Human Rights and Privilege

World Affairs -- – A Journal of International Issues , 1998

The modern notion of “Human Rights” is reflected in the UDHR (1948), the two UN Covenants (1966), and in scores of UN instruments on Human Rights. These documents conceptualize human rights as universal in the sense that they transcend national boundaries or ideologies. Many scholars and nations have contested the claim of universality of human rights and asserted that they are not a Western discovery as human rights values and traditions have been part of their cultures/civilizations and politico-legal systems for centuries. In fact, Human Rights are the product of historical, cultural and socio-political experiences of a given society. These societies have formulated and conceptualized their notion of rights to suit their particular socio-cultural and political settings. Hence, cultural specificity has to be taken into cognizance while formulating and implementing human rights standards. There cannot be uniform human rights standards or a single interpretation of a meaning of a right. There can be different meanings attributed to a right even within a single tradition. This is a challenge posed by those who believe in cultural relativism as against universalism. Besides being culturally specific, the concept of rights, it is argued, also includes dynamism that lends its meaning and interpretations to constant evolution and change. An understanding of non-Western perspectives helps us to appreciate the limitations in the prevailing international human rights protection system and the difficulties experienced by the Non-western states in implementing human rights norms. Besides discussing the non-Western perspectives of human rights in Chinese, Indian (Hindu-Buddhist), African and Islamic traditions, the paper argues that what should be universal is the idea or the concern for human rights in general and not a particular model of human rights.

A comparative analysis of human rights in different countries and regions of the world by author in this article reveals that the concept of rights has a diverse meaning, understanding, history and practices.

In the most general sense human rights are understood as rights which belong to any individual as a consequence of being human, independently of acts of law. Awareness of the existence of this type of rights finds its expression in the output (especially in literature) of various cultures of various times. However the real career of the category of human rights which led to its common use in disputes of practical type, not only in the area of law but also in politics, morality or religion, dates only from the Second World War. The modem concept of human rights is rooted in the experiences of 'legal lawlessness' when crimes were committed with the authorization of law, and some human beings possessing certain characteristics were refused the status of being human. The emergence of international law of human rights was an answer to these experiences. The conception of human rights adopted in the acts which laid foundations for this law determines nowadays the paradigm for the understanding of human rights not only in international law, but also in other areas of culture. International community's appreciation of the unique worth of every human being led to the concern not only to eliminate elements destructive for an individual but also to create the conditions for his or her development and flourishing. In spite of cultural changes which took place during the last half of this century, in spite of the critics, the basic original ideas of human rights have seemed to remain the same. This paper aims at identifying these ideas and at sketching a coherent perspective for consideration of human rights in their full richness. The legal or semi-legal acts of the protection of human rights are considered here not from legalistic point of view but rather as an expression of an experience of the condition of a human being in the modem world.