IB Diploma Programme Global Politics SL (first assessment 2019; 2016 guide). The thematic studies are shared by SL and HL: RIGHTS AND JUSTICE, DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY, and PEACE AND CONFLICT, each studied through contemporary cases. Each kit below gives its concepts, its institutions and law, its classic debates, and a worked case framing — the course's concept-to-case discipline applied across its whole middle.

Must-know for the thematic studies:

Human rights 人权 are universal entitlements by virtue of personhood, codified in the Universal Declaration 世界人权宣言 (1948) and its two Covenants (civil-political; economic-social-cultural) — the THREE GENERATIONS: liberty (speech, vote), equality-claims (work, education, health), and solidarity rights (development, environment, peace). The enforcement architecture is STATE-BASED and weak by design: treaty bodies report, special procedures name, but the hard instruments (sanctions, prosecution) need politics. The theme's central tension: UNIVERSALITY versus CULTURAL RELATIVISM — whether rights claims override local practice (the debate the “Asian values” argument ran), and its modern face, Humanitarian intervention 人道主义干预: when does the responsibility to protect (R2P, 2005) license crossing the sovereignty the core taught? Cases: the International Criminal Court (1998 Rome Statute) prosecuting individuals where states cannot or will not; a humanitarian crisis (Libya 2011, mandated; Syria, blocked) showing the Security Council's veto deciding who is protected.

Worked framing. An essay on R2P writes itself in the course's spine: define R2P (the state's duty, the international community's fallback); apply to Libya (Resolution 1973's no-fly mandate — protection invoked, contested in execution) and to Syria (veto blockage — protection acknowledged, action impossible); weigh the counter-view that R2P legitimises the strong's interventions and so undermines the order it claims to serve; judge: R2P realigned legitimacy without disarming sovereignty — the gap between norm and enforcement is the theme's permanent finding.

Development 发展 is the expansion of people's capabilities — not just income — measured beyond GDP by the Human Development Index 人类发展指数 (health, schooling, income) and pursued through the MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (2000–15) and now the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (17 goals, 2015–30) with their integration of poverty and planet. Sustainability 可持续性 (the Brundtland formulation) meets present needs without compromising future generations — the definition the geography student already carries, now applied to politics: who decides, who pays, who is heard. The debates: AID versus trade (does aid build capacity or dependence? — the studies disagree, the question is conditional: what kind of aid, in what institutions); DEBT (the burden the Jubilee campaigns targeted); SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT'S contradiction (growth-driven poverty reduction against the emissions budget); and the GLOBAL GOVERNANCE of all three — institutions (the UN development system, the World Bank and IMF with their structural-adjustment history) whose conditionality is itself a power relation.

Worked framing. On SDG implementation: the goals are universal (every state reports, not only the poor ones) and integrated (climate action inside poverty action), the innovation; the counter-case is the accountability gap (no enforcement, voluntary review) — and the judgement: the SDGs redefined legitimacy and direction more than they bound behaviour, exactly the norm-versus-enforcement gap.

The theme's first distinction is Wilsonian 威尔逊式 collective security (one for all, against any aggressor) versus WESTPHALIAN restraint (intervention only in self-defence) — the UN Charter 联合国宪章's architecture tries to run both: the Security Council's Chapter VII powers and the Article 2(4) prohibition. CONFLICT's modern form is INTRA-state (civil wars, with interstate war rare) and the concept toolset is DPIR — the conflict cycle 冲突周期 (DPIR) of defusing, PREVENTION, INTERVENTION and RESOLUTION — applied at every stage from early warning to peacebuilding. Peace 和平 itself divides NEGATIVE (the absence of violence) from POSITIVE (the presence of justice and institutions; Galtung's distinction, and the reason a ceasefire can be unstable. Cases: a peacekeeping mandate (consent-based Chapter VI versus robust Chapter VII), a peace agreement's design (power-sharing, transitional justice), and a nuclear or arms-control regime (deterrence as stability) each anchor the concepts to institutions.

Worked framing. On collective security: the Council's record — Korea (1950, absence-of-veto accident), the Gulf (1991, reversal of aggression by mandate), Rwanda (1994, absent), Libya (2011, contested), Syria (blocked) — reads as the architecture working exactly when the P5 converge and not otherwise: collective security is the great powers' concert with a charter, the critique and the realism in one judgement.

• UDHR 1948 + two Covenants; three generations; universality vs relativism; R2P 2005 with Libya and Syria (rights).
• The ICC (Rome 1998) prosecuting individuals; enforcement's state-based weakness (rights).
• Development as capability; HDI; MDGs to SDGs; aid/trade/debt debates with their conditionality critique (development).
• Sustainability's Brundtland definition and the SDGs' universality-integration-accountability triad (development).
• Wilsonian vs Westphalian; the Charter's Chapter VII and 2(4); DPIR's cycle; negative vs positive peace (peace).
• The case spine: each theme's two worked framings and the norm-versus-enforcement gap as the course's recurring finding (all).

Boundary notes: the thematic papers reward CONCEPT-TO-CASE discipline with contemporary examples (post-2000 preferred), and the top band synthesises across the theme rather than stacking cases. All worked framings are original; the classic facts cited are the standard record.