Vol. 1, Issue 13, Part D (2015)

Abstract
Global governance and human rights have rarely been considered in relation to each another. Here I explore their connections with special attention to the rhetoric of international justice. The result is an argument that combining these two sets of perspectives can give us a better understanding of global politics. Mainstream treatments of human rights traditionally center on nation-states. This is, perhaps, as it should be. Nation-states are the primary violators of human rights. At the same time, they bear the principal responsibilities under international law for promoting basic rights. Research on human rights has turned recently to an added focus on at least some non-state actors that also violate rights. This important step addresses the impact of economic actors, especially transnational corporations (TNCs), on human rights. It has helped the attention to human rights learn from developments in global relations and advances in theories of international relations (IR). Yet further developments in global politics and IR theories demand still greater expansion for the horizons of human rights. The time has come for them to face global governance. Global governance (GG) is a relatively recent paradigm for policy makers and IR theorists. Early GG work focused on international organizations (IOs), especially the United Nations. The end of the Cold War, combined with the centrality of the UN Security Council for legitimizing the Gulf War of 1991, led to hopes that the UN would become a stronger and more influential body. UN supporters popularized the term “global governance” because they wanted to distinguish between it and “global government.” Governance is a broader term. It addresses political management on a global scale but management that stops short of the formal powers and procedures of a government. GG is specifically not about a world state or the creation of some supranational body that would have control or sovereignty above that of the nation-state.