Human Rights and Post-War Reconstruction

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the post-Second World War concern to place human rights on the international political agenda. In particular, it will look at the tensions between a human rights regime built upon the traditional principles of the international system and those principles associated with the idea of establishing universally accepted norms. Although these tensions had long been acknowledged, apart from a brief period between 1941 and the early months of the United Nations the principles of the international system prevailed. Wartime rhetoric suggesting that the postwar order give greater priority to the place of the individual under international law remained unfulfilled. Consequently, it is argued that the human rights regime is built upon principles that often leave victims of violations in a struggle with authoritarian governments legitimised and supported by international society.¹