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![handle is hein.journals/bjil51 and id is 1 raw text is:
THE SILENT SOUND OF DROWNING:
HUMAN RIGHTS JUSTIFICATIONS AND
COMPLEX INTERSECTIONALITY
Maria Grahn-Farley*
INTRODUCTION
T his Article examines the use of Human Rights
Justifications in Swedish laws and legislative proposals
directed towards the complex intersection of migrant, mostly
male, children in socially and economically vulnerable areas.1
This description illustrates how human rights can be abused in
a post-hegemonic liberal democratic order, including the slow
dismantling of the individual human rights protections for
children in Sweden through the use of the United Nations (UN)
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).2 Anti-
* Visiting Professor, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; S.J.D. Harvard Law School,
USA; Coordinator of HRJust, an EU Funded Horizon with project ID: 101094346. The
Article was written as a Visiting Research Fellow at Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
(IALS), University of London, UK Academic Year 2024-25. I want to thank the staff at
the Library of IALS and Dr. Wolfgang Bode of the EU Commission REA for all the EU
support. I am grateful to Professor Hurst Hannum for his comments on an earlier draft and
for so generously sharing advice and opinions in regard to the general HRJust project. I am
also grateful to Professor Gerald Neuman of Harvard Law School for at an early stage of
this project encouraging me to expand the research and the questions to a general applicable
level. Thanks to Matheus Pelegrino da Silva and Alexander Troedsson for comments on
earlier drafts. I am grateful to Professor Laura Carlson for the support of English language
editing. I want to thank the editors of the Brooklyn Journal of International Law and
especially Editor-in-Chief Jeanette Subkhanberdina and Managing Editor Emma Soltis for
a productive and positive editorial process.
1. See Convention on the Rights of the Child, opened for signature Nov. 20,
1989, 1577 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into force Sept. 2, 1990) [hereinafter CRC];
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature Dec.
16, 1966, S. EXEC. Doc. NO. E, 95-2, 999 U.N.T.S. 171 (entered into force Mar.
23, 1976) [hereinafter ICCPR]; Convention for the Protection of Human Rights
and Fundamental Freedoms, Nov. 4, 1950, 213 U.N.T.S. 221 (entered into force
Sept. 3, 1953) [hereinafter ECHR]; see also discussion infra Parts II-III.
2. See, e.g., HURST HANNUM, RESCUING HUMAN RIGHTS: A RADICALLY
MODERATE APPROACH 1-3 (2019) (arguing for a focus on fundamental human
rights); see generally CRC, supra note 1; Susan Marks, Human Rights in
Disastrous Times, in THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO INTERNATIONAL LAW 309
(James Crawford & Martti Koskenniemi eds., 2012) (presenting a critique of
human rights); ERIC A. POSNER, THE TWILIGHT OF HUMAN RIGHTS LAW (2014)
(providing a realist critique of human rights); JOHN GRAY, THE NEW](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/bjil51&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)