ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how international law is undergoing a transformation from being the law of nations to becoming the law of people. It traces the sources of human rights from natural to positivist law and how international institutions and nongovernmental organizations have emerged to advocate human rights, sponsor human rights legislation and end human rights abuses. In 1948 the UN General Assembly passed the Genocide Convention, which made genocide a crime. The Holocaust not only produced the term genocide but forced the world to confront the phenomenon. Despite controversy surrounding reproductive rights, great strides have been made toward gender equality in Europe and the US in recent decades. Cold War politics precluded the use of international criminal tribunals for several decades because the superpowers clashed over the meaning of human rights. Twenty-Seven Japanese leaders were brought before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo.
