PO 275 - Human Rights

This course provides an introduction to human rights and is organized around a number of important questions including: What is the nature of rights? How did human rights develop? What accounts for the success of human rights as an ideal in international politics? Why do countries commit to human rights treaties that limit their sovereignty? Do countries actually comply with human rights obligations? What are the various international and regional instruments for the protection of human rights? How has human rights thinking evolved to deal with the mass violation of human rights so often seen in the twentieth century?

Four credits.