Much has been written about the development of international human rights, the concepts, mechanisms and their implementation, from legal and institutional perspectives. Arguably, however, there has been a paucity of literature on the subject from a critical social policybased perspective and hesitancy by policy-makers and analysts alike to challenge threats to a rights-based approach to human development. In an increasingly challenging geo-political context, with various state attempts to reverse even the most basic of rights, many communities have been left to deal with contradictions between the aspirations of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the systemic abuses that are so prevalent across the world today. Indeed, given the current diverging trajectories of inter-state governance, there is an urgent need to revisit the very concept of the universality of human rights, the processes that led to their development and the factors that could ensure the implementation of an internationally accepted rightsbased policy framework.

In the volatility of the post-Cold War international order, there has been a drive to recognise the contribution of a rights-based philosophical discourse on equality, democracy and social justice, as well as ongoing dialogue on the impact of human agency itself in securing human rights (Alston and Goodman, 2013: 3– 57; Donnelly, 2013: 7– 23; Weissbrodt et al, 2009; Gearty and Douzinas, 2012; Morris, 2006). This discourse has not taken place in a vacuum. Ideology, cultural formation, geo-political considerations and combative power relations have all meant that universal human rights are being increasingly contested at a macro-level, in the development of policies to support them, and in the establishment of oversight mechanisms. They are also increasingly being contested and defended at a micro-level, by civil society for example, when it comes to the justiciability, realisability and enforceability of rights. Human rights are, essentially, about how humans interact with each other, how we view each other, and how our governments are obliged to protect citizens and others. As Mark Frezzo highlights in The Sociology of Human Rights, rights relate to social cohesion and interdependence: