What human rights are is dealt with in Part One of this book. Part Two is concerned with the role they play in contemporary international politics. And Part Three answers the question: what ought to be done about human rights in international relations? The movement is from theoretical analysis, to the judgement of practice, to recommendations about policy. The book speaks of ‘we’ as though for the whole world. It treats human rights as the universal standards their name implies. And it makes reference to all foreign policy, and not merely to the position of this or that state. But it is a study by someone from the West for a western institution. Accordingly, the policy, if not also the theory and the practice, it has chiefly in mind is that of the western powers (and among them mainly the United States and Great Britain).

This does not mean that it seeks merely to find out what western policy is and give it a highbrow academic defence. Indeed, the first chapter of the book accepts a definition of human rights which includes the claims of individuals to subsistence as well as to security, an acceptance the implications of which the western powers themselves have been reluctant to confront.