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In this paper, I argue that there is a philosophical basis for the claim that states can be held responsible for structural injustices such as gender discrimination and violence—a claim that has been made in international human rights documents, but one that has not gained much normative force. To show this, I draw on and develop Iris Young's notion of "political responsibility." The purpose of political responsibility is not to find fault or blame the state for a past wrong, but to encourage the state to make things more just in the future. I argue that the state is able to take responsibility in this sense and can discharge the duty of political responsibility in a more systematic way than individuals can. Further, I show that taking political responsibility would entail changing how states think about their human rights obligations. Rather than focusing on cataloguing abuses, states would be required to work toward changing conditions so that human rights violations are less likely to occur in the future. Consequently, I show that it does make sense to say that the state can be held accountable for structural injustices that lead to women's human rights violations.

This article examines a number of the more well-known theories of the foundations of human rights that have been developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and adds to this discussion the voice of a less well-known theorist of human rights, Hannah Arendt. The traditional theories of the foundations of human rights are divided into two camps, the essentialists and the anti-essentialists, and the benefits and limitations of each camp are analyzed. The author then articulates Arendt's view of human rights and situates her voice within the contemporary debate on human rights.