Human Rights Conventions

What is it about?

Human rights conventions codify a wide range of rights and standards under international law. However, because debates about human rights are often highly polarised, views about human rights conventions are also sharply divided. The main strands of scepticism focus on the pitfalls of the legalisation of human rights and the limited effectiveness of international instruments and institutions in implementing human rights standards and improving compliance, despite their much-criticised proliferation. Beyond these sceptical views about what can broadly be described as the praxis of human rights conventions, they also raise more fundamental philosophical questions. These include, for example, whether human rights conventions help to clarify the content of human rights, and what the point and normative justification of having such conventions might be. After providing an overview of human rights conventions, this paper engages primarily with the former issue and argues that the conceptual content of human rights can be explained through norm-making and subsequent norm-applying in international legal practice. The normativity of human rights conventions is also discussed, although it is treated as an open question. The paper concludes with some remarks on the continuous nature and authority of international legal practice and argues that human rights conventions do not have to conform to any single philosophical account.

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Photo by Gavin Li on Unsplash

Photo by Gavin Li on Unsplash