Children without Humanness. Criança-Irân Infanticide Cultural Practice Challenging Human Rights in Guinea-Bissau

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the discrepancies between the onto-metaphysical foundations of criança-irân ritual infanticide (practised in Guinea Bissau) and the principles underpinning international, legal human rights. Bissau-Guinean cosmological beliefs justify the infanticide, excluding infants from the category of human being. This paper argues that the practice and its underpinning principles constitute a threefold challenge to human rights, as analysed in the three sections constituting the paper. The first part reveals the apparent inconsistency between the primary human rights corpus and given cultural practices, in the framework of the right to culture. The second it takes into account the universalist and the relativist stances in the discernment of individualistic and societal features as benchmark for human rights formulation, implementation and protection. Last, resorting to ethical pluralism, it exposes the dichotomy between the practice and human rights’ foundations, emphasising the peculiar ways in which humanness, and hence rights-holder, have hitherto been conceptualised.