The social construction of international human rights

Abstract

This chapter, revised and updated in early 2011, examines how human rights have been built and integrated into the international policy agenda since the mid-twentieth century. This analysis seeks to contextualize some of the recent discussions in the area of human rights. It proposes that one may understand the role of human rights as an instrument for defending human dignity against the practices and agents that threaten it. In this sense it is possible, now and in the future, to claim the complete validity of human rights  based purely on their status as a social construct, whose nature is contingent, and is linked to the ways in which human dignity is understood, and the state’s role as the main guarantor and source of threat to individual human rights.