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How does being human give rise to rights? To answer this question we need a theory of human nature. Although I despair of being able to offer one, I can point out some basic distinctions that provide useful insights.

Theories of human nature deal with how we define, or what it means to be, "human." In a very crude way, we can say that a scientific approach to human nature involves an empirical investigation of the psychobiological makeup of human beings. A moral or philosophical approach focuses on what it means to be a person, a human being capable of reflective action and subject to the constraints of morality. Although moral theories may be constrained by science, they address different issues.

Those who seek to ground human rights in science usually speak of basic human needs. But any list of needs that can plausibly claim to be empirically established provides an obviously inadequate list of rights: life, food, protection against cruel or inhuman treatment, and perhaps companionship. The problem may lie in contingent shortcomings of our current scientific procedures or knowledge. I would argue, however, that science is in principle incapable of providing the appropriate kind of theory of human nature. We have human rights not to what we need for health but to what we need for a life of dignity.

Realist arguments are often reinforced by relativist arguments that moral values are historically or culturally specific rather than universal. For example, Kennan argued that "there are no internationally accepted standards of morality to which the U.S. government could appeal if it wished to act in the name of moral principles."  Many nonrealists share such relativist skepticism.

It is often claimed that there are a variety of distinctive and defensible conceptions of human rights that merit our respect and toleration even if we disagree with them. One standard form of this argument, which was particularly prominent in the 1980s, was the claim that there are "three worlds" of human rights. The "Western" (First World) approach, it is asserted, emphasizes civil and political rights and the right to private property. The "socialist" ( Second World) approach emphasizes economic and social rights. The "Third World" approach emphasizes self-determination and economic development. Furthermore, both the socialist and the Third World conceptions are held to be group oriented, in contrast to the fundamental individualism of the "Western" approach.

These changes were both lavishly praised and reviled, both within Chile and abroad. The resulting ideological polarization helped to set the stage for a military coup in September 1973. Allende was assassinated and a repressive military regime was installed that ruled until 1990.

In Uruguay, the military had not intervened in politics since the 1860s. Furthermore, beginning in the first two decades of the twentieth century, under President José Batlle y Ordoñez, Uruguay implemented a series of model social and political reforms that created a widely admired democratic welfare state that provided education and health care for all. The system, however, began to collapse in the late 1960s.

National purification also had a major economic dimension. In Chile, the Pinochet government tried to reverse not only Allende's reforms but also those of the 1960s as well. In 1975 the junta applied "Shock Treatment" (Plan Shock). Government spending declined by more than one-fourth and public investment was cut in half. Uruguay and Argentina pursued similar plans somewhat less vigorously. The aim was to privatize the economy and weaken or destroy organized labor, which was seen as a focal point for subversion. (In Argentina, for example, as many as half of the disappeared were labor activists.)

This forced march toward "free" markets produced a rapid decline in living standards. For example, real wages in Chile were one-third lower in 1976 than in 1970. Infant mortality increased dramatically.  But after the initial shock, there was limited economic recovery, especially in Chile. Although most of the benefits of growth were concentrated in the hands of a small elite, employment and wages increased while inflation declined. Economic success helped to calm at least some of the discontent with military rule. In fact, all three military governments relied on economic success to deflect attention from, or compensate for, political repression.

If the Southern Cone provides a particularly striking example of human rights violations, it also provides a moving example of resistance. On April 30, 1977, fourteen middle-aged women, frustrated in their search for their disappeared children, met publicly in the Plaza de Mayo (the main square of Buenos Aires) in front of the Casa Rosada (the president's residence and the seat of government). The weekly Thursday afternoon vigil of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo -- white scarves on their heads, silently walking around the square -- became a symbol of both the cruelty of the military regime and the refusal of at least some ordinary people to bow to repression.

Although subject to harassment and even attack -- nine people associated with the mothers, including two French nuns, permanently disappeared on December 10, 1977, after evening mass -- the mothers persevered and grew in numbers and in strength. By 1980, they had almost five thousand members and were able to set up a small office.

The Argentine military, ironically, finally fell from power after it lost a conventional war with Britain over control of the obscure Falkland Islands. Argentina had long protested British occupation and control of the Malvinas, as they are known in Latin America. In April 1982, the junta decided to reclaim them by force, a ploy to deflect public attention from the collapse of the economy during the global recession of the early 1980s.

But when the invasion was decisively repulsed, the Malvinas episode completed the military's humiliation rather than rescuing its reputation. Having attacked its own people, brought the economy to the brink of ruin, and then embarrassed itself and the country before the entire world, the Argentine military had little choice but to permit a return to civilian government. On October 30, 1983, Raúl Alfonsin won the national presidential election. He took office on December 10, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In Chile, the economy also collapsed in the early 1980s. In 1982, per capita gross domestic product declined one-sixth. By March 1983, onethird of the labor force was unemployed. The minimum wage lost between one-fifth and one-half of its purchasing power. Close to half of Chile's children were malnourished, an appalling situation in a country that had previously been relatively prosperous. A wave of bankruptcies brought hard times even to the middle and upper classes.

Regimes on racial discrimination, women's rights, torture, and the rights of the child have developed around similar treaty-reporting schemes.

These treaties give added international prominence to the rights they address. The mandated periodic review of reports provides additional international scrutiny of state practices in these areas. And the treaties give greater range, precision, and force to the much more general formulations of the universal Declaration and the Covenants.

For example, the torture convention states that "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture". Orders from superiors are explicitly excluded as a defense. Special obligations are established for training law enforcement personnel and reviewing interrogation regulations and methods. To reduce incentives for torture, statements obtained through torture must be made inadmissible in all legal proceedings. The convention also requires that wherever the alleged torture occurred and whatever the nationality of the torturer or victim, parties must either prosecute alleged torturers or extradite them to a country that will.