HUMAN RIGHTS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

HUMAN RIGHTS - Essay Example What are Human Rights? Human Rights can broadly be defined as a set of various international norms that have been designed to help in the protection of all people all over the world from any form of severe social, legal and political abuses. Common examples of human rights generally include the right of an individual not to face any torture, the right to have freedom of religion as well as the undeniable right for one to have affair trial in the event that they happen to be charged with a crime (Orend 2002). The main sources of the current versions of human rights include the International Bill of Rights which emerged as the United Nations, 1948b Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various treaties and human rights documents (Mcneill, St. Clair and St. Clair 2009). Various human rights treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) have resorted to creating various treaty bodies to help them effectively monitor the implementation and compliance of these treat ies (Orend 2002). How and why did Human Rights Enter the International Political Process since WWII? After the horrors that were witnessed during the Second World War, there was a broad consensus that emerged at the international level that was keen in demanding that the individual human being should essentially be placed under the protection of the international community. The atrocities that had been committed against certain specific ethic groups as a result of anarchy had shown that it was possible for national governments to gravely fail to protect their citizen’s liberty and lives. As such, since it had been established that the provision of protective mechanisms at the domestic level alone was not enough to provide enough sufficiently stable safeguards, it was thus necessary to entrust the planned new world organization with the role of guaranteeing the enforcement of human rights on a universal scale. Some Latin American countries requested that a full code of human r ights be included in the United Nations Charter at the 1945 San Francisco conference so as to promote the Universalism of these rights. Due to various time constraints it was not possible for the motion to successful at that stage. The commission on Human Rights created a draft of the International Bill of Rights and drafted the Universal Declaration of Human rights, which was adopted by the General Assembly on December 10th, 1948. This Declaration of Human Rights and two UN international treaties are what are collectively commonly referred to as the International Bill of Human Rights (Mcneill, St. Clair and St. Clair 2009). What has Changed about the Character of International Relations since WWII Since the end of the Second World War, there have been rampant changes in the nature and content of international relations. Some of these changes include the fact that the politico-geographic setting of the world has undergone major changes. This factor has been further emphasized by dec olonization that lead to the materialization of an enlarged number of new Sovereign nations that seek to assert themselves in the international community of nations (Fry 2002). After the Second World War, the number of nations that where members of the U.N. was seen to increase from 51