The idea of rights as universal we often trace back to political philosopher John Locke who wrote in the 17th century
and he proposed that human beings are born with what he called a 'blank slate' or a 'tabula rasa'
and because of that, people should therefore be endowed with a series of inalienable rights granted from birth
To John Locke, these core rights were the right to life, liberty, and property.
and a lot of John Locke's thinking has formed the basis of western liberal democratic society
some of these basic rights are reflected in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 2, for example, states that access to these rights and the granting of those rights are granted solely because you are human
and cannot be based on location or nationality, or race
or gender, or ethnicity, or language, or religion
and to follow up on that, article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that
everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person
Right? So these central, core rights of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
we can certainly understand to be universal
Right? Granted to you from birth - the right to life, security of person - maybe those should be something that everybody
in the world should be entitled to have
Right? So total universalism argues that every single right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
should be applicable to every single human being from the moment they are born in any part of the world, full stop.
So It starts to get a little bit trickier, however, once you start digging a little bit deeper into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and this is where the idea of relativism challenges the universalism of the intent of the declaration
So a relativist interpretation of human rights believes that
beliefs, values, and therefore rights are a product of culture - and should therefore vary from culture to culture and place to place
However, where do we draw the line on that?
Pure cultural relativism might, for example, excuse genocidal practices as being a product of culture
which would go very much against the spirit of human rights.
Human rights scholar Jack Donnelly believes that human rights are what he calls 'relatively universal'.
What this means is that the idea of human rights should very much be universal
and we see this through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being very widely accepted around the world
but the interpretation of those rights could very much be culturally relative.
and so let's look at an example of this
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grants everybody the right to freedom of expression and freedom of speech
universally we can accept this as being something that, yes, every person should have
in terms of implementation, different places around the world might actually
draw different limits of, you know, where the limit of freedom of speech might be
so if we think about hate speech, for example, different
places around the world, based on their context, based on their cultural values - maybe religious values
might place a different limit on what they consider hate speech because they might define hate speech in a slightly different way
so while everybody accepts the right to there being free speech, more or less
but where those lines can be drawn can very much vary, and that is this idea of 'relative universality'
where the interpretation of that right can vary - but the overall spirit of the right is very much left intact.
Another potential example of this is with property rights.
So, article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
ensures that everyone has the right to own property, so
private property - again if we think back to John Locke's views on inalienable rights being life, liberty, and property
this one is very much drawn from that.
However, a potential cultural challenge to that might be, for example, indigenous collective rights
where different indigenous groups in different parts of the world look at
land not from a perspective of ownership and owning land as private property, but more from a perspective of stewardship
that it is their collective responsibility to take care of the land and protect it for future generations.
Using the resources that it provides in a way that is sustainable for the future.
In Canada, for example, several legal precedents such as the Nisga'a Treaty in the 1990s
and more recently the formation of the territory of Nunavut
has challenged this conception of private property by granting indigenous communities self-government
over their traditional lands in a way that challenges these western liberal notions of private property
Nevertheless, even though the implementation of these rights might vary from place to place
having that global acceptance of the idea of human rights
is ultimately something that is a positive thing for the world.
Jack Donnelly sums this up by saying:
Furthermore, cultures aren't static - they don't exist in a vaccum.
Through globalization, cultures keep changing, through time
cultures adapt and evolve to changing circumstances
and so our global understanding of rights
and how they can be implemented in various different places around the world grows and adapts as well.
Ultimately countries do have sovereignty