Human Rights; Who Decides?

I have been having difficulty sorting out exactly what fits in to my assigned topic of Global Crime. Professor Sills had pointed out that in addition to finding stories on things like piracy, international organized crime and drug running, the trafficking of humans and illegal weapons, and the hunting of endangered species, I could also write about human rights violations. Human rights according to whom though? The Geneva Convention? The UN? Amnesty International? As interpreted by local law? If someone has not been indicted by anything other than the opinion of his people is he a criminal against humanity? Amnesty International wants Iran to stop stoning as a method of execution of "criminals", but that is not a violation of human rights according to a large group, namely Iran and, we must assume, parts of the fundamentalist Muslim world. Isn't imposing our own views on these issues, when we have the death penalty ourselves, the worst form of hypocrisy and ethnocentrism? The US qualifies as well then, according to the UN Convention Against Torture, which states that;

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. (Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Part 1, Article 1. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm)

Is there a universal truth we can all agree on about what human rights are, or does the concept come from our western focus on the individual versus the collective, or on some other cultural bias? When I asked Professor Sills, he said to ask the class in the blog, so I'm asking; what do you think?