ABSTRACT
International Rights' represents the development of rights-claims to the global level. This phenomenon has two features: First, it makes claims concerning the status of the person regardless of their cultural, ethnic, religious or national background. The second feature of international rights concerns the obligations and reasonable expectations of states towards each other. This chapter compares two discourses of international rights with very different assumptions. It examines how the assumptions of each perspective are constitutive of how they interpret and hence respond to questions of international rights violations through appeal to a concrete case. The chapter argues that the Kantian approach fails to properly grasp such an atrocity as is evidenced by the practical response of the international community both during and after the genocide. It also argues that this failure is symptomatic of its approach and that something like a contextualist outlook best serves the ends and aims of the discourse of international rights.
