Rights and justice in international relations

Can the concept of human rights be applied across borders or are rights culturally specific? Is it realistic, or even desirable, to aim at an international system based on universal principles of justice? This free course, Rights and justice in international relations, takes a critical view of the assumption that 'rights are a good thing' and looks at the problems that arise when they are applied in the international arena.

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1 International human rights: an introduction
• 1 International human rights: an introduction
• 2 The United Nations settlement
• 2 The United Nations settlement
• 2.1 Background to the idea of international rights
• 2.1.1 Where did the attempt to define notions of rights internationally come from?
• 2.2 The origins of a rights discourse
• 3 Defining rights
• 3 Defining rights
• 3.1 Introduction
• 3.2 What are rights?
• 3.3 Examples of rights
• 3.4 Debates about rights
• 4 Defining justice
• 4 Defining justice
• 4.1 Distributive and commutative justice
• 4.2 Social and political justice
• 5 Rights in the international arena
• 5 Rights in the international arena
• 5.1 Rights, justice and international politics
• 5.2 Human rights in the international arena
• 5.3 Problems with international rights
• 5.4 The influence of the Western perspective
• 5.5 Feminist critiques of international rights
• 5.6 Against whom are rights claims made?
• 5.7 Relating individual rights to state sovereignty
• 5.8 Review of criticisms of international rights
• 6 International justice – communitarian and cosmopolitan perspectives
• 6 International justice – communitarian and cosmopolitan perspectives
• 6.1 Introduction
• 6.2 Some general features of communitarianism and cosmopolitanism
• 6.3 International distributive justice
• 6.4 International retributive justice
• 6.5 Military and humanitarian interventionism
• 7 Conclusion
• 7 Conclusion
• 8 Further reading
• 8 Further reading
• References
• Acknowledgements