Do human rights have a future globally? The evidence presented here suggests that with sufficient political pressure and an outcry about every known situation – torture, terror, suppression of religious expression, restriction on migration, genocide, and other violations of the several extant human rights protocols – individual nations can be muscled into some agreement. But this will take enormous and continuing political activity and steadfastness on the part of the present world’s democracies. The funding of private international rights organizations is a major task, and those concerned nations will have to stand by the NGOs and help expand the existing machinery for human rights concerns. Moreover, each nation will have to fully fund its stipulated contributions to UN activities – supporting the Center for Human Rights, ratifying and implementing treaties, adhering to human rights standard for a nation’s diplomacy and trade policies, and issuing a clear, positive statement of adherence to human rights. In any case, it will be a long leap from a politics of human rights to a law of human rights. The European Convention is, thus far, unique in this process. A similar inter-American effort has never taken hold, and there is no similar effort in Asia or Africa. In the long run, a functioning law of human rights must be governed by a law-based polity. In the short run, over many decades, a vigorous international rights movement must be funded to continue to alleviate human rights abuses and to help more nations move toward recognition of the need for a human rights law. After all, this is what democratic politics is all about.
