Sociology

1. What comparisons can by drawn between the Rights of the Universal Declaration Model and the US Bill of Rights
The rights of the Universal Declaration Model differs mainly from the U.S. Bill of Rights in that it seeks to govern many countries over many different cultures, whereas the Bill of Rights is specifically tailored to our court system, our culture, and all of our judicial precedents rest  upon it. The Universal Declaration Model has to compete with the problems, if one sees it as such, of international law and intervention.  Rights must protect the individual without violating a states sovereign rights. As such, our foreign policy is invested in influencing the behavior of other states, taking into account that the human rights accorded to individuals in those states may be being oppressed by the sovereign rule.

Unfortunately, a government may choose to not respect the human rights of its citizens, yet the force of rule in that country enforces the decisions of the sovereign state, and not of the individual. The Bill of Rights, however, is utilized across the U.S. in every incident in which a citizen meets with the governing force of the city or county or state or country. Our Bill of Rights is more powerful than the president, than the cabinets, and than every other individual judicial body, since we have a system of checks and balances in place. No one governing body can change the Bill of Rights without consent of the others. Our Bill of Rights is stronger within our government than the Rights of the Universal Declaration Model, since the latter often seems like a suggestion for human rights than a mandate. And, unfortunately, the U.S. cannot enforce this doctrine of human rights since it would be violating the codes of non-intervention.

2. Given the international conventions and protections, how does something like genocide become debatable in our contemporary time
International conventions have clauses which go against the very nature of one states interference in anothers mode of government. Violations of a states right to govern as it sees fit is illegal, and what is known as intervention. International ethics does not have a law which imposes universal ethical principles, otherwise the systematic elimination of a population would not be condoned as a states right.

Changing concepts of what sovereignty means allows for states to give up their right to nonintervention if they are guilty of what is termed aggression. Large groups of individuals under persecutionfrom a genocide or from outside state borderscan be given a kind of international legal standing all their own, which seems to be the loophole through which genocide can be eradicated even while upholding the international conventions which grant sovereignty to each states governing bodybodies.

Hence, genocide has not been debatable per se, but rather a glitch whereby persons fall out of the protective sphere of international human rights laws. I dont believe that genocide has been debatable as much as it has forced nations to confront the issue of sovereignty and what it means when it impinges on international human rights. It seems that the progress which has been made is extremely positive, and that the laws which allow for governments to legally intervene and stop genocide (such as the provision that a state forfeits their right to nonintervention if they are guilty of aggression) are a great step forward in international relations.