‘Self-critique, (Anti)politics and Criminalization: Reflections on the History and Trajectory of the Human Rights Movement

Today’s human rights movement places the fight against impunity at its center. Such a focus is the culmination of a governance project in which the movement has been engaged for close to two decades that puts an enormous amount of attention on and faith in criminal justice systems—international, transnational and domestic. This article situates the fight against impunity in the history and trajectory of the human rights movement from the 1970s until today. It argues that the movement’s early ideology of antipolitics has reemerged in recent years, functioning to defer—even suppress—substantive debates over visions of social justice, even while relying on criminal justice systems of which the movement has long been critical.