Universalism of human rights and cultural relativism

Abstract

The universality of human rights is a fundamental principle of international human rights law (IHRL). The main source of IHRL is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 2 of the UDHR says that everyone is entitled to all the rights set forth in the Declaration. The Vienna Declaration (1993) affi rmed that the universality of human rights was ‘beyond question’. 1Yet the universality of human rights has been questioned. In 1947 the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) published a ‘Statement on Human Rights’, in which they asserted that values and standards ‘are relative to the culture from which they derive’. 2 This cultural relativism was motivated by a fear that the promotion of human rights as universal values would lead to the hegemony of the dominant global powers. The AAA now supports human rights, but ‘extends’ them to the collective rights of cultural groups. 3In the 1990s the dominant conception of universality was challenged on the basis of ‘Asian values’ by certain Asian governments and intellectuals, who insisted that there was a distinctively Asian conception of human rights. 4 Similar challenges have been made by some African scholars, 5 and on the basis of Islam. 6These challenges are often interpreted as manifesting a contest between the West and the rest, but Western culture does not always support human rights. Conservatives and leftists have reservations about IHRL. Communitarian philosophers have argued that the1 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (1993) UN Doc A/CONF.157/23, para. 1. 2 The Executive Board, American Anthropological Association, ‘Statement on Human Rights’(1947) 49(4) American Anthropologist 539-43 at 542. 3 K. Engle, ‘From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American AnthropologicalAssociation from 1947-1999’ (2001) 23(3) Human Rights Quarterly 536-59. 4 J. Bauer and D. Bell (eds), The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (Cambridge, CUP, 1999). 5 M. Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (University of Pennsylvania Press,2008). 6 A. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics , 4th edn (Westview Press, 2007).