The Politics of Human Rights The Quest for Dignity in the 21st Century

This chapter introduces the meaning of human rights, what those rights are and where they can be found, but it also offers some critiques of human rights, especially the charge that they represent little more than Western values. The chapter discusses the universality of human rights, embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and the fact that all human beings have human rights no matter where they live and no matter whether their own state has ratified various human rights conventions. It introduces international human rights law, which takes human rights from the moral or ethical sphere into real law. We discuss the relationship between domestic and international human rights law. We conclude with an introduction to the major players in the human rights field with examples of the kind of work these bodies engage in.