ABSTRACT

Since the adoption of the UDHR1 six decades ago, a remarkable global human rights infrastructure has been put in place. What started as a ‘common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations’2 is now transformed into a complex web of institutions tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and preventing human rights violations. The remit and mode of operation of these institutions differ, as do their legal basis, composition and impact. Their sustained growth and development, indeed their sheer existence in the absence of any overarching master plan, remains an intriguing feature of an international legal order which rests firmly on state sovereignty, yet keeps creating and entrusting such institutions with the very mandate to intrude into that sovereignty.