This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the role of humanity in international law, offering a fresh perspective to a discussions with global implications. The 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed the sporadic emergence of a new vision of global law. Although the vision has taken many different forms, all instances of it have been uniform in the attempt of radically altering how we understand international law by seeking to posit the human as the primary subject of the international legal order and humanity as its main source of legitimacy. Together, this book calls these instances "the law of humanity project". In so doing, it also paints a picture of and critically assesses a particular moment in the history of international law - a moment which may have already come to a sudden end as a consequence of the current populist backlash in world politics, but during which it seemed inevitable that the law of humanity vision would come to play an increasingly important role in world affairs.

This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the role of humanity in international law, offering a fresh perspective to a discussions with global implications. The 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed the sporadic emergence of a new vision of global law. Although the vision has taken many different forms, all instances of it have been uniform in the attempt of radically altering how we understand international law by seeking to posit the human as the primary subject of the international legal order and humanity as its main source of legitimacy. Together, this book calls these instances "the law of humanity project". In so doing, it also paints a picture of and critically assesses a particular moment in the history of international law - a moment which may have already come to a sudden end as a consequence of the current populist backlash in world politics, but during which it seemed inevitable that the law of humanity vision would come to play an increasingly important role in world affairs.

Trafficking in human beings has become one of the most talked about criminal concerns of the 21st century. But there is more. Trafficking has also been declared one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time. As such, it has become a part of the expansion of the human rights phenomenon. In Trafficking in Human Beings and Foucauldian Biopower: A case study in the expansion of the human rights phenomenon, Ukri Soirila examines the reasons for, and consequences of, formulating the anti-trafficking campaign in human rights language. Drawing from Foucauldian theory of biopower and Giorgio Agamben's concepts of bare life and homo sacer, Soirila argues that the human rights approach is a double-edged sword, but that the human rights language can nevertheless provide unidentified, excluded victims of trafficking the tools to formulate political claims and to challenge the exclusive and depoliticising concept of 'victim of trafficking' or to continuously redraw its borders.