Overview of Course

This course introduces students to contemporary global human rights issues. It examines the gradual construction of an international human rights regime (international law) and its influence on both international and domestic politics. Why have human rights standards come into being and how and why do they change over time? What influence do such standards have? Drawing on historical and contemporary cases, the course will survey the actors and organizations, including states, international organizations, and non-state actors, involved in the promotion of human rights around the world, as well as obstacles to such promotion. It will review competing conceptions of human rights, whether human rights are universal, how accepted human rights standards may clash with political, social, cultural, and economic interests; problems of enforcement, and the role of human rights in foreign policy. Major topics include civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; genocide and ethnic cleansing, transnational corporations and sweatshops, modern slavery, indigenous groups and land rights, war crimes and the international criminal court, and women’s and LGBTQ rights. Our port regions will provide a variety of case studies that will illuminate the politics of human rights in different cultural, political and economic contexts.