I believe that there is generally a lack of protection of Human Rights across the world, and this is as a result of a few factors. Often it is simply down to the fact that Human Rights are very difficult to protect, however arguably international institution and superpowers have been very inefficient at protecting human rights across the world. Firstly, it is very difficult to have a set of universal human rights with the theory of state sovereignty, and therefore if protecting human rights is not in a states best interest then the international bodies such as the ICC and the ICJ become largely irrelevant. The UNGA Resolution 2131 acknowledges that ‘no state has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in internal or external affairs’, so as result UDHR becomes soft law and states choose whether to interfere or not. For instance the UK government ignored the ECHR ruling by not allowing prisoners the vote and retaining life imprisonment for certain crimes but also on 2001 to 2005 the Blair government ‘derogate’ from article 5 when it held foreign terrorism suspects in prison without trial.
In addition, in modern times, the protection of human rights has been seen to be very difficult due to the fact that there is not one standard of human rights across the world and therefore protecting everyone’s rights has seen to be nearly impossible. The United Declaration of Human Rights have been influenced by the principles of the enlightenment and so they are highly westernised and Eurocentric, where they do not take into account the competing claims of different traditions. Edward W. said in in 1978 book, “orientalism”, “what is right for one society may not be right for other societies”. An example of this is the fact that in the west, gay rights are self evident however in large parts of the developing world homosexuality is a crime. In 72 countries homosexuality is illegal and in 10 countries it is punishable by death.
In conclusion, I believe that there has been a poor protection of Human Rights in the world today, this is because it is very difficult to do, due to sovereignty of states and the difficulty of creating universal rights that are applicable to every country. These two factors result in a world where human rights are simply not protected.