Ten years ago the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan set out a new international doctrine. Annan declared that the world was looking forward to what he called ‘a new century of human rights’.
For the United Nations, declared Annan, this meant an entirely new way of doing things. ‘No government,’ he declared, ‘has the right to hide behind national sovereignty in order to violate the human rights or fundamental freedoms of its peoples.
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