The years 1950 to 1975 represent a key period at the end of the British Empire as Britain began to transition from post-war colonial reassertion to widescale decolonisation. It also marks a significant period of international diplomacy around human rights and international development at the United Nations (UN). This thesis takes a focus on women's rights to consider the impact both of colonial interests and the process of decolonisation on Britain's foreign policy approach at the UN in this period. As such it establishes Britain's global colonial legacy relating to women's rights diplomacy on the UN stage, at the end stage of its Empire. It focuses on the key women's rights conventions and international development policy frameworks debated in the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) from 1950 up to the first UN World Conference on Women in 1975. It argues that from 1950 through to 1962, Britain sought to safeguard its colonial interests as part of diplomatic negotiations on three key women's rights conventions: on women's political rights, nationality rights, and marriage rights. Britain sought to limit the development and/or applicability of these standards on the basis of its colonial entanglements. This conservative approach continued as part of Britain's diplomatic engagement with the issue of international development within the CSW in the 1960s, at a time of widespread decolonisation of the British Empire. It was not until 1975, and the first UN Conference on Women, that Britain began to take small steps towards supporting women more explicitly within its development policy positions.