East Germany’s Human Rights Campaign: Foreign Policy, Socialist Human Rights, and Legal Rhetoric in the Global Arena
PhD Project
Her dissertation project analyzes how the East German state utilized human rights as an avenue to gain a foothold in the global community when many other economic and diplomatic avenues were closed to the regime. The dissertation will cover multiple, overlapping historical trajectories during this time period including decolonization, increasing global engagement by the GDR, and growing debate and output on human rights from the UN in the forms of declarations and covenants, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Margaret McCool argue that not only did the SED, East German academics and lawyers, and government officials develop their own concept and theory of human rights- socialist human rights- they also used it as a rhetorical tool to cement their position in the global community and challenge the West’s moral authority. The project will specifically focus on the work of these lawyers in tandem with East German human rights committees, legal committees, and government departments.
During her stay at the ZZF Margaret McCool is working in Department I: Communism and Society.