The recognition of migrants’ rights within the UN human rights system: The first 60 years

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) sets out the rights that should be enjoyed by ‘everyone’.1 While this language clearly indicated an intention to protect all human beings, for much of the 60 years after 1948 migrants were on the margins of human rights law, caught between international principles of universality and exclusionary rules of state sovereignty and national law.