This document provides an overview of a college lecture on human rights protection. It discusses the basic tenets of human rights, the development of international protections from the League of Nations to the United Nations, key institutions and agreements, and challenges relating to cultural relativism. The lecture covers the origins and evolution of the concept of inherent rights to all humans, the formation of international laws and organizations to uphold these rights, and debates around universal standards versus cultural differences.

1. INR 4075: Human Rights Protection
Lecture 1
Professor Maslanik
Spring 2019
Basic Tenets of Human Rights
Inherent rights to all human beings, regardless of nationality,
place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color,
religion, language, or any other status.
These Rights are often expressed and guaranteed by law, in the
form of treaties and customary international law.
International Human rights law expresses obligations for
Government to act or refrain from acting in certain ways, with
the intention of protecting certain individuals.
The League of Nations—Paris Peace Conference Jan 10 1920
Prevent war through collective security, but lacked its own
force.
United States never formally joined and the USSR was only
apart of it for a brief period.
Constitution with no general provisions dealing with human
rights. International protection for human rights had not yet
gained acceptance.
Protection of minorities—came about from redrawing of
territories, creating pockets of ethnic, linguistic, and religious
minorities.
Article 22 & 23 did lay some of the ground work for the
development of human rights law.
22: Mandate system applied only to the former colonies of
States that lost the First World War.

2. The League were to administer ”that the well-being and
development of [the native] peoples form a sacred trust of
civilization.
23: Dealt with the question relating to “fair and humane
conditions of labor for men, women, and children.”
International Labor Organization (ILO) was created to promote
this objective.
Beyond LON: United Nations 1945
Founded 24 October 1945
Primary aim to prevent war—international peace and security.
Other goals include, promoting human rights, economic and
social development, environmental protection, and humanitarian
assistance and intervention during natural disasters and armed
conflict.
Founding originally had 51 members, it now has 193.
Main offices are in New York, Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna.
Six Organs: General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC), the Secretariat, the International
Court of Justice, and UN Trusteeship Council.
Cold War: Membership grew with the spread of decolonization
in the 1960s.
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights 10 December 1948,
Paris
“Freedom, Justice, & Peace in the World.”
30 Articles establishing individual rights
First step in the Creation of the International Bill of Rights
(1966)
UN Constitution—non-binding e.g., not in and of itself a part of
domestic law.
However, the Declaration has brought about other international
agreements: International Covenant on Civil and Political

3. Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which are legally
binding for states that ratify the agreements.
Elenore Roosevelt “May well become the international Magna
Carta of all men everywhere.”
United Nations Cont’d
Cold War: Peacekeeping was its primary mission. Though, the
United States and the USSR typically halted the UN from doing
so.
Though, the UN Participated in some missions in the 1950s
(authorizing a US-led coalition to combat North Korea’s
invasion of the South, approved the partition of Palestine, and
established the first peacekeeping force to end the Suez Crisis
(1956).
In the 1960s, the UN led peacekeeping missions in the Congo.
However, largely in part of its inability to mediate conflicts in
the Middle East, Vietnam, and Kashmir, the UN shifted to
working on more secondary goals of economic and cultural
diplomacy.
Despite some of its successes (El Salvador, Namibia, Cambodia
and South Africa), its peacekeepers are often regarded as
bystanders (Bosnian crisis, Rwanda, and Somalia).
International Human Rights Protection Institutions
International Court of Justice (ICJ)
International Labor Organization (ILO)
UN high Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)—1950
Create in the aftermath of WWII to help millions throughout
Europe who lost their home.
International Criminal Court (ICC)—2002
Intergovernmental organization and tribunal in The Hague that
has jurisdiction to persecute individuals for international crimes
of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

