ABSTRACT
Human rights are standards, standards that outline the conditions necessary for people to live in full dignity. Contemporary eff orts to defi ne specifi c human rights include United Nations instruments such as Th e Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Th e International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1963), Th e International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), Th e Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989), Th e Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1981), and Th e Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1994). Although there is spirited debate over the cultural universality of the work of the United Nations and the specifi c rights outlined within many U.N. instruments (Donnelly, 2002; Ignatieff , 2003; Mutua, 2002a, 2002b), these instruments nonetheless provide useful examples of potentially universal human rights.
