International Human Rights Law and Organizations
Since 1948 an elaborate body of international human rights law has developed through state practice, the work of international courts, and multilateral treaty making. Dozens of human rights treaties are now operative within organizations such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the African Union. Some of these treaties have been ratified by more than three-quarters of the world's countries. This section sketches the development of international measures to promote and protect human rights. Efforts to protect human rights through international treaties began in 1919 in the League of Nations and expanded after World War II with treaties such as the Genocide Convention (1948), the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), and the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (both 1966). The international promotion and protection of human rights complements the legal protection of human rights at the national level.
When a government violates the human rights of its residents the victims may be able to appeal to the country's laws or bill of rights and get a court to order that the violations stop and that the government provide remedies. If suitable national laws and bills of rights are unavailable, however, victims of human rights violations may want help from international law and organizations. Traditionally, international law did not confer rights and protections on individual persons; its concern was exclusively the rights and duties of countries or states. Victims of human rights violations could appeal to heaven, and invoke standards of natural justice, but there were no international organizations working to formulate and enforce legal rights of individuals. After World War I the League of Nations had some success in using minority rights treaties to protect national minorities in Europe, but the effort ended with the rise of Nazi Germany and the beginning of World War II.
Countries fighting Hitler's Germany decided that after their victory a new international organization would be needed to promote international peace and security, and that securing human rights in all countries would help lessen the likelihood of the reoccurrence of large wars (Lauren 1998, Morsink 1999, Glendon 2001). Indeed, prior to the official formation of the United Nations, the Allies imposed human rights obligations on Italy and Central European powers in peace treaties. Similar obligations were imposed on Germany and Japan during the Allied occupation (Henkin 1999). The United Nations was created in 1945. Its Charter established goals of protecting future generations from the “scourge of war” and promoting “fundamental human rights” and the “dignity and worth of the human person.”
Not long after its founding the UN established a committee with the charge of writing an international bill of rights. This document was to be similar to historic bills of rights such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) and the United States Bill of Rights (1791), but was to apply to every person in every country. This international bill of rights emerged in December 1948 as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Morsink 1999, Lauren 1998, Glendon 2001). Although some diplomats had hoped for a binding human rights treaty that countries joining the UN would have to adopt, the Universal Declaration was a set of recommended standards rather than a binding treaty. By now, however, almost all of the norms in the Universal Declaration have been incorporated in widely-ratified UN human rights treaties.
The Universal Declaration has been astoundingly successful in setting the pattern for subsequent human rights treaties and in getting countries to include its list of rights in national constitutions and bills of rights (Morsink 1999). The Universal Declaration and the treaties that followed largely define what people today mean when they speak of human rights. The Universal Declaration proposed six families of rights including security rights, due process rights, liberty rights, rights of political participation, equality rights, and social rights. The inclusion of social rights to goods such as education and an adequate standard of living took the Declaration beyond its 18th century antecedents (see Eide 1992).
The Universal Declaration was born at a time that made its success difficult. The Declaration's approval by the General Assembly coincided with the beginning of the Cold War—an ideological and geopolitical conflict between capitalist and communist countries that continued until almost 1990. Ideological differences and hostilities might have stalled the human rights movement if not for human rights advances in Europe. In the early 1950s Western European countries formed the Council of Europe and created the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This international treaty entered into force in September of 1953, and was binding upon countries that ratified it. The European Convention established basic rights similar to those in the Universal Declaration, but included provisions for enforcement and adjudication. The European Convention gave birth to the European Court of Human Rights, whose job is to receive, evaluate, and investigate complaints, mediate disputes, issue judgments, and interpret the Convention. The human rights set forth in the Convention are legally enforceable rights to which member states are bound. In creating the European Convention and Court, the countries of Western Europe gradually proved that effective protection of human rights could be provided at the international level.
Inspired by the success of the European Convention, the United Nations followed a similar path, creating numerous treaties aimed at the enforcement and adjudication of the rights set forth in the Universal Declaration. These documents establish legal obligations among the ratifying countries to implement international rights within their national legal and political systems. By 2000 the main human rights treaties had been ratified by a large majority of the world's countries. As Ann Bayefsky writes, “Every UN member state is a party to one or more of the six major human rights treaties. 80% of states have ratified four or more” (Bayefsky 2001).
Regional arrangements, similar to those in Europe, exist in the Americas and Africa (see 5.4.2 and 5.4.3 below). Efforts to protect human rights through international law have obviously not been totally successful—numerous human rights violations still occur today in all parts of the world. International human rights law is a work in progress, but it has developed much farther than one could have expected in 1950 or even in 1975.