The Politics of “Faith” in/and Human Rights: Reflections from a TWAIL Postcolonial Vantage Point.
Location:
Raeburn Room
Old College
Date/time
Mon 6 October 2025
16:00-17:30
This event is organised by Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law
About the event
God is out of the closet in many countries around the world and the amplified role of religion in the global public arena has produced anxieties and contradictions for those committed to secular human rights and liberal democracy. This surge is experienced not only in authoritarian states, but also liberal democracies. The talk offers some reflections on the implications of ‘faith’ for progressive, leftist / Marxist politics and critical thought through a TWAIL and postcolonial, feminist lens. The argument foregrounds the tension between faith and secular human rights in encounters with the religious ‘Other.’ It traces the work that advocacy around these concepts is doing as well as the legal and political worlds it is creating. The analysis moves beyond thinking about human rights through a progressive linear trajectory, to one that complicates the narrative and prompt us to think productively in a different direction.
Short Bio
Ratna Kapur holds a Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London School of Law, and is also a Senior Faculty with the Institute of Law and Global Policy, Harvard Law School. She is a Distinguished Visiting Faculty of Human Rights at Symbiosis School of Law, Pune. Kapur has written and publshed extensively on international law ,TWAIL, human rights, postcolonial and feminist legal theory. Her talk is based on her new book project : Beyond Belief : Human Rights and the Politics of Faith (tentative title)
Image credit: Freepik