International human rights law, in one sense, offers great promise and hope because of the lofty ideals it espouses and, in another sense, great disappointment because of the gap between what these idealistic statements proscribe in terms of aspiration for all humanity and the reality under which most people live. If all the rights claimed to exist under international human rights bill actually existed, a global utopia would have emerged. Yet all over the world, there are routine violations of rights set forth in fundamental documents that outlaw the rights humanity is supposed to enjoy simply as a result of the fact that we are human.
The body of rights that is largely held to exist stems from three main documents said to be the ‘international bill of rights’. This is made up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR). These three conventions are said to represent in respective order first generation universal human rights, second generation universal human rights and third generation universal human rights. Critics of the international human rights law project raise their objections on the grounds that the idea of universal rights is a Western concept that is imposed without any sensitivity to the cultural practices of cultures that have developed independently of a system. rights-based law. While this is true in some respects, there are also human rights advocates within these cultures who accept the universality of the idea of human rights and say that often this intellectual objection to the notion of human rights is an excuse for cover up the numerous human rights atrocities committed by governments around the world. In any case, global recognition of human rights has existed for more than 60 years in a codified international form and seems unlikely to cease anytime in the near future as a relevant political discourse.
