The theme is that global power is changing. I can say that particularly in the last decade the threats to security are no longer issues of the Cold War but might come in unfamiliar forms. It is heavily debated right now how general human rights really are.
I’m not sure we’d have the Declaration of Human Rights or the laws on genocide without the Holocaust and the atrocities that occurred. Tribunals like the ICC are other legacies of the events that occurred then. Ever since the Second World War human rights have become the central factor in how we deal with things.
Clinton said that the OSCE founding documents were revolutionary, tying the security of one country to the security of another. Human rights are a time-tested blueprint for a successful government. Not all governments share that view, although if you look in the Middle East, you can see a push-back in that direction.
One lesson to be drawn is that governments cannot do it on their own, civil society must play a role. Europe now has a tightly woven net of different organisations. Most other regions have similar organisations. These kinds of organisations offer one model of how to deal with human rights issues. We also have to recognise our limits to influence these issues from the outside through intervention. Complaints about human rights abuses mostly fall on deaf ears, which might suggest that change must really begin from within the countries themselves.