Institute researcher awarded two major human rights prizes
At an award ceremony at the annual International Studies Association conference in Baltimore, USA, Dr. Jensen received The Human Rights Best Book Award and the Best Book Award on International Organization for his “strikingly original” work.
The Human Rights Section’s Best Book Award recognizes an outstanding monograph in the field of human rights published within the past two years. Nominated books are evaluated for excellence and impact in terms of substance, originality, and timeliness.
Mr. Jensen’s book “The Making of International Human Rights - The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values” fundamentally reinterprets the history of human rights post-1945 by arguing that it was a group of states from the Global South that were behind the breakthrough on human rights.
Challenges decades of western narrative
According to Dr. Jensen, for many years the overall narrative has been human rights as a western project, but his book argues that this is not the case. He argues that actors from Jamaica, Ghana, Liberia and the Philippines pushed for the development and implementation of international human rights.
Representing over 100 countries, the International Studies Association has more than 6,500 members worldwide and is the most respected and widely known scholarly association in this field. Endeavoring to create communities of scholars dedicated to international studies
The jury behind the book prizes acknowledges Mr. Jensen’s analysis because it “shows a keen political understanding of the postcolonial moment, from which deep and broadly shared concerns of international racial and religious hierarchies brought these countries together in a coalition, leading to a profound normative shift in laws and practices of human rights throughout the 1970s and beyond”.
Forces a fundamental rethink
Furthermore, the jury foresees that the book “will force a fundamental rethinking of how normative change in international relations happens. It will motivate a serious discussion of race and religion in world hierarchies, and it should open an entire new research agenda on the Global South as the location for normative and policy innovation”.
It will motivate a serious discussion of race and religion in world hierarchies, and it should open an entire new research agenda on the Global South as the location for normative and policy innovation.
In Baltimore, Mr. Jensen called it a “great privilege” to receive the awards. “It means a lot because it means that the book will have a much wider audience internationally and be subject both of scholarly debate but also in policy forums like the United Nations and it is a story that has relevance in both contexts”, Mr. Jensen says.
The book was published in February 2016.