The sovereign state is the predominant form of political organization in the modern world. Sovereign states confer rights on individual citizens, using laws and policies to secure these rights within the territory of the state. Treaties and trade policies are made between sovereign states, and state leaders guide the decisions made through the United Nations. But though the world’s political structure is shaped by state sovereignty, many of its needs and realities are not. Environmental concerns and transnational threats defy the borders of a state-centric world, affecting multiple states at once. Paradoxically, millions of individuals don’t belong to any state at all, and their statelessness means a lack of access to protection, marginal to no control over the political processes that impact their lives, and discrimination.

Traditionally, the promotion of Human Rights and the concept of state sovereignty have been fundamentally opposed. The rights of states and the 1648 Peace of Westphalia pitted against the right of the individual and the 1969 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The very definition of sovereignty entitles states to non-intervention in their domestic affairs. The idea of Universal Human Rights and the protection of an individual within a state would appear to come into direct conflict with this very definition. As such, International Human Rights obligations are regularly seen as “eroding state sovereignty”  The coexistence of the two has not been easy; more often than not the two principles have confronted rather than partnered. By definition, Human Rights give the basic liberties and freedoms entitled to all simply because of being human. This