 It was in 1948 that the vast majority of states signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, committing themselves to respect over 30 separate rights for individuals. As it was not a legally binding declaration and contained no enforcement provisions, the declaration left states’ sovereignty intact, but it was a first step towards tethering them to international, universal obligations regarding their internal affairs. Over decades, these human rights would come to enjoy ever stronger legal status. One of the most robust human rights conventions, one that indeed curtails sovereignty, even if mildly, through its arbitration mechanisms, is the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, formed in 1950. Roughly contemporaneous, signed on December 9, 1948, was the Genocide Convention, committing signing states to refrain from and punish genocide. Then, in the mid-1960’s, two covenants — the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — legally bound most of the world’s states to respecting the human rights of their people. Again, the signatories’ constitutional authority remained largely intact, since they would not allow any of these commitments to infringe upon their sovereignty. Subsequent human rights covenants, also signed by the vast majority of the world’s states, contained similar reservations.