The Making of International Human Rights

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.

'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