4. UN Security Council Chapter VII of UN Charter
Since the end of the Cold War, the UN Security Council has
become more engaged in responding to large-scale human rights
violations.
Security Council Permanent Members: Russia, UK, France,
China, & United States
Chapter VII of the Charter applies to situations involving a
“threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”
Examples of this adoptions are: Former Yugoslavia, Haiti,
Sierra Leone, East Timor, and the Darfur region of the Sudan.
Ad hoc International Tribunals: International Tribunals for the
Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and the mixed war crimes
tribunals for Sierra Leone and Cambodia, to punish those
responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide and war
crimes-–is seen as a modern form of collective humanitarian
intervention.
Results?
Week 4: Cultural Relativism
INR 4075
SPR 2019
Significance of International Human Rights—Thomas Pogge
2001
Two basic components: the Concept and the Substance
So What are Human Rights? And What Human Rights are there?
What: Universally express moral concerns relating to human
beings.
Substance: Any instant understood as an outright abuse of once

5. relative civil liberties—inherently challenges cosmopolitanism.
”Every person has a negative duty not to collaborate in the
avoidable imposition upon others of an institutional order in
which they lack secure access to the objects of their human
rights.”
“Do not the Chinese, the Indians…have traditions of their own
from which they can construct their own moral conception—
perhaps wholly without the individualistic concept of human
rights?”
Pogge (2001) Cont’d
When we imagine human rights as moral obligations pegged to
global institutions, then it makes sense that we a plurality of
rules may govern a regime of international partners, regardless
of differing histories.
Alternatively, said universal application neglects similar refutes
international diversity.
“There can be…only one global institution.”
Defends the utility of placing international regimes and
institutions under moral claims as a way of mitigating some
human rights violations.
Review of H. Lauterpacht
How can law and international law maintain a free society?
To elucidate this, the author examines human rights provisions
expressed in the UN Charter, and the subsequent efforts to make
the provisions effective.
The Rights of Man and the Law of Nations
Human Rights Under the Charter of the UN
International Bill of the Rights of Man
The Law of Nature and the Rights of Man: Contemporary
concerns for human rights is set deeply in “antiquity” and

6. human nature.
Lauterpach Continued
The Law of nature, acts as an ”instrument of reaction” as well
as a ”lever of progress.”
Article 55, promotes the legal duty to respect human
rights…and establish agencies for the effective international
support of these rights.
Though throughout the remainder of his book, Lauterpacht
deplores the “timidity and inadequacy,” of various proposals for
the Covenant of Human Rights, the Covenant itself and simliar
draft instruments, though these she be regarded as steps in the
process of adopting the International Bill of Human Rights.
International Human Rights & Cultural Relativism
Term borrowed from anthropology and moral philosophy ( Alain
Locke 1924).
”The position according to which local cultural traditions
(including religious political, and legal practices) properly
determine the existence and scope of civil and political rights
enjoyed by individuals in a given society.”
Relativists argue: HR standards vary considerably between
different cultures.
The Elitist Theory of Human Rights
Argentina
Democracy only works for superior cultures
“The Conspiracy Theory of Human Rights” – Popper
Machiavellian creation of the West, calculated to impair the
economic development of the Third World.

7. Marxists assumptions is that civil and political rights are
”formal” bourgeois freedoms that serve only the interests of the
“capitalists.
Cannot Detract from their Beneficial Features
HR Movement has resisted the relativist attack: Social Inst
(international law) are created by and for the individual.
“International human rights law embodies the imperfect yet
inspired response of the international community to a growing
awareness of the uniqueness of the human being and the unity
of the human race. It also represents an eloquent body of norms
condemning the effects of organized societal oppression on
individuals.”
Considerations
“Coercing Religious uniformity leads to far more social
disorder than allowing diversity.”
Before and without government, there would have been a state
of nature. But later voluntarily consented to cede some of their
rights, which later gave protection to other rights.
Tabular Rasa
Follow up Questions
1.) Following Pogge, how do some of the world’s largest
Multinational Corporations (MNCs) violate international human
rights standards?
2.) Explain negative duties-–i.e., to avoid certain actions, and
their role in human rights protection.
3.) Define the elitist perspective of Cultural Relativism . Do

