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CONCLUSION
The enforcement of human rights is in dire need of attention. While two legally binding
human rights covenants now exist, approximately 14% of UN member states have yet to ratify one
or both human rights covenants. 284 Genocides in the 1990s and 2000s demonstrate the need for a
more powerful human rights mechanism. However, human rights have progressed since their
declaration in 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and are nearly unrecognizable
from the individual rights enumerated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Bill of
Rights, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. While the American and
French revolutions inspired human rights a century and a half later, human rights were not an
inescapable conclusion in 1776 or 1789. These rights, in practice, were not afforded to certain
populations, including women and slaves. These rights were also dependent upon the authority of
the state, which (in both France and the United States) originally lacked a judicial system capable of
holding states accountable to these promises of individual rights. The tragedies of the two world
wars and the Holocaust encouraged the international community to pursue the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. This document was important for human rights because it was the
first of its kind to list out all rights contained within the phrase “human rights.” Even after this
declaration, however, human rights were not legally binding on states. It was only after two human
rights covenants made human rights legally binding on state parties and the mass mobilization
campaigns of human rights NGOs that human rights superseded state sovereignty. With this final
milestone, human rights became modern human rights, rights that are natural, equal, and universal
and transcendent over state sovereignty.
284
The United States has not ratified the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, for example.
"International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," United Nations Treaty Collection, May 15, 2016, accessed May 15, 2016,
http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx.
"International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," United Nations Treaty Collection, May 15, 2016, accessed May 15, 2016,
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx.
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