A human rights discourse now dominates politics; there is a powerful human rights “movement”. It is the new secular religion of our time.
… This new “human rights-ism” accords great value to the United Nations – notwithstanding its inability to enforce its decisions, and its refusal to make practical demands of its members to be democratic or respect the human rights of their citizens. The effect is to maintain a certain challenge to normative liberalism, but on rather different terms than before.
… But where disappointed in political economy, its transitional demands have been resurrected in the shrill discourse of human rights and their “abuses”. The new militant is not the party sectarian but the NGO activist.