A Human Rights Quarterly Reading List for Human Rights Month

December 10, 2025

December is Universal Human Rights Month. Every year, December 10th is acknowledged around the world as Human Rights Day in commemoration of the day that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

The journal Human Rights Quarterly will soon celebrate 50 years of publishing insightful papers devoted to the study of human rights around the world, and we asked the editors of Human Rights Quarterly to share some recommended readings spanning the history of this esteemed academic journal.

We have made all of the articles free to read through the of the year.

Selections by Editor Bert B. Lockwood

National Magazine Award Nominee

The Rape of Dinah: Human Rights, Civil War in Liberia, and Evil Triumph
Kenneth L. Cain
Human Rights Quarterly
Volume 21, Number 2, May 1999

In 1999, we went to the final four of the National Magazine Awards with this article, losing to an article in Vanity Fair. Dean Joe Tomain and editor Bert B. Lockwood attended the awards ceremony in New York, and "The Rape of Dinah" was subsequently collected in an anthology of the best magazine articles of 1999.

Surfacing Children: Limitations of Genocidal Rape Discourse
R. Charli Carpenter
Human Rights Quarterly
Volume 22, Number 2, May 2000

Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights
Charlotte Bunch
Human Rights Quarterly
Volume 12, Number 4, November 1990

The Road to San Francisco: The Revival of the Human Rights Idea in The Twentieth Century
Jan Herman Burgers
Human Rights Quarterly
Volume 14, Number 4, November 1992

A Question of Narration: The Voice in International Human Rights Law
Joseph Slaughter
Human Rights Quarterly
Volume 19, Number 2, May 1997

Women's Human Rights: From Progress to Transformation, An Intersectional Response to Martha Nussbaum
Shreya Atrey
Human Rights Quarterly
Volume 40, Number 4, November 2018