Violence-Focus of the International Human Rights Discourse: Blind Spots, Tunnel Vision, and Distorted Versions

Abstract

The post-World War II international human rights discourse categorizes our social practices into binaries of violence/non-violence, with the purpose of conditioning our responses to view the former as illegitimate, harmful, and wrong, and the latter as an accepted arena of social activity. As I shall argue in this paper, this violence focus of human rights is a cumulative outcome of the birth of the modern human rights movement as a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust; the grounding of the self understanding of the human rights discourse in Western liberal philosophies; and, the self-conscious strategies used by human rights activists to bring their agendas within the human rights regime. However, I argue that this violence focus of human rights is problematic as it has adverse consequences for the uniform, universal and humane application of the discourse. It also raises concerns of cultural relativism in non-Western societies. I will argue that there is a need to build a more pluralistic foundation for the human rights discourse, and will suggest that the notion of “choice,” which reflects the experiences of the decolonization movement (particularly that of South Asia), but also subsumes notions of opposition to violence, is one alternative approach to re-conceptualizing human rights. I will also sketch out the practical impact of this paradigm-shift on human rights theory and advocacy in general and in the South Asian context in particular.