Human Rights:Chinese and Dutch Perspectives

by Peter Baehr (Editor), Liu Nanlai (Editor)

This volume contains the papers which were presented at a symposium on human rights, held in September 1994 in Beijing and organized within the framework of an academic programme of co-operation between the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. The focal point of most of the papers is the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action - adopted during the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights - which, from the perspective of particularly the Chinese participants, is considered as marking a new beginning in the field of human rights. Taking the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action as a point of departure the following main themes were the subject of discussion at the symposium and are more or less similarly reflected in the present volume: universality "versus" particularity; individual rights "versus" collective rights; national sovereignty and matters of international concern; ratification of international treaties.

172 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Peter Baehr is Chair Professor of Social Theory at Lingnan University. Before coming to Hong Kong in 2000, he worked at universities in Canada and Britain. He teaches and writes mainly in the areas of social/ political thought, political culture, and mass emergency. Peter Baehr’s work has been translated into Chinese, Danish, Farsi, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese. Aside from his position at Lingnan University, Baehr is Raymond Aron Fellow at Boston University, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh. He is President of the History of Sociology Research Committee of the International Sociological Association, and sits as an international editor on eight journals. Baehr’s books are published by Cambridge University Press, Cornell University Press, Transaction, Penguin and Stanford University Press.