Human rights and basic needs: Jimmy Carter’s North-South dialogue, 1977–81

Abstract

This paper reinterprets Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy from the perspective of North–South economic relations. It finds that the Carter Administration used the social and economic rights provisions of its human rights policy as a key stratagem in its efforts to reform US-Third World relations. It then shows how the Administration attempted to persuade Third World leaders to end their insistence in global negotiations for a radical ‘New International Economic Order’ in exchange for new forms of foreign aid targeting ‘basic human needs’, thus demonstrating the impact of global economic change on the 1970s global human rights revolution.