The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the wake of the horrors of the Second World War established human rights as a legitimate focus of international attention. In the half-century since, there have arisen nearly 100 universal and regional human rights agreements governing issues as diverse as discrimination against women, state-sponsored torture, and fair trials. Yet, as we embark on the twenty-first century, accompanied by the ongoing war on terrorism, there has been surprisingly little talk of these agreements. I want to take this opportunity to consider why, despite their ubiquity, human rights treaties have been largely ignored in current debates over how to address the myriad problems in the Middle East, and to suggest how we can make international agreements work more effectively to prevent abuses of human dignity.