Will International Human Rights Be Used as a Tool of Cultural Genocide? The Interaction of Human Rights Norms, Religion, Culture and Gender

Abstract

Ironically, certain contemporary international human rights norms appear to place governments in an adversary relationship to certain peoples, such as Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, whose attempted destruction provided the impetus for modern human rights law. This raises the paradoxical spectre of human rights law being used as a tool of cultural genocide.This conflict is, of course, not confined to Hasidic and Orthodox Jews; indeed, it appears that the majority of people on the earth are identified with a people-group whose cultural/religious practices violate certain international human rights norms. While it is common to use Islam as an example, this paper initially concentrates on traditional Judaism because of the special place of the Holocaust as a catalyst for the modern international human rights movement.