Course Design and Critiques of the Human Rights Framework

The dominant conceptual framework of international human rights has rested on the dialectic between rights, duties, and violations. This framework has been helpful in initiating a global conversation with universal terms about human rights abuses as well as in identifying human rights victims and violators. Though widely accepted, it is not without its detractors. Since the framework’s emergence, many critiques have emerged primarily pertaining to the origin, scope and relevance of human rights. The concern addressed herein is whether these critiques are incorporated and the issues they confront problematized in courses on human rights within U.S. institutes of higher education.