Conformity, Compliance, and Human Rights

Abstract

Increased concern for human rights has heightened awareness of the fact that humans are being arbitrarily and brutally repressed around the world. When someone is incarcerated or killed without benefit of lawful due process, there is general agreement that a rights violation has occurred. Few would want to argue that the excesses which occurred in Uganda were legitimate or appropriate. Even in acknowledging violations in such clear-cut cases, however, and certainly more often in less dramatic instances, disagreements and conflicting perceptions of events are common. These discrepancies typically occur along lines of conflict and ideological divergence. What the East and the West see as violations is often quite different. At times, that which an outsider considers to be a violation is perceived by authorities within the country as a justifiable and necessary defense of the established order. While controversy over violations may constitute a propagandistic attempt to denigrate the other side, it is also frequently due to real differences in definition of the situation. Divergent world views, ideological contradictions, and diverse structures of judicial, legal, and penal systems, combined with culturally diverse ways of emphasizing particular facets of economic, political, educational, religious, and social life, all play a part in creating disagreement as to when and in what way a human rights violation has occurred. When viewed from such a perspective, it is apparent that universally valid criteria for determining the occurrence of human rights violations will be extremely difficult to achieve. A course of action that avoids some of the pitfalls in attempting to establish absolute and universalistic criteria is possible, however. If particular countries are viewed from the standpoint of what their citizens are promised or offered by the system, a basis exists for evaluating that country's treatment of human rights. If the promise is reality, then human