Human rights and the USA

Abstract

This chapter critically assesses the role of the USA in human rights development both nationally and internationally, its views on international oversight and the idea of ‘American exceptional’. It traces the development of rights nationally from the establishment of the Bill of Rights, through to slavery and civil rights and the war on poverty in the 1960s. It discusses USA influence internationally in the development of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and how West/East ideological differences during the Cold War and geo-political concerns have influenced the current international human rights system. It then examines contemporary USA attitudes to human rights as reflected in policy approaches nationally to welfare provision, inequality, racial and ethnic divisions, the rights of the child, the treatment of prisoners and internationally in terms of foreign policy and ‘the War on Terror’.