The Making of International Human Rights

'Based on an impressive range of multinational archival and published primary sources, as well as on a solid reading of the relevant body of research literature, this book is a valuable and impressive contribution to international historical scholarship on the evolution of international human rights norms and their codification as international law in the twentieth century.' Jay Winter, Yale University, Connecticut

'Steven L. B. Jensen offers a fundamentally new interpretation of international human rights history, and his book will make a major contribution to this emerging field. The book is based on an impressive body of research in a wide range of countries and archives. This is a truly important work.' Sarah Snyder, American University, Washington DC

'This book makes a significant and, in many respects, highly novel contribution to the field. Crucially, it represents one of the few recent works that seeks to address the 1960s. The author gives ample reason to revisit this decade and, consequently, to rebalance the relative importance of the two favored decades of human rights historiography, the 1940s and 1970s. It is a work that complements the current state of the art.' Roland Burke, La Trobe University, Victoria

'... the most comprehensive counter-narrative produced to date. Making use of archive collections in ten nations ... Jensen convincingly argues that the Global South is an active and formative player in the diplomatic negotiations regarding human rights. In addition, his illustration of how human rights became a discursive tool ... provides an important counterbalance to notions of a Cold War that provided no space beyond the US-Soviet binary. ... readers will particularly appreciate his skill at recreating complex diplomatic moments, and translating legal documents, meeting notes, and policy reforms into readable and frankly, riveting chapters. NotonlydoesJensen's work unsettle the entire narrative of human rights history, buthe alsoin fact requires modern historians to step back and reevaluate virtually every diplomatic development in the postwar era. This work is a critical and long-needed intervention in human rights history, diplomatic history, and indeed, modern world history.' Samantha Christiansen, H-Diplo

'Jensen pursues two aims: to include the 1960s into the historiography on human rights and to highlight the contributions made by a number of states from the Global South, especially Jamaica and Liberia. ... Jensen has written a well researched and solid book.' Philipp Kandler, Global Histories: A Student Journal

Steven L. B. Jensen is a researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. He has previously published on genocide in the twentieth century, HIV/AIDS, global health and development, and 1960s politics. He is the winner of the 2015 Ester Boserup Thesis Prize and the 2015 Rene Cassin Thesis Prize (Special Mention).

Introduction; 1. 'Power carries its own conviction': the early rise and fall of human rights, 1945-60; 2. 'The problem of freedom': the United Nations and decolonization, 1960-1; 3. From Jamaica with law: the rekindling of international human rights, 1962-7; 4. The making of a precedent: racial discrimination and international human rights law, 1962-6; 5. 'The hymn of hate': the failed convention on elimination of all forms of religious intolerance, 1962-7; 6. 'So bitter a year for human rights': 1968 and the UN International Year for Human Rights; 7. 'To cope with the flux of the future': human rights and the Helsinki Final Act, 1962-75; 8. The presence of the disappeared, 1968-93; Conclusion.