International Human Rights Seminar

The course involves the study and analysis of the core United Nations-sponsored international human rights treaties with the following objectives: understanding the history and development of human rights protection in the post-UN Charter era; examining the substantive content of the major international human rights instruments; and measuring the relative compliance of the states that have ratified them. The course will assess the impact of these treaties on the enjoyment by the citizens of the various state parties of the rights provided therein. Particular attention will be paid to claims about the apparent decline and/or stagnation in the enforcement of these treaties in the post-Cold War period, especially in the last decade. This course satisfies the upper-level writing seminar requirement.