The Contributions of Human Rights Struggles: A Comment

For many years, the interest of historians in the theme of human rights was limited to aspects linked with the history of ideas. Recently, however, there has been an increase in empirical studies suggesting that more questions must be asked regarding a viable historical concept of human rights, including their genesis and division into periods. This volume examines the development of human rights since the Second World War, against the background of the Cold War, decolonisation and the political turning point of 1989/90. This reveals not only the diversity of the protagonists involved in developing the contents and concepts of human rights and contributing to their advancement, but also how malleable this instrument was, and indeed still remains