Rights and Critiques

Human rights represent a cornerstone of moral progress, promising a better world by championing fundamental principles such as the right to life and freedom of belief. However, their implementation faces complexities, prompting critical reflections on their universality and cultural relevance. This introduction sets the stage for exploring the multifaceted nature of human rights and the challenges in achieving consensus across diverse global perspectives.

For those who believe in them, human rights is one of our greatest moral achievement who can also embody the promise of a better world. I personally believe that human rights are a good basis for uniting and equalizing people to achieve the rights to life, the rights to respect for private and family life, the rights to freedom of religion and belief.

However, the effectiveness of mechanisms for implementing various legal norms in human rights is inseparable from the various problems that exist,[1] which it makes me realize that not everything can be protected by a human rights, this just because human rights justify duties. More precisely, human rights exist when a fundamental and general human interest is a sufficient reason to hold someone else (the duty barrier) under a duty to respect that interest.[2] However, this has resulted in the concept of human rights and its antecedents, natural rights have always attracted persuasive criticism.

During my study period, I realized that criticism is necessary to promote human rights progress. By using criticism, we can observe that human rights are not completely perfect, even the concepts itself tend to be classified as fundamentally flawed.[3] Postmodernism, is one way of critical thinking that is quite interesting to me. By questioning knowledge, truth and reason to politics, this way of thinking does not consider there are facts in the world instead there are only interpretations. Related to this statement it makes me realize that in this world, it is not enough to have only one concrete meaning to define or justify everything.[4]

thus, to understand something we need to debate a myriad of meanings by looking at the various perspectives that exist. For instance, human rights have universal and inalienable principles this is stated in article one of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”.[5]

However, does the universality in human rights justification have a concrete interpretation in the life of the international community? this might be a broad question where everyone has a different view in concluding the answer to this question. Even so, I will conduct a brief discussion in the following paragraph.

We live in a vast world, there are approximately 7,873 billion people in this world and it is not easy to unite all thoughts and all human needs with different backgrounds and ethnicities into one unit.[6] This is related to the question in the previous paragraph, in fact human rights are the biggest challenge to universality, coupled with the inseparable human rights from politics.[7] This also reminded me during my study period, to have critical thinking to begin to understand something by having an objective view, it is not enough for us to only see one particular perspective of existing interpretation.

In fact, religious, philosophical, sociological, and legal perspective are important things to use in the framework of a human rights approach so that all their rights can work universally.[8] This objective viewpoint also has further relevance for applying the universality interpretation of human rights. Basically, the enjoyment of all rights is interrelated with one another.[9] Therefore, civil and political rights will always linked and cannot be separated from economic, social and cultural rights.[10]

As briefly highlighted above, various factors are needed to achieve ‘universality’ in human rights. In fact it is very difficult to get all the concrete rights at the same time this is based on the strong politics in the human rights system that we have, not to mention the human rights system which still tends to be westernized.[11] This has strong implications for countries outside the region, such as Asia, Africa and the Arab world, which will find it difficult to remove barriers to universal human rights. This westernised system ignores the fact that many people, even in the West, have human rights beliefs that are in opposition to the prevalent liberal interpretations of international human rights, as well as the fact that Asia, Africa, and the Arab world each have their own, robust traditions that are consistent with it.[12]

For instance, Asia has a wide area, in another sense there are various characterizations of Asian values in it.[13] There are many cultures that produce different perspectives in assessing and addressing all matters of human rights.[14] In addressing human rights Asian point of view tends to pay more attention to local values that are in accordance with existing human rights principles. Therefore, a human rights system that tends to be westernized will be difficult to implement in some areas outside western countries.[15]

Although the human rights system is still classified as ambiguous and there are still major questions in it not to mention the relation if we discuss human rights that cannot be separated from politics. As learning progresses, this makes me doubt whether human rights can be used as a concrete guide for the international community to obtain equal rights with one another.[16] On the other hand, this learning module has also made me realize that no matter how messy and chaotic our human rights system is, it would be better if we have an existing system rather than no system at all. This goes back to my argument in the previous paragraph.

I strongly believe that it is not easy to design a system that is perfect for the various needs of people in different cultures and ethnicities and again apart from all political interest in it. However, I still believe that human rights can still have the prospects to develop and the system within them can still be improved, especially if there are many critics who address this issue. I also believe that in order to be able to enjoy the universal rights and avoid the legal vacuums, it is important for us to pay attention to the rights from all different aspects, in this case to reach multiple interpretation of human rights we cannot separate civil and political rights from economic, social and cultural rights.

[1] Oliver Ferouville, ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70: the challenges that await the UN’ (The Conversation, 15 April 2019) < https://theconversation.com/the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights-at-70-the-challenges-that-await-the-un-115032> accessed 27 December 2022.

[2] United Nations, ‘Are Human Rights Universal?’ (United Nations Chronicle) < https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/are-human-rights-universal> accessed 27 December 2022.

[3] Marie Benedicte, ‘What are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought’ [2010] TJHUP 30.

[4] Simon Halliday, an Introduction to The Study of Law (first published 2012, Thomson Reuters 1927) .

[5] United Nations, ‘Peace, Dignity and Equality on a Healty Planet’ (United Nations) <https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights> accessed 27 December 2022.

[6] World Meter, ‘Current World Population’ (World Meter, 2022) < https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/> accessed 28 December 2022.

[7] Leila Nasr, ‘Are Human Rights Really ‘Universal, Inalienable, and Indvisible’?’, (LSE, 14 September 2016) <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2016/09/14/are-human-rights-really-universal-inalienable-and-indivisible/> accessed 28 December 2022.

[8] Halliday (n 4).

[9] United Nations Human Rights Office of The High Commissioner, ‘Key concepts on ESCRs — Are economic, social and cultural rights fundamentally different from civil and political rights?’ (United Nations Human Rights Office of The High Commissioner) <https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/economic-social-cultural-rights/escr-vs-civil-political-rights> accessed 28 December 2022.

[10] ibid.

[11] Janne Mende, ‘Are human rights western — And why does it matter? A perspective from international political theory’ [2019] SJ 17.

[12] ibid.

[13] ibid.

[14] Anon, ‘Western Human Rights in a Diverse World: Cultural Suppression or Relativism?’ (2014) 1(1) EIR < https://www.e-ir.info/2014/04/25/western-human-rights-in-a-diverse-world-cultural-suppression-or-relativism/> accessed 29 December 2022.

[15] ibid.

[16] ibid.