ABSTRACT
This chapter clarifies that human rights are comprehensively global as well as national. Liberal rights, in contrast, deal exclusively with individual rights within the nation-state. The human rights concept makes assumptions about individual human dignity and human connectedness that are more universal than liberal assumptions about individual rights. The language of human rights is first and foremost about equality, but it is also about cultural difference, and it deals with difference in a very different way than liberalism does. The chapter reviews a sample of human rights instruments that are derived from the principles stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which all state parties of the United Nations have ratified. Three United Nations documents compose the International Bill of Human Rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
