International human rights and the challenge of legitimacy

Abstract

International human rights regimes: acceptance and resistance International human rights regimes as they exist today are perplexing. On the one hand, international human rights emerged virtually out of the blue at the end of the Second World War (Mazower 2004) and had their political breakthrough in international affairs only by the mid 1970s (Moyn 2010). By now, they have become institutionalized as a set of elaborate international practices, almost universally recognized, if not always respected, by key international actors (Beitz 2009, chap.1–2). Virtually every state has ratified at least one of the United Nations’ core international human rights instruments, and 80 per cent of states have ratified four or more. Regional human rights mechanisms claim a total membership of more than 150 states. In 65 countries, independent national human rights institutions monitor the state’s human rights practices domestically. And not only states are implicated in this growing web of international human rights treaties: global governance institutions and multinational corporations increasingly find themselves being assessed in terms of their human rights impact in the countries with which they interact. Most notably, international human rights have inspired a vibrant international civil society. It monitors and holds to account governments, corporations and other organizations for their human rights practices, and mobilizes individuals and groups to appropriate the rights ascribed to them in international declarations and treaties. Growing numbers of new issues of global concern – migration, trade, investment, climate change, etc. – are being framed in the vocabulary of human rights (Donnelly 2007, p.289). Thus, judging by the avowed acceptance by this multitude of actors, the practices and institutions of international human rights would seem to enjoy, on average, a broad, strong legitimacy in the contemporary world.