Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy: South Africa

Economic and political power is shifting from the West to the Global South and East. Yet international human rights experts and practitioners seem to only occasionally pay attention to the role of human rights in the foreign policy of emerging powers and the consequences of their rise for the global human rights regime.

The Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy series focuses on rising powers and their current and potential roles in the international protection and promotion of human rights. Will the human rights regime gain more support and legitimacy because of these power shifts, will rising powers try to restore the sanctity of state sovereignty within world politics or are they aiming for other changes in the international order?

Human rights in the foreign policy of South Africa

The third volume in the Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy series contains a collection of eleven essays on South Africa’s foreign human rights policy. Fifteen authors from South Africa, Asia and the United States write about a variety of topics, including South African geopolitics, internet governance and South Africa’s foreign policy and the Responsibility to Protect from a South African perspective. The volume contains contributions from, among others, Jeremy Sarkin (University of South Africa), Audie Klotz (Syracuse University) and Dan Kuwali (University of Pretoria).

Previous volumes in this series were published on Brazil (2014) and India (2015).