Indivisible Human Rights: A History

Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights

by Daniel J. Whelan

Human rights activists frequently claim that human rights are indivisible, and the United Nations has declared the indivisibility, interdependency, and interrelatedness of these rights to be beyond dispute. Yet in practice there remains a significant divide between the two grand categories of human rights - civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights on the other. To date, few scholars have critically examined how the notion of indivisibility has shaped the complex relationship between these two sets of rights. In Indivisible Human Rights, Daniel J. Whelan offers a carefully crafted account of the rhetoric of indivisibility.

328 pages, Hardcover

First published May 18, 2010