Human rights and peoples rights in the post-colonial context

Introduction

The approach to human rights as a matter of international legal development has over the past four decades undergone radical reorientation requiring the formulation of new concepts and the adoption of new perspectives.

As a significant part of that development, the notion of peoples rights figures prominently in the emergence of new nation-states and the formal accession of colonial peoples to international legal statehood. In this context, the relationship between human rights (as rights vested in the individual) and peoples rights (as rights attaching to recognised collectivities) assumes specific features which are peculiar to the post-colonial era. The purpose of this short paper is to delineate some of these features within the framework of the international system and, in so doing, to explore the potential tensions between human rights and peoples rights. It is also proposed to consider certain aspects of that relationship in the context of the domestic law of Zimbabwe [...]