DONALD TRUMP AND THE IRRELEVANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The election of Donald Trump furnishes an opportunity to look beyond the naïve celebration and apocalyptic criticism of international human rights in search of balance about their true importance.¹ Human rights could well complement a political response to populism, but will not compensate for the failure to construct that response in the first place. The international human rights system, with its diverse global movements, is epoch-making, allowing stigma to be applied to errant states on matters of crucial global concern.² But promoting its exclusive relevance in the face of injustice, as if the alternative were apathy or despair, is simply