Abstract
The States, which are the main actors in international politics, should never lead moral actions, if we take account of their rationality and egoism. Indeed, it is difficult to understand the incentives for states to act morally if we focus on the main theories of international relations. Actually, it is argued that what lead countries to behave in this irrational way (regarding the material costs) are domestic reasons. The defence of human rights is not something new (e.g. French declaration in 1789, fight to abolish slavery in the 19th century…) but it only became a universal recognized issue-area after the shocking tortures of WWII (Donnelly, 1986, p. 614). In the Declaration of Human Rights established by the United Nations in 1948, Human rights comprise different dimensions: “the right to be free from what are often called atrocities such as torture and genocide”, political and civil rights (including freedom of thought and speech) and even economic rights now seen as irrelevant (Gordon, 1997).
Then, agreements (Covenants in 1966, Rome Statute Agreed 1998) were ratified by many countries to improve the international mechanisms implemented to fight against the violations of such rights, although the enforcement system remains weak. Hence, this essay will show that the international human rights regime is very distinctive from the other regimes because it is based both on moral interdependence (rather than on material one) and domestic reasons (rather than the external environment).
The first part will demonstrate that individually, the States have sometimes incentives to undertake moral actions in spite of their material cost. It can be understood if we look at domestic reasons. Then, the second part will explain that the structure of the international human rights regime is thus very different from other regimes since it is a strong promotional regime which relies on moral interdependence.
