Human rights has been an established subject of international relations for only half a century. With minor exceptions – most notably, nineteenth-century efforts to end the slave trade and twentieth-century work on eradicating slavery and protecting the rights of workers and ethnic minorities – human rights simply were not a subject of international relations before World War II. Even genocidal massacres, such as Russian pogroms against the Jews or the Turkish slaughter of Armenians, were met by little more than polite statements of disapproval. Less egregious violations typically were not even considered a fit subject for diplomatic conversation.

This practice reflected a statist logic arising from the interaction of a realist notion of the national interest and a rigid legal positivist conception of sovereignty. To the realist, human rights are largely irrelevant to the national interest defined in terms of power. To the legal positivist, they present an archetypical example of actions solely within the domestic jurisdiction, and thus the sovereign prerogative, of states.

Although this radical statist logic has suffered some erosion, realist and legal positivist conceptions continue to shape dominant international human rights practices. This chapter seeks to chart the contours of contemporary international human rights norms and practices, with a special emphasis on the continuing centrality of the state.