ABSTRACT
Human rights are requirements to be treated in a certain way which derive their legitimacy simply from the fact of humanity. As such they are applicable irrespective of time and place. As tools of international politics, human rights are intended to secure certain outcomes: a state widely recognised as violating human rights may find itself shunned by other states, and consequently, its interests damaged. Many advocates of human rights rely on a mixture of treaty law and ‘shame’ to advance their cause. The legal realisation of human rights will inevitably involve ‘local interpretation’ – for example, Muslim societies will interpret human rights differently to western societies – but human beings are bound together through discourse, and discourse presupposes a conception of the human agent as autonomous. For defenders of human rights, the increasing spread of human rights discourse indicates a welcome development in humanitarian moral consciousness.
