International law remains confined to treaties between sovereign states

Evidence

It is by no means certain whether this is possible. For, contrary to the best-intentioned humanitarian attempts to obtain new declarations of human rights from international organizations, it should be understood that this idea transcends the present sphere of international law which still operates in terms of reciprocal agreements and treaties between sovereign states; and, for the time being, a sphere that is above the nations does not exist. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 729

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the scaffolding task: grounds why international human-rights declarations fail to protect the stateless and excluded.