generalised human rights provisions. By 1948 two key documents emerged, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide.^50 These were followed by the International Covenants on
Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (both entered into
force in 1976), the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial
Discrimination (1969), the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination against Women (1981), the Convention against Torture and other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987) and the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (1990).^51
By the 1990s, it had thus become possible to articulate the vast majority of
the suffering with which professional humanitarians were concerned in terms of the
now complex and extensive language of human rights. Firstly, it had very clearly
become the dominant vernacular to express international humanitarian concern.
Secondly, instead of the perfect, perpetrator-less crime of a “humanitarian crisis”,
human rights promised to provide a description of events in terms of specific
failures of political responsibility, just as professional humanitarians were becoming
disillusioned with constant palliation, and aware of the harm that even an
apparently “do no harm” approach could entail, such as Tony Vaux experienced in
Sudan where “providing a few sacks of food was virtually the same as providing a
Kalashnikov rifle. They could be exchanged for each other within hours of
delivery”.^52 Most importantly, human rights represented the most ambitious
attempt to create accountability for suffering in various forms.
For professional humanitarians, the dilemma became one of how to situate
themselves in relation to the question of political responsibility with regard to
human rights violations: as radically distinct, or, increasingly, as part of the
50
On the drafting of the UDHR, see Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor
Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001).
On the Genocide Convention, see Samantha Power, 'A Problem from Hell': America and the
Age of Genocide 51 (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 47-60.
The most comprehensive overview of the international human rights regime is Henry J.
Steiner, Philip Alston and Ryan Goodman, eds., International Human Rights in Context: Law,
Politics, Morals 52 , 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Vaux, The Selfish Altruist , 82.