Human Rights Gratifiers

To begin with, human rights has failed in terms of international law. Human rights are defined as “the existence of rights that all human beings possess that even one’s own government cannot infringe on or deny and then can be protected by external elements, as through the United Nations.” There are 30 provisions in the Declaration of Human Rights that was passed on December 10th, 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. However, not many of these are seen as universal. Most of these provisions depend on state interpretation, which relies on culture, norms, beliefs, history, etc. Realists would argue that human rights are not a symbol of international relations. Human rights are seen as an internal affair or a state matter. Liberalists would favor the United Nations and its human rights authority. They would see that to not acknowledge human rights would be problematic. Constructivists would say that things change over time. The emphasis of human rights clearly demonstrates a change of norms in order to accept the idea of human rights. The first controversy with human rights is the issue of state sovereignty. “Sovereignty implies the existence of a government that claims complete authority to regulate virtually everything and everybody within its borders.” States see themselves as their own policy makers and enforcers. They do not see any other state or mechanism in place as more important than the laws already placed in the state of question. States are also more involved with political immunity where they do not wish to indict any leader of their own government. They also do not want to be tied by any treaties that could possibly limit their future endeavors. This is why the United States is not signed to a lot of treaties involving issues of human rights. Even if the United States is a signator of a treaty, most of these have been ratified which are not allowed for human rights. The second controversy with human rights is the treatment of foreigners. Foreigners are expected to obey host country laws even though they are entitled to special treatment that is different from the manner in which the host government deals with its own nationals. This creates a …show more content…
Ratifiers do not differ significantly in their behavior from nonratifiers. In addition, some of the countries that have joined human rights treaties have worse records than those that have not joined. In developing societies, data on human rights violations are difficult to obtain because of the secrecy of the government and distortion. Nonetheless, nongovernmental organizations have managed to improve the monitoring of human rights worldwide. The United Nations Human Rights Commission was authorized in 1970 to investigate against complaints regarding human rights violations. The United Nations Human Rights Council blacklists countries being scrutinized. It attempts to use shame as a tactic for promoting compliance with international conventions and norms. Although, the United Nations monitoring system is heavily dependent on the good faith of governments to submit annual reports on their treaty compliance. This not only keeps states from submitting such forms of their own violations, but also limits the states that lack resources in order to do so. Nongovernmental organizations have become agenda setters for human rights. Horizontal enforcement does not necessarily work either because compliance induced by fear of retaliation does not operate effectively under international