We have now dealt (in Part One) with the theory of human rights: what they are, their evolution in western political theory, the form of their survival in the transition from European to global international politics. We have dealt also (in Part Two) with the place of human rights in contemporary world politics, and with the extent to which they give expression to the existence of a single world society. The task now is to decide what ought to be done. If there are such things as human rights, even if only in the limited senses discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, what, in the light of our discussion of world politics in Part Two, should be done about them? In this chapter, this is treated as a moral question: what attitude should anyone take up towards the issue of human rights in world politics? Then this discussion informs the directly practical concern of the last chapter, Chapter 8, which is to ask what governments, and particularly western governments, should do about human rights in foreign policy.

There are a number of senses in which it might be said that the theory of world politics — theory here as reflection on the public arrangements that ought to be made for the government of humankind — should start with human rights.