The Cold War Origins of Human Rights in the Americas

JUAN PABLO SCARFI

New York

Conferencia; Columbia University, Barnard College; 2020

Columbia University, Barnard Colllege

Ideas of human rights in the Americas have been rooted in humanitarian, as well as geopolitical, concerns since the early twentieth century. This talk examines the repercussions of the foundational declarations of the Organization of American States (OAS) on human rights in 1948, and the projection of US Cold War concerns of containing socialist regimes into the OAS and the Inter-American System. The talk will focus on the emergence of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC), created in 1959, and the final exclusion of Cuba from the OAS in 1962. It will argue that both the IAHRC and the OAS in their early stages of progressive institutionalization were informed by US-led Cold War geopolitical and humanitarian concerns that contributed to shaping their present form.