Introduction

There is unfortunately little prospect of eliminating all obstacles to protecting human rights in the twenty-first century. Applying universal human rights standards across the globe is a difficult and daunting task. Many problems and challenges lie ahead. One of the most formidable tasks facing the international human rights community is to establish whether a commitment to the full range of human rights is even feasible given the cultural diversity, unequal economic circumstances, and socio-economic priorities of the expanding globalized world. A related focus of this volume will be on the extent to which the dynamics surrounding the human rights challenges in the Middle East conform to or diverge from such dynamics in other parts of the world. Since the protection of all human rights requires perfection regardless of region, two sensible questions to ask regarding the Middle East are: (a) To what extent progress or improvement can realistically be made on the status quo? and (b) To what extent are the apparent or real features of such uniqueness a function of contemporary manifestations of Orientalism and Islamophobia?