The Diplomacy of Human Rights

Event Co-Organised by the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights at the University of Luxembourg and the Embassy of Canada to Belgium and Luxembourg

Abstract

In the 75 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a highly institutionalised international human rights regime has progressively taken shape. A dense web of international conventions and other legal obligations now formally govern the actions of both state and non-state actors. A broad community of non-governmental organisations and other civil society actors have influentially established themselves in the sector, contributing to the creation of forms of international civil society that further benefit from the dramatically increased ease of communications. Yet, if the protection and promotion of human rights may no longer be seen as essentially confined within national boundaries, nation-states continue to hold a predominant place in the wider international system. The effective protection of human rights remains structured by – and may find itself subordinate to – the interplay of competing interests and the cold realities of power politics.

It is against the backdrop of this complex international reality that states seeking to promote human rights as an integral part of their foreign policies are obliged to chart their course. What are the most effective instruments whereby a human rights agenda may be realised at a time of intensifying geopolitical rivalries and a heightened risk of the proliferation of armed conflict? How are human rights best championed as part of a coherent external position relative to potentially competing national foreign policy goals? How may states most appropriately engage in dialogues concerning the conception of human rights themselves in a manner that recognises both universality and diversity?

The present event, co-organised by the UNESCO Chair of Human Rights at the University of Luxembourg and the Embassy of Canada to Belgium and Luxembourg, creates a forum for the discussion of these difficult questions. A survey of selected national experiences in seeking to promote a human rights agenda is used as a starting point for a wider, critical discussion of the means, possibilities, and limits of a diplomacy of human rights.