Sikkink Human Rights Violations Analysis

Sikkink talks about how certain political leaders faced judgement on how they treated their citizens and she uses examples of how treaties helped to limit their powers. The Treaty of Augsburg and the Peace of Westphalia which limited the ability of a ruler to impose his religion on his citizens and prohibit any other. Later then UN created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. This allowed for the development of international organizations to be able to look into human rights violations in other states and investigate what the issues were. Sikkink states that, the work of NGOs made states’ repressive practices more visible and forced those that otherwise would have remained silent to come out and respond. (Sikkink 414)