TY  - GEN
AB  - This paper explores the politics of monitoring at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a new United Nations human rights monitoring mechanism which aims to promote a universal approach and equal treatment when reviewing each country's human rights situation. To what extent are these laudable aims realised, and realisable, given entrenched representations of the West and the Rest as well as geopolitical and economic inequalities both historically and in the present? Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the UN in 2010-11, the final year of the UPR's first cycle, we explore how these aims were both pursued and subverted, paying attention to two distinct ways of talking about the UPR: first, as a learning culture in which UN member states 'share best practice' and engage in constructive criticism; and second, as an exam which UN member states face as students with vastly differing attitudes and competences. Accounts and experiences of diplomats from states that are not placed in the 'good students' category offer valuable insights into the inherent contradictions of dehistoricised and de-contextualised approaches to human rights.
AU  - Cowan, Jane K.
AU  - Billaud, Julie
DA  - 2015
DO  - 10.1080/01436597.2015.1047202
DO  - doi
ID  - 297168
L1  - https://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/297168/files/Between_learning_and_schooling.pdf
L2  - https://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/297168/files/Between_learning_and_schooling.pdf
L4  - https://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/297168/files/Between_learning_and_schooling.pdf
LK  - https://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/297168/files/Between_learning_and_schooling.pdf
N2  - This paper explores the politics of monitoring at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a new United Nations human rights monitoring mechanism which aims to promote a universal approach and equal treatment when reviewing each country's human rights situation. To what extent are these laudable aims realised, and realisable, given entrenched representations of the West and the Rest as well as geopolitical and economic inequalities both historically and in the present? Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the UN in 2010-11, the final year of the UPR's first cycle, we explore how these aims were both pursued and subverted, paying attention to two distinct ways of talking about the UPR: first, as a learning culture in which UN member states 'share best practice' and engage in constructive criticism; and second, as an exam which UN member states face as students with vastly differing attitudes and competences. Accounts and experiences of diplomats from states that are not placed in the 'good students' category offer valuable insights into the inherent contradictions of dehistoricised and de-contextualised approaches to human rights.
PY  - 2015
T1  - Between learning and schoolingthe politics of human rights monitoring at the Universal Periodic Review
TI  - Between learning and schoolingthe politics of human rights monitoring at the Universal Periodic Review
UR  - https://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/297168/files/Between_learning_and_schooling.pdf
Y1  - 2015
ER  -