The territory of our globe is actually and legally divided into discrete parcels of land and people administered by governments. The people living in each of these parcels, according to the organising principle of the state, come under control of the government of the land and none other. Governments relate to each other and not to the people subject to another government. When they decide to do so, governments acting in the name of states create organisations, such as the United Nations.
States fall under no authority, except their own, unless they agree to some limits.
Yet this notion of sovereignty, so dear to the contemporary crop of nationalists, does not in fact describe anything except a principle. On a global basis, governments agree to promote human rights through such organisations as the United Nations. Their agreement suggests an implicit contradiction. A glib answer to these questions would hold that governments respond to the wishes of their subjects. The UN treaties of our time assert the human rights of participating in social decisions and provide for the protection of association and expression necessary to such participation.