Universal human rights: ‘as much round and round as ever onward’

Abstract

The human rights narrative is commonly presented in linear form: the horror of Nazism, the centrality of human rights in the United Nations Charter, agreement on human rights norms, standard setting; and implementation. Each of these is viewed as a distintic chapter in the development of the contemporary international human rights regime. It is also commonplace to characterise the contemporary period as on a cusp, somewhere between the end of standard setting and reaching agreement on the means of implementation. Duner, for instance, argues thet the mayor deficiency of the regime in the eyes of many professional observers is poor compliance to the purposes of treaty. Accordingly, to complete the narrative, the current task for international society is to imagine new institutional arrangements for implementing the norms and standards agreed in previous chapters. From the perspective of the narrative, the only remaining questions are concerned with implementation.