Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
A worldwide human rights regime has emerged, expanded, and intensified throughout the twentieth century, especially in the post-Second World War era. This regime involves a global system of expanding organizations, social movements, conferences, rules, and discourse promoting the human rights of individuals. This regime is universalistic in aspiration: all humans are expected to be covered by the regime. This universalism involves a discursive and organizational reframing of the more limited and more varying national citizenship emphasis; human rights in principle accrue to all individuals, regardless of their citizenship or residency. And, a growing number of types of individual persons can press for their human rights: women, children, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, gays and lesbians, the elderly, the disabled, and the imprisoned. The content of the human rights at stake also expands, from the rights of “abstract individuals” to the rights of individual members of a specific collectivity, e.g. from suffrage to reproduction rights for women. Also on the rise is both worldwide attention to human rights abuses and violations and national displays of commitment to human rights principles and policies. These unexpected developments have increasingly been highlighted by scholars working within both the disciplines of international relations (e.g. Donnelly 1986; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Hathaway 2002; Vreeland (forthcoming)) and macrosociology (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005; Tsutsui and Wotipka 2004; Smith 1995; Soysal 1994).
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