Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

Universal human rights
Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there was a surge of activity in the
development of the human rights regime. The idea that individuals have
rights as human beings which they ought to be able to claim against their
own governments was established in the 1948 Universal Declaration on
Human Rights, but little progress was made towards claiming these rights
for all people until relatively recently. During the Cold War, human rights
were often treated as a strategic bargaining tool, to be used to gain conces-
sions from or to embarrass the states of the East. After 1989, the political
barriers to the universal spread of the notion of human rights came down,
plus advances in technology enabled NGOs concerned with the promotion
of human rights to exert more influence than ever before.
Perhaps the most concrete example of the increased activity is the number
of states ratifying the six main human rights conventions and covenants,
which has increased dramatically since 1990. Ratifications of the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights grew from around 90
to nearly 150 over the decade. Broad support for the goals of the regime
was also demonstrated by the participation of over 170 countries in the
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Understanding International Relations

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1993 World Conference on Human Rights, which met in Vienna where the