By Jarna Petman

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There is no doubt that human rights — especially international human rights — have been a Left or a liberal Left agenda throughout the 20th century, existing alongside liberal internationalism, and an embedded anti-State rhetoric. “Ours is the age of rights,” writes in a triumphant note Louis Henkin, one of the most important U.S. advocates of international human rights towards the end of the 20th century. For him, the struggle for human rights is part of a grander fight for progressive causes:

That the interest of the people is the accepted touchstone of legitimate government gives hope — even, perhaps, renders it likely — that in time more governments will be more representative, and more governments will do better by the people’s rights and interests.

Henkin finds the antecedents for the struggle in the way international law has always sought to provide some protection for individuals. The pedigree of modern human rights, he writes, comes from 19th-century efforts to protect ethnic or religious minorities and the fight against slavery. After the First World War, the flame was kept alight through minorities treaties in the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation instruments. The decisive moment, however, had to wait until the Second World War.

The war against Hitler identified violations of human rights as a major threat to international peace, and they were linked in the rhetoric of the war and in plans for the peace. Human rights were prominent in the constitutions of the new nations that began to emerge in the postwar years.