Ali RASTBEEN
Executive Summary: More than 230 years after the proclamation of Human Rights and Citizen’s Rights (1789), and 75 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the philosophy of Human Rights remains the essential foundation of any discourse on peace and international coo-eration, after two centuries of struggles, struggles, arguments and discussions aimed at proving the superiority of universalism of Human Rights over competing philosophical or political conceptions (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Communist, Socialist, Nationalist or Colonialist). The ideology of human rights now seems to have gained a decisive victory over competing systems of thought and is more than ever at the origin of the international legal order as constituted after the Second World War. However, this victory remains fragile and is perhaps more temporary than the founding fathers had hoped and imagined the ruling elites of Western democracies. Discussions about the scope and merits of human rights attest to the variety and vigour of alternative world views. Finally, the blockage of the United Nations system, a prisoner of the original structure of its Security Council, reflects its inadequacies to the new global geopolitical situation. It will take a strong will for reform and re-foundation, backed by a superior imaginative capacity and an out-of-standard training force, to give the existing system a new impetus and lay the foundations for a peace architecture capable of meeting the great challenges of the 19th century.
Keywords: Human Rights, Universalism, Philosophy, Politics, Geopolitics, Ideology, International Order, Legal, Great War, Second World War, Cold War, Human Rights, Human Security, Development, Fear, Threats, Human Dignity, Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations Organization, Security Council, Peace Architecture, International Cooperation, West, Conventions, Congress, Humanitarian, UNDP.
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