Keele Research Repository

Does the absence of legal unity challenge the universality of human rights? Is the systematic integration of human rights in other branches of law a remedy to fragmentation? This article offers a critique of « integral human-rightism », i.e. the project that seeks to treat every social problem as a rights question and that promotes the mainstreaming of human rights as a regulating mechanism for managing legal pluralism. The article argues that, in order to preserve human rights’ revolutionary potential, rights fetishism must be avoided, instead advocating a tactical, critical and political use of human rights.