Ralph Bunche and the Evolution of Human Rights

Abstract

viewed the UN as a means, one means, to a larger end. That end was what Bunche called an mind, or what we today call, civil society. Second, I want to contend that Bunche unlike many of his colleagues, saw human rights from a pragmatic, political and secular perspective rather than a universalistic, legalistic and religious perspective. Scholars such as Richard Rorty and Michael Ignatieff are just now articulating Bunche's type of pragmatic and political view of human rights in human rights discourse. Finally, Bunche saw the rights of minorities as fundamental to this larger project of an international mind devoted to human rights. He tied the local to the global in a way that was belatedly recognized by the Supreme Court and the civil rights movement. The local, for Bunche, included economic and social rights as well as political and civil rights. Most importantly, it did not accept democracy as a substitute for human rights or accept rights without responsibilities. 1900, three years before Bunche's birth, there were 26 Esperanto (universal language) clubs in the world. By the onset of World War I in 1914 there were 1800 such