This article is an attempt to explore the intersecting dynamic of human rights and weapons control from a postcolonial perspective. It seeks to bring to the fore the contested terrain of human rights discourses within which grand proclamations of “Human Rights” as a “new standard of civilization” are being championed. At the same time in the field of security studies, an effort to rejuvenate “disarmament as humanitarian action” is mobilizing scholars and activists. It is in this context that this article seeks to problematize deployment of specifically human rights–based discourses to address the problem of weapons. In this effort, it encourages scholars and activists to take note of the imperial legacy of human rights–based and civilization-based discourses. It then expresses concern with how these civilizational discourses of differences between the West and the Rest are exploited to encourage a licentious use of human rights language to acquire and maintain weapons by state and nonstate actors. This article then proceeds to express concern with a shift from anthropocentric to anthropomorphic discourses on weapons that threatens to constitute and reinforce a stratified human civilization. These reflections are undertaken to encourage scholars to think more deeply about the pernicious nature of a human rights–based discourse in the context of weapons control. It is an invitation for postcolonial scholarship to think more deeply about the intersecting discourses of human rights and weapons control and its implications for the Global South.

中文翻译：

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人权作为武器控制文明的新标准？

本文试图从后殖民的角度探讨人权与武器控制的交叉动态。它力图突出人权话语的争议领域，在该领域中，正在倡导“人权”作为“文明的新标准”的盛大宣言。与此同时，在安全研究领域，旨在振兴“裁军即人道主义行动”的努力正在动员学者和活动家。正是在这种背景下，本文试图将具体以人权为基础的论述的部署问题化，以解决武器问题。在这一努力中，它鼓励学者和活动家注意基于人权和基于文明的话语的帝国遗产。然后，它关注如何利用这些关于西方与其他国家之间差异的文明​​话语来鼓励国家和非国家行为者肆意使用人权语言来获取和维护武器。然后，本文继续对威胁构成和加强分层人类文明的武器的讨论从人类中心论转向拟人化论述表示关切。进行这些反思是为了鼓励学者更深入地思考在武器控制背景下基于人权的话语的有害性质。它邀请后殖民学者更深入地思考人权和武器控制的交叉话语及其对全球南方的影响。