ABSTRACT
For the past fifty years the study of international politics has been dominated by the "realists". In the post cold war era "realism" is increasingly being challenged by a "new realism"—a way of looking at the global system that puts the interest and needs of people, instead of states at the center of the analysis. Global humanism corresponds to one possible direction for a Post Cold-War world. Thus far the movement toward a new human rights agenda has taken two distinct forms. First, there is the path of international agreements and international organization (IO). Second, states are still relatively free to apply or ignore these protections selectively and to avoid obligations through their own interpretations of critical provisions and definitions in the agreements. It is in this manner that such issues as gender discrimination, discrimination against ethnic minorities, and environmental issues of all types have found their way out of the woods of "domestic" concerns and into the global agenda.
