Standard Setting in Human Rights: Critique and Prognosis

Makau Mutua, University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY

1/02/2008
(Original Publish Date: 2007)

This article interrogates the processes and politics of standard setting in human rights. It traces the history of the human rights project and critically explores how the norms of the human rights movement have been created. This article looks at how those norms are made, who makes them, and why. It focuses attention on the deficits of the international order, and how that order—which is defined by multiple asymmetries—determines the norms and the purposes they serve. It identifies areas for further norm development and concludes that norm-creating processes must be inclusive and participatory to garner legitimacy across various divides.