UGC-NET (NTA) Human Rights and Duties, December-2019

UN human-rights system is a 'regime': that is, a set of norms and institutions that is accepted by states as binding. The UN human-rights regime is based on the Universal Declaration.
The Vienna Declaration and the relatively large number of signatories to the 1966 covenants show that most states accept the legitimacy of this regime. Yet the concept of state sovereignty remains strong, and implementation of human-rights standards is uneven and sometimes disastrously ineffective. Since the end of the cold war there has been some attempt at human-rights enforcement, but this has proved uneven, not very effective, and to some extent counterproductive.
That the regime is strong on declarations and weak on implementation and enforcement reflects the interests of the principal international actors: states.
Nevertheless, the political character of international human-rights institutions can promote human rights if a sufficiently strong alliance of states exerts pressure on an offending state with an interest in conforming with the demands of the society of states.
The international human-rights regime has some prestige in world politics that gives it the potential for mobilization. Its political selectivity undermines this prestige.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is another instrument for impartial human-rights promotion and, perhaps, implementation.
The international human-rights regime is political, not philosophical. It responds pragmatically to circumstances, and consequently operates inconsistently. The relatively coherent ideals of the Universal Declaration are, therefore, in practice unevenly implemented.
The UN is a club of States, represented by governmental leaders, and, notwithstanding their conflicts of interest and ideology, they have a common interest in mutual accommodation. This may inhibit robust action for human rights when such action might upset the diplomatic apple-cart.
What is a Regime? 

The twenty-first century begins with the future of human rights uncertain. Great advances have been made since 1945, not only in standard-setting (international and national laws) and institutionbuilding (human-rights commissions, committees, courts, etc.), but also in freedom and well-being for many people in many countries.
There are still many countries in which civil and political rights are trampled on. Progress towards the recognition of economic and social rights has been slow and largely rhetorical. Worse, the fashion for neo-liberal economic policies has reduced the protection of these rights for millions of people around the world who enjoy them least.
There is a tendency among human-rights academics to devote excessive attention to the UN system of commissions and committees. These may be important, but they are certainly not the only important institutions that affect human rights in the world, and they are probably not the most important.
The concept of human rights is centrally concerned with the misuse of power. The social-scientific study of human rights should give priority to the primary centres of power and to the possible sources of resistance. This entails that human-rights studies should attend more to the G7, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the foreign policy of the USA.
The study of human rights should be integrated with political economy, development economics, conflict studies and the politics of democratic transition. The political theory of human rights has, since Locke, accorded to the rule of law a central place in the protection of human rights.
This is correct. Nevertheless, both the theory and practice of human rights have suffered from being excessively legalistic.
Due to which policies millions of people around the world have enjoyed human rights least?