Abstract
This article describes and explains the historical and current emphasis on human rights as a foreign policy issue in the Netherlands. Whilst human rights have, in the past decades, had a central place in Dutch foreign policy they hardly figure in political and societal discourse on pressing domestic social problems. In order to explain why this is the case, the article presents a three-fold model of understanding how human rights acquire meaning as a discursive framework. Whilst the legal dispensation is important, attention also has to be paid to legal culture and legal consciousness and the role of actors in rights implementation. Applying this model to the Netherlands, it is noted that there is hardly a country in the world in which human rights have a more privileged legal position. There is, however, a lack of knowledge of human rights combined with a legal culture that privileges consensualism over adversarialism and fears juridification of disputes. Additionally, the many actors involved in policy-making are also considered a factor in explaining the relative lack of reference to human rights in a country that is so active in their formulation and implementation at the international level.