The United Nations has been adapting its human rights machinery in order to better respond to the changing demands of the international community. During the cold war, the United Nations created the normative and institutional structures for international human rights protection, steadily broadening its competence in this area. At the same time, it supported the vast process of decolonization, which led to the birth of over 80 new independent nations. Landmark United Nations actions, such as the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960), provided the blueprint for universally establishing the collective right to self-determination. The United Nations also concentrated its efforts on the human rights abuses resulting from the policy of apartheid in South Africa, overseeing international action which eventually helped to end this gross abrogation of fundamental rights. Despite these successes, however, the effectiveness of the United Nations was severely restricted by the cold war, both in terms of the range of human rights to be defended and in terms of ensuring their respect in practice. The world political situation did not allow for much concerted human rights activism in the field. Doctrines of national security and sovereignty were often invoked to conceal, excuse or justify human rights abuses.Today, there is widespread recognition that the 50-year investment in development and human rights promotion requires new impetus to secure broader realization of economic and social rights. Extreme poverty and exclusion from economic, political and cultural life continue to be the fate of millions in both developing and developed countries. Currently, there are 48 countries where more than one fifth of the population live in "absolute poverty", with little prospect of dramatic change in the short term. Breaking the cycle of poverty thus continues to be a formidable task for the international commu...
