ABSTRACT
Human rights are globalising. In one sense, of course, human rights are inherently global. As they were developed after World War II, with the horrors of genocide in mind, they are not just universal in form; at least in terms of the intentions of those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and in contrast to the great eighteenth-century declarations of the ‘rights of man’, which were very clear that ‘man’ was a citizen, they were really meant to abolish state persecution of all human beings regardless of whether they were citizens or not. As Article 2 of the UDHR has it:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
