Culture and Context in Human Rights (original) (raw)

Human Rights Discourse and Interculturality: Insights from the Margins

REFLEXUS - Revista Semestral de Teologia e Ciências das Religiões, 2018

Since the early 1970s, human rights discourse has swept across the globe, becoming common currency in world politics. Approaching the end of the 20thcentury, not only was there a significant increase in the use of the term “human rights” in official documents but the number of countries ratifying important international treatises protecting human rights also proliferated. According to Emilie Hafner-Burton and James Ron, 150 countries have ratified the two principal human rights treatises, namely, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Covenant Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). On top of that, new global social movements employ the language of “rights” or “human rights” in their reasoning; such movements include women’s movements, green movements, and indigenous peoples’ movements. Despite the sweeping use of human rights language, important questions have been asked about its efficacy.Interrogando...

A Transdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Introduction to the Issue of Human Rights in a “Glocal” World

Politeja, 2021

The purpose of my contribution is to provide a general overview of the issue at stake when today over the world people debate human rights. In order to do so I will rely on and both differentiate and associate philosophical, anthropological, ethnological, historical, sociological, political, and psychological approaches. Let me stress that this is not at all to contribute to a muddled understanding of the issue of human rights that necessarily has to be perceived differently depending on the field of research. On the contrary, it is in fact to articulate that the issue of human rights can only be understood from a transdisciplinary perspective; and that cross-cultural communication is required to approach the question of 'values' and 'rights' in our globalized world.

Debating the Universality of Human Rights from an Intercultural Perspective

Identity, Belonging and Human Rights: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective, 2016

Are human rights universal and are they applicable to different cultures? The questions have given rise to various arguments that criticise the universality of human rights. On the one hand, the 1948's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) claims a universal nature by a broad consensus among states during its drafting meeting; the advocates of cultural particularity still refuse to acknowledge a universal nature of the UDHR by the reason of cultural and traditional values on the other. With the central question how the discourse human rights' universality in the aftermath of the UDHR is, this study aims to analyse the challenging cultural debates on the universal nature of human rights. This chapter is good in three parts. Firstly, an examination of the tension between culture and universal human rights demonstrates a gradual process into an abstraction of human rights. Secondly an investigation into the 1990's claim of Asian Values elaborates the phrases how the authoritarian regimes refuse to follow international human rights norms. Thirdly an analysis of the dispute over traditional values followed by the 2009's resolution from the United Nations examines a crisis in the power to an interpretation of traditional values controlled by the political authority. To sum up, a culture may challenge the discourse of the universality of human rights, yet, that is a necessary process to reach a mutual understanding. There are no universal human rights without an interwoven discussion between different values accompanied by a deep reflection on the inhuman violences.

The Universality of Human Rights Against Cultural Relativism: Between Fiction and Reality

The Lawyer Quarterly, 2021

This paper aspires to defend the universality of human rights against cultural relativism. The relativism claims that human rights are not universal enough, but even if they were, it would not imply they should always prevail over other moral or legal norms. This paper advocates the opposite: the human right corpus is universal enough because it has been drafted and approved by representatives of all cultures which are dominant in the current globalized world in the context of actual or latent international political conflicts. The intercultural consensus on human rights is overlapping, i.e., the human rights corpus contributes to realizing the comprehensive doctrines of good that are held in all participating cultures. Although the consensus on human rights does not inevitably lead to a uniform moral and legal practice, it also plays a crucial role in a purely declaratory level-it creates a common language through which various cultures can conceptualize their different moral and legal attitudes. Therefore, the language of human rights should take at least prima facie precedence over other moral systems whether stemming from a religion or a particular moral or political philosophy.

Human Rights: Universality and Cultural Diversity of the World

Proceedings of the International Session on Factors of Regional Extensive Development (FRED 2019), 2020

The article considers the problem of human rights in the aspect of their universality and cultural diversity of the world through the prism of established traditions. The problem of universality and universalization of human rights becomes the most acute in conjunction with the sustainable development strategy in a situation of increasing integration of the economies and societies. Based on methodological approaches to the problem of human rights, the transformation of the meaning of human rights is revealed, human rights are examined through the prism of traditional ideas about a person and his rights. The research base was taken by the Anglo-Saxon legal family, Russia, Islam, and Christianity, based on the traditions established within their framework, the development of the idea of human rights to its normative consolidation at the international and national levels is shown. The purpose of the study is identifying the prevailing traditions in individual cultures and on their basis, understanding the transformation of approaches in understanding and normative consolidation of human rights. Close attention is paid to traditions in human rights issues as representations that have developed as socio-cultural landmarks in incorporating the idea of human rights into the modern concept of universal human rights.

HUMAN RIGHTS BEYOND DICHOTOMY BETWEEN CULTURAL UNIVERSALISM AND RELATIVISM

THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 2020

The consolidation of relations of global society requires the progressive establishment of a global legal system, consisting of a system of rules-precisely, human rights-as the source and evaluation criteria of positive national rights. This essay aims to contribute to some extent using reflective dialectical methodology, establishing logical-argumentative criteria, based on the dialogue between authors to exercise a critical reflection of the official narrative on the universality of human rights, in addition overcoming the universalism/relativism dichotomy eurocentricaly established by a theory of human rights between universalism and cultural relativism. Introdution There are strong criticisms of the attempts to create a world political order based on the defense of human rights, allowing international organizations and major powers to implement a centralized policy of "humanitarian" intervention, situated above the sovereignty of States, using even of war resources if necessary. In this line of argument, there are those who accuse the West of using "human rights rhetoric" to cover up their true political and economic interests and, through that discourse, impose its policies on the rest of the world. The process leading to the creation and consolidation of human rights is contemporary to the expansion of Europe and the West over the whole world and inextricably linked to this process and its contradictions. If, in the so-called West, the consolidation of some fundamental rights was the result of many struggles and conflicts and wars, non-European countries excluded from this process since the beginning and not infrequently participated as victims. The approach to the issue of human rights comes as a more tortuous issue to jurists faced with dilemmas that have assumed an enormous degree of importance with the intra-frontier and international community and which, at the same time, have not yet achieved unity of thought that allows its organization to ensure universal protection. It is, therefore, relevant to the establishment of a set of universal human rights to try to find, at least, a minimum set of guarantees capable of assuring the dignity of the human person. The very notion of dignity is problematic for the solution of this impasse, as each country, and within each of these countries, each culture sheltered by them, tends to establish its own conception of human dignity. To discuss a theory of human rights necessarily leads to a reference to the juridical theory of this class of rights, enshrined by a range of treaties, conventions and