It is sad how often it’s violated. But it still has value as a yardstick we can use to measure the crimes. Otherwise, we could drift away from what we previously thought of as human values. It provides the baseline to say “this was wrong”. I hope someday we have the means to internationally force countries like my own to comply with its terms

Sure but the “legalistic theory of progress” does have some merits. The Helsinki Declarations of 1975 are the most famous example. The Soviet Union was cornered into signing a document guaranteeing a bunch of fundamental freedoms that it obviously had no intention of honoring. In the 1980s the document was used again and again as a diplomatic stick to expose Moscow’s hypocrisy, and seems to have had a role in the Gorbachev reforms that led to the end of the USSR.