Emotional Diplomacy and Human Rights at the United Nations

This article investigates the role of emotion within the postwar human rights program at the United Nations. While there is an impressive body of scholarship on the UN and human rights diplomacy, the place of sentiment in the dynamic of these debates has not been studied in detail. Drawing on archives, personal papers, contemporary transcripts and visual sources, this article argues that the collective sentiment of the assembly was highly influential in determining outcomes. Beyond this, the nature of the prevailing emotional register, which varied markedly between the 1940s and 1980s, shaped, and was reshaped by, the prevailing understanding of what constituted "human rights."