentary analysis and interviews, Miia Halme-Tuomisaari delves into the Committee's monitoring cycles from the perspectives of Committee members, UN Secretariat staff, state delegates, and NGOs. Written in an accessible, jargon-free style and based on embedded fieldwork, the book examines the continuous movement inherent in UN treaty body operations as embodying the forward-looking progressiveness inherent in human rights ideology. This movement, in turn, receives its momentum from the hope and belief that human rights will inculcate societal change, simultaneously legitimizing action taken today even when no direct consequences are visible.Halme-Tuomisaari further illustrates how, against common expectations, this movement strengthens rather than curtails state authority over its geography. This casts the Human Rights Committee's operations as a state-building exercise that continues the civilizing mission of international law toward a world order structured around human rights and the rule of law. Her book is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and students interested in human rights, the anthropology of international organizations, and international law.

Since World War II, human rights have engaged people around the world like perhaps no other discourse. In Finland their embrace represents a shift from ideological homogeneity to pluralism and openness. Human rights education is understood to hold a key role in empowering individuals to become free and equal members of their societies. Yet little empirical scholarship exists evaluating how this goal is met in reality. By combining anthropological approaches with critical legal theory, this study explores the conceptions of knowledge, expertise and learning embedded in the educational activities of a particular network of Scandinavian and Nordic human rights experts. It explores how the ideals of emancipation and equality of the abstract discourse are realized in action.