Discussion

1. Universalizing and Internationalizing Human Rights
2. Examples of the Universalization of Human Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa
3. The United States and International Human Rights
4. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
5. In Cooperation with the United Nations

"In Cooperation with the United Nations"

The sixth recital of the Preamble provides that states should achieve the promotion of human rights "in co-operation with the United Nations." The UN represents and concentrates international concern regarding human rights. It put human rights on the world agenda half a century ago and has kept it there. It developed the international law of human rights, including this Universal Declaration, the two Covenants (the ICCPR and the ICESCR,) and numerous subsequent conventions. The very existence of the United Nations -- its network of organs, its relations to governments and non-governmental bodies, and its myriad activities--served to "promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms," as the Charter of the United Nations declared in 1945.

References

See generally Louis Henkin, "The internationalization of human rights" in The Age of Rights at 13.

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