Can Human Rights be Reconciled with State Sovereignty?

This paper centres on the question as to whether human rights can be reconciled with sovereignty. Therefore, in order to examine the reconciliation of human rights and state sovereignty, it is important to know the nature of relationship between them. This research first, analyzes the impact of the historical evolution of human rights on changing the nature of sovereignty and then engages with the different arguments based on the moral, legal, and political nature of the human rights which has an effect on its relationship with state sovereignty. There are some who think that human rights exist outside legal system of the states and they are moral, independent, and universal, linked to the nature of our own humanity like Chris Brown who thinks human rights have a moral nature rather than legal. In contrast, some others are thinking that human rights exist within legal system of the states and focusing on the particularity of the human rights. In between, there is Andrew Vincent’s argument, which is more supported in this paper, who explains this relationship through the political dimension which has both moral and legal outcome, in Andrew Vincent’s words; the states can become both object and subject of the human rights at the same time.