This course will offer a comprehensive history of the United Nations, the role of international organisations across the history of the twentieth century, and on the worldwider implementation of human rights linked to Human Rights and issues of equality. The course will begin by examining the creation of the different organs of the UN in a range of areas beyond its primary function to preserve international peace and explore how the institution shaped the policies and practices that developed out of these bodies and influenced states on a worldwide scale. Further objective is to trace the evolution of the idea of global governance from the League of Nations and how the UN was developed as an instrument to construct the international order. The course will continue by looking at UN resolutions, their (gradual) acceptance by states, and their global implementations. The focus will be on the impact of implementing UN resolutions on a global cultural scale and the aim to analyse how equal rights are only possible by diminishing former societal privileges that are (were) based on gender, race, and social status in particular. This course will therefore provide an overview of how the UN helped shape the contours of the contemporary world in terms of creating new orders of (societal) privileges.
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