Human Rights as a Tool of Diplomacy in Foreign Policy; A Case Study of USA

Attention to human rights is important component of the international governance and concerns about the equal value, freedom, and welfare of individuals has influenced many national constitutions and domestic public policy. After the adoption of UDHR in 1948, human rights consciousness has especially been nurtured or cultivated. Since then, the concept of 'Human rights' has entered into the political and constitutional lexicon and oriented political thinkers and constitutional experts to re-adjust their ideological and constitutional schemes inconformity with the imperatives of Human rights. Referring to human rights, one can describe foreign policy as activities by policy makers to influence another state or group of states so that they may improve respect for human rights. It is inseparably difficult to design a sound human rights policy, when it comes to international relations. It needs negotiating immense complexities in order to encourage or pressurize governments across the globe to improve their human rights situation. Sometimes such pressures through might bring some improvement, for example, a given government might release some political activists and human rights advocates from prisons or house arrests. However, more often than not, arbitrary laws and practices remain statutorily intact and invite deeper violations of human rights, such as killings, disappearances, harassments and intimidation, detention, torture, etc. Improvement of human rights scenario in other countries become all the more difficult in view of the fact that such countries are independent and sovereign states guided by their historical and cultural treaties. Through this paper, we look into how United States of America has used the carrot of foreign policy to influence, alter and cause changes in the foreign policies of other nations and whether the military interventions that USA had in many countries have been able to fetch the degree of results with which it was initiated or not, when it comes to human rights.