Kirsten Ainley, ‘The Implications and Imperfections of Practice’, Human Rights Review, 12(2) 2011: 241-246.

This special issue on Human Rights as Ideal and Practical Politics brings to the fore the significant ways that our study, practice and understanding of human rights have developed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948. These articles incite us to look beyond theories of human rights which accept rights as static and activists as unreflective workers towards an uncontested ideal. Instead, they show rights to be a dynamic, political, potentially (still) radical concept that shifts in meaning between historical contexts and in the hands of the various players in the human rights field.