Human Rights And The Structures That Seek To Protect Them

Andrew Updegrove, Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP

2/20/2008
(Original Publish Date: 9/1/2006)

Since the Second World War, an increasingly precisely defined and extensive list of individual, and in some cases group, entitlements has been codified that are referred to as \"human rights.\" Under a variety of global and regional treaties and conventions, the governments of signatory nations accept a duty to observe and protect these same rights, as well as the proposition that some degree of international oversight and action is appropriate to safeguard their own citizens from abuse of these rights, and to protect the citizens of other nations from signatory actions. That oversight is provided under an expanding multi-layered, overlapping infrastructure of global and regional commissions, institutions and courts that are still largely supplemental to, rather than empowered to supersede the domestic laws and legal structures of member states. A variety of non-governmental organizations also play an important \"watchdog,\" role by exposing human rights abuses, and applying public pressure upon governments capable of curtailing such abuses. This article provides an overview of the types of human rights that are internationally recognized today, the treaties and conventions that acknowledge them, and the structures that are evolving to protect them.