International Human Rights Policy

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

International human rights have undergone impressive development in the past 75 years. Yet current challenges, ranging from populism and authoritarianism to digital repression and global warming, threaten human rights. This course helps students to formulate promising policy responses to these threats. It first introduces the main international human rights institutions, laws, and policies. It then discusses, with the help of invited human rights practitioners, the most prominent challenges to them. Third, and most importantly, it assists students in devising detailed policy solutions to pressing human rights problems they are passionate about. For example, students can propose to amend existing human rights treaties to close glaring loopholes, reform monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms to improve compliance, and plan campaigns to shame violators or mobilize support for new human rights treaties.