The Organization of Islamic Cooperation: a case study of international organizations’ impact on human rights

As part of DIHR’s new theme on human rights and universality, Matters of Concern presents a series of papers discussing contemporary challenges to the legitimacy of universal human rights through analyses of key actors, dynamics and discourses.

With this paper we hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the role of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) in the promotion of human rights, and more broadly, to discussions on human rights, international organizations and Islam.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) recent engagements with human rights hold out the tantalizing promise of giving the human rights regime purchase within an important bloc of states that, at times, have been presented as collectively opposed to human rights.

This promise, however, raises a number of difficult questions. Will the OIC’s engagement with human rights helpfully advance human rights in the Muslim world or is it a problematic strategy to co-opt or even subvert human rights? And, more broadly, what does the OIC’s engagement with human rights say about the ways in which human rights norms are independently impacted by international organizations, either positively or negatively?

This paper argues, specifically, that this engagement has more potential to be problematic than helpful in advancing human rights.

About the author

Anthony Tirado Chase is Associate Professor in the International Relations Department at Occidental College, Los Angeles. A theoretician of human rights, often in the context of the Middle East, he recently authored the book Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World (2012) and the peer reviewed article “Legitimizing Human Rights: Beyond Mythical Foundations and Into Everyday Resonances” (Journal of Human Rights, 2013).

Chase was guest editor of a special volume of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, "The Transnational Muslim World, Human Rights, and the Rights of Women and Sexual Minorities" (2007). His first book was Human Rights in the Arab World: Independent Voices (co-edited with Amr Hamzawy, 2006). His current projects include Handbook on Human Rights and the Middle East (Routledge, 2016) and an article titled “Human Rights Contestations: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.”