8. you agree?
4.) Explain Kanarek’s attack of cultural relativism e.g., what are
its deficiencies.
Week 3
Natural Law & Cosmopolitanism
INR 4075 Spring 2019
Natural Rights?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,
and the Pursuit of Happines…” Thomas Jeffferson Dec of Ind
1776
Rights that have always existed.
By being human, we possess inalienable and immutable rights—
regardless of the government, religion, or ethical system under
which one lives.
Those who reject this concept (Rousseau, Bentham, Nietzsche,
Mill, & Burke).
Drawing from Darwin, there is nothing natural about natural
rights. There is a natural principle, however, The will to
survive.
Natural Law
” The international recognition and protection of the rights of
man is, in strict juridical logic, independent of any doctrine of
natural law and natural rights.”
Natural law, at is base, can serve as a source of inspiration and

9. sanction for men of goodwill.
Founders of contemporary International law (Vitoria, Grotius,
Vattel, Wolff, and Puffendorf, drew upon concepts of natural
law and Concerned themselves for the individual suggest again
a conception of that law as not merely governing the mutual
relations of states, but “as being above the legal order of
sovereign states.”
Natural Law Cont’d—Challenges
Contesting Natural Law
“…It must be admitted that we can never prove the existence of
things other than ourselves and our experiences. No logical
absurdity results from the hypothesis that the world consists of
myself and my thoughts and feelings and sensations, and that
everything is mere fancy.” Bertrand Russell The Problems of
Philosophy (p. 10).
“ Right…is the child of law: from real laws come real rights;
but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and
invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and
intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of
monsters.” (Bentham, Anarchical Fallacies).
Thinking about Natural Laws
How were these explored and implemented? 1946 UN committee
tasked with developing fundamental human rights from the
world’s diverse cultures.
Elaborate questionnaire was sent to statemen around the world.
Shared common assumptions about the nature of man and
society.
Every persons, simply through virtue of being human, has
inalienable rights, which others must attend to in a civil ized
society.
Beyond basics (food, shelter, and safety) Do economic (or other
more eccentric) rights belong on a list of basic (or natural)

10. human rights?
Is the International Bill of Rights Reserved for the liberal
democratic Welfare State? Or do Ideals transcend sociocultural
and political realities?
Critique of Cosmopolitanism—Calhoun (2001)
Cosmopolitanism?
Its vision is limited and overly optimistic.
How does citizenship contend with global capitalism and with
non-cosmopolitan dimensions of globalization?
Reflects an elite perspective on the world--few academic
theories escape this label.
Top financial institutions are exemplars of cosmopolitanism,
though not of democracy.
Cosmopolitanism is deeply, and ironically attached to the nation
state.
It has been intertwined with capitalism and Western Hegemony
Huntington (1993) –Cultural Relativism/Or Universally
Mandated?
Predicted that culture, not ideology would account for major
conflicts.
“Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism,
human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free
markets, the separation of church and state, often have little
resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist, or
Orthodox cultures.
Drawing from the economist article, what are the contentions
against the cultural relativist argument? For example, are the
core documents exclusively Western?
“Jihad vs. McWorld.”
Classical Liberalism

11. Rand: Objectivism, an objective reality and objective morality,
which can be discovered through the use of reason.
In order to survive, we need certain natural rights.
Teleology, they exist for a goal or purpose of human beings.
Nozick: Pursuing a rational self interest you would not impede
upon the rights of others.
Deontologically: tell us what we should not do: Though shall
not kill.
Gov violates our natural rights.
Capitalism is the only moral economic system because it is
based on voluntary exchange not corrosion.
Defend capitalist acts between consenting adults: Military,
Police and a Court. That is it.
Discussion
1. Do we live in a cosmopolitan era? In other words, can we
achieve global citizenship? If so, what are some examples?
2. What is natural law? Does it have universal weight, or is it a
concept solely applicable to Western elites?
3. Looking ahead, what is "cultural relativism?"
* Please respond to one of the questions. Thank you