Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Family professor of Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor, Radcliffe
Lecture 1 - The Mystery of the Missing Duties: Why are individual duties absent from human rights law?
Kathryn Sikkink discusses the mystery of why many human rights treaties do not discuss the role of individual duties, since every right theoretically comes with a corresponding duty. She looks at this problem in light of the worry among many human rights advocates that talking about duties is dangerous because the idea has been co-opted by those who believe that individuals only have responsibilities toward themselves but not toward others.