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date: 14 February 2025

Human Dignity in International Relationslocked

Human Dignity in International Relationslocked

  • Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr.Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr.Leiden University

Summary

The literature on dignity in international politics can be analytically evaluated based on three key themes: (a) historical, conceptual, and political underpinnings; (b) international law and global governance; and (c) the global political economy. Although discussions of human dignity within these three themes draw on varied disciplines (philosophy, political theory, political science, law, and history), they demonstrate a shared purpose in investigating the nature of human dignity and its implications to understanding individuals and political orders amid increasing global interdependence. Human rights scholarship has been a firmly established research agenda in international relations (IR) since the end of the Cold War, but the notion of human dignity has yet to gain traction as a key research topic on its own beyond its peripheral association with the human rights literature. Dignity may be a highly contested concept, but its mere invocation in policy and scholarly debates attracts so much moral appeal and intellectual curiosity. If the core normative task of IR research pertains to the improvement of the human condition (and its relationship to global humanity and the ecosystem), then human dignity should feature as a core object of analytic inquiry in the future.

Subjects

  • Human Rights

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