Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States in the Construction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Abstract

In the fifty years that have passed since the United Nations General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),' literally hundreds of books on the subject of human rights have come to fill the shelves of major university libraries in the United States and around the world. Human rights has claimed the attention of scholars in several disciplines, and the notion is alternatively approached as a philosophical idea, a legal concept, or a political project. Human rights readily finds a home in Western political philosophy, where theories of natural rights and social contract are well-anchored and help elaborate the modern concept of human rights. This concept has also been discussed in comparative philosophical frameworks.2 Human rights as a legal concept is part of the bedrock of contemporary international law, and neither legal scholarship