Learning Objectives

After finishing this chapter, you should be able to:

  • Articulate the scope of human rights on an international scale.
  • Identify some of the major human rights instruments, like the UDHR, ICCPR, and ICESCR.
  • Understand some of the strengths and weaknesses of the international human rights treaty system.
  • Locate the main regional human rights system, and understand some of the trade-offs of a regional approach compared with an international one.
  • Identify the ways in which nonstate actors play a crucial role in human rights promotion.
  • Present different arguments for whether and how human rights have power on a global scale.
  • Analyze how global forces shape the human rights field.