Human rights language has come to dominate world politics. Some scholars argue that this demonstrates the spread of international human rights norms, which in turn will bring about improvements in human rights. However, others have questioned this view, pointing to the use of human rights rhetoric by states that commit rights abuses and the willingness of repressive states to ratify international human rights treaties. These scholars argue that human rights commitments are examples of ‘cheap talk’.

In this study, we examine this issue using new empirical evidence that helps to address limitations of existing approaches. Using natural language processing (NLP) methods, we examine countries’ engagement with human rights in their annual statements in the General Debate of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). We do this using the UN General Debate Corpus (UNGDC), which we extend back to 1946, and examining factors associated with greater state engagement with human rights in their UNGD statements. Our analysis demonstrates a strong the relationship between human rights rhetoric and states’ human rights performance, and sheds light on the different human rights rhetoric across states.

Therefore, the paper makes several contributions. First, it identifies trends in states’ human rhetoric references over a 75-year period. Second demonstrates the relationship between human rights rhetoric and state behaviour. Third, we unpack differences in human rights rhetoric between more rights-protecting states and human rights violators. In doing so, the paper provides important new empirical evidence to address a fundamental issue in the global politics of human rights.