Rights Beyond Borders

Abstract

Abstract Over the five decades since the establishment of the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights issues have become a dominant feature of the international system, embracing new actors, eroding the traditional Westphalian concept of sovereignty, and leading to an acceptance that the treatment of individuals and groups within domestic societies is legitimately a focus of global attention. This book examines the effect of this normative evolution on individual, state, institutional, and advocacy network behaviour. Having described this normative environment, it assesses its impact on the relationships of key actors (selected non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), some national governments and the UN human rights institutions) with China, particularly in the period since the Tiananmen bloodshed in June 1989. The book seeks to trace how the various parts of the international human rights regime have operated in combination, and why democratic governments have sustained a human rights element in their policies towards China. It also examines China's responses—international and internal—to being the focus of global attention in this issue area. The book's theoretical concerns are to uncover the mechanisms through which international human rights norms influence especially the external but also the domestic behaviour of states. By examining Beijing, it explains why there has been some forward movement in China's participation in the regime, and why that level of participation has only reached a certain stage. The book has nine chapters. The first is an introduction, and the rest are arranged in two parts: One, The Setting (two chapters), and Two, The Process (five chapters, followed by a concluding chapter).

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