either duties to abstain from interfering within a protected zone shielding every individual, or duties to provide everyone with the opportunity to develop and realize their full potential. Human rights have transformed the way in which we conceive of the place of the individual within the community and in relation to the state in a vast array of disciplines, including law, politics, philosophy, sociology and geography. The published output on human rights over the last five decades has been enormous, but on the whole bound tightly to a notion of human rights that links individuals and groups directly to the state. However, over the last two decades, there has been a gradual enlargement of the scope of human rights, moving them beyond claims against the state to contest human rights violations by non-state actors. Initially spurred by feminist critiques of the exclusion of domestic violence as a human rights concern, a move to reinterpret human rights has meant that more and more rights can be claimed to protect victims from abusers which have no relation to the state. Examples include the rise of individual criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Such application of human rights nevertheless by and large remained anchored in a positivist understanding of law, calling for the state to remain centrally involved as arbiter or enforcer. This has been, till date, the prevailing view with regard to civil and political rights as well as rights popularly defined as “group rights” (e.g. women rights, child rights, rights of the excluded communities etc).