Discuss the relationship between treaties, declarations, and the history of human rights protections around the world.

What will be an ideal response?

Ans: There is a lack of clarity on which specific human rights are considered either non-rival and/or non-excludable. We know that human rights have involved civil liberties, economic rights, and political rights as well as any number of combinations of these three themes. It seems all nations have a problem with connecting rhetoric (what should be) and practice (what is). It is clear that the United States, a supposed beacon of human rights, has its troubling history of genocide (Native Americans), slavery, and suppression of women’s’ rights in spite of their rhetoric about “all created equal”. A contemporary example of the gap between rhetoric and reality involves the North Korean constitution. Universal declarations of human rights (a weaker iteration of international commitment than a treaty) have been ill formed as this is evident by the many subsequent attempts to re-address these concerns. Human rights declarations, however, have impacted the language of treaties when attempting to mitigate or eliminate racial discrimination, gender discrimination, child and immigrant exploitation, and discrimination against differently abled people. This process is a work in progress with the most recent attempts to acknowledge the rights of Indigenous peoples around the world being the latest in an evolving saga.