{"id":619,"date":"2025-02-21T10:46:21","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T10:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/internationalhistory20c\/?post_type=content&p=619"},"modified":"2025-02-21T10:46:21","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T10:46:21","slug":"chapter-21-the-rise-of-human-rights-in-international-politics","status":"publish","type":"content","link":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/internationalhistory20c\/students\/chapter-21-the-rise-of-human-rights-in-international-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 21: The Rise of Human Rights in International Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Chapter 21: The Rise of Human Rights in International Politics<\/h1>\n\n\n
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The last decades of the twentieth century appeared to mark the entry of a new issue into the international relations agenda \u2013 human rights. However, to a degree, concerns about rights and humanitarian intervention had played a role going back to the eighteenth century. Moreover, controversies about minority rights had marred inter-war Europe and been exploited by Nazi Germany. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948 promised the creation of a new observance of rights, but the Cold War soon cancelled this out. Instead, it was left to the newly independent states and to non-governmental organizations in the West to advance and normalize the human rights agenda. The result was that from the late 1960s onwards, the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union\u2019s intolerance of free speech and the behaviour of autocratic regimes in the Third World brought attention to the need to move human rights to the centre of international politics. This, though, was not without its problems. Some states denounce human rights as a Western invention designed to legitimate intervention, while there also remains the fundamental issue of the continuing battle between national sovereignty and the principle of human rights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Multiple Choice Questions<\/h3>\n\n\n