Human Rights: What Possibilities of Universalization? (original) (raw)

The Universality of Human Rights in the Modern Age

The international Regime of human rights claims its universality through the mutual development the rights involved. However, the narratives have been subject to critiques, with a strong trend towards challenging the universality of something so particular and individual as human rights. This essay will examine the claim of universality of international human rights while discussing the relationship between human rights and its history's narratives and the critiques it is facing from cultural relativists, who criticise the international human rights regime as western-centric. Is the modern human rights regime the "trojan horse of moral imperalism" or does it sufficiently support fundamental freedoms around the world?

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

Humanitarian law: the controversial historical construction of a universal moral

Sckell, Soraya Nour. “Humanitarian law: the controversial historical construction of a universal moral”. Janus.Net e-journal of International Relatons, Vol. 3, n.º 1, p. 78-93, Spring 2012. ISSN: 1647-7251. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=413536169004, 2012

Humanitarian law was conceived by legal and moral normativism founded on universal principles. Despite its undeniable universal moral content, its formulations and application methods are however the result of historical conflicts. This article aims to analyze how the universality of humanitarian law is produced by highly controversial conflicts. It is necessary to overcome the antagonism between an analysis that focuses on the moral undeniable value of humanitarian law by ignoring its controversies and an analysis that focuses on social antagonism questioning the achievability of the moral and universal value of humanitarian law. For this, we must consider that humanitarian law is a construction. It appears as autonomous and independent of power relationships, as based on the rationality of morality and thus worthy of universal recognition. Yet its development is only possible when one considers the historical roots of reason. It is only through political struggle that humanitarian law is realized in history. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the universal nature of humanitarian law is produced by highly controversial conflicts. Firstly, an analysis is offered on the universal but at the same controversial character in the codification of humanitarian law, recalling controversies around the creation of the Additional Protocols of 1977 (Section 1). Next, an analysis is given on the conflictual character of organizations supporting humanitarian law, taking in account conflicts between the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders and controversies around the ambitions to pass from an humanitarian law to a right of humanitarian intervention (Section 2). Finally, a reflection is offered on how the theories of international relations that most appropriately grasp the universal nature of humanitarian law must be complemented by a "historical sociology of the universal" that embraces the conflicting historical dimension in the construction of the universal (Section 3)

Two problems surrounding the universality of human rights

2018

This thesis marks the end of an academic and personal period that I chose to undertake in the hope of gaining a better understanding of our world, or at least the tools for such an understanding. And, just as in the world we inhabit, it has been marked and determined by the unexpected, life and death, joy, uncertainty and failure on occasions, and, more than anything else, the help and kindness of others. I would not have been able to enter this program without the full tuition exemption I was generously granted by the Department of Philosophy. I too enjoyed an achievement stipend for two semesters. I am grateful for this opportunity, and for the willingness to help in all matters I have always encountered from all members of this department. Among them, I wish to heartily thank my supervisor, Siobhan Kattago, for teaching me these years through her academic and personal example, establishing a truly enriching intellectual relationship with me where I felt the freedom to pursue my ideas with rigour, and an essential touch of the wisdom usually known as common sense. My ideas and personal way of addressing them benefitted from discussions with many friends and colleagues, among them Merily Salura, Mirt Kruusmaa, Francisco Martínez and Semyon Reshenin. The incisive work of Karel Pajus as my opponent in 1 These General Comments published by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights contain an ample body of comments declared by the same office to be "authoritative interpretations of the relevant treaty provisions" to each of the human rights treaties approved by the United Nations.

The Relative Universality of Human Rights

Human rights as an international political project are closely tied to claims of universality. Attacks on the universality of human rights, however, are also widespread. And some versions of universalism are indeed theoretically indefensible, politically pernicious, or both. This essay explores the senses in which human rights can (and cannot) be said to be universal, the senses in which they are (and are not) relative, and argues for the "relative universality" of internationally recognized human rights.

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.

Two Problems Surrounding the Universality of Human Rights- A Master's Thesis

2018

This thesis points at two main issues in the concept of the universality of human rights. First, the obstacles it poses to the notions of the sovereign and the political as defined by Carl Schmitt. Second, the paradox of human rights formulated by Hannah Arendt remains unsolved, since the contradiction at its heart has not changed after its formulation. The third chapter attempts to illustrate how these theoretical concepts are relevant for our understanding of human rights crises involving state actors analyzing some of the events that took place during the 2015 migrant crisis in Europe. The thesis concludes pointing at the need to end the misconceptions derived from the idea of the universality of human rights in the mind of the public. I successfully defended this thesis in Spring 2018, at the Philosophy Department of University of Tartu.

Establishing Universal Human Rights

This article explores the practical and philosophical issues associated with bringing diverse moral conceptions into the judgments of international crimes. It is argued that a Habermasian view of cosmopolitan law provides a possibility for envisioning the way international courts can contribute to a universal morality across culturally disparate human rights conceptions. It is also argued that the most universally acceptable human rights conceptions reflect a convergence of procedures and substance. The author explores the treatment of rape in international war crimes tribunals in order to demonstrate how these judgments advance a more universallyacceptable human rights conceptions.

Universal Rights and the Historical Context

The European Journal of Development Research, 1998

A common assumption of communitarians and other moral relativists is that the idea of universal human rights cannot apply to societies outside the modern Western world. Their argument is that since a valid morality cannot but reflect the values that are actually held in this or that society, and since universal human rights are not generally recognised in pre-modern and non-Western societies, there are in fact no universal human rights. In this essay the communitarian argument is criticised on the grounds that it does not distinguish between positive morality (that is, what people, as a matter of fact, believe to be right and good) and normative morality (that is, what people should believe to be right and good, were they fully rational). Moreover, it is argued that a normative understanding of the morality of universal human rights need not involve us in any anachronistic reasoning about the moral character of people in ancient or culturally distant societies. Nor does it imply a rejection of what is sound in a communitarian argument about the importance of historical contexts.