Conclusion and Speculation

Abstract

Human rights are now the most prominent idea in the rhetoric of international relations, except perhaps for democracy. This book has investigated the progress made during the last fifty years in turning this idea into something more than a slogan. Human rights lend themselves to regime analysis because international regimes are themselves understood to be normative structures. For most authors the existence of the Commission on Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the major Covenants and the machinery for dealing with violations of human rights are sufficient to demonstrate the existence of a regime. According to the optimists, a regime already exists. However, for all this activity, and contrary to the optimists’ claims, torture, political arrests, disappearances, wilful starvation and other gross violations of human rights remain common in many parts of the world. On the one hand the idea of human rights has become one of the most powerful political images of modern times, while on the other, and for all the activities of the United Nations and other international fora, little has been achieved in response to that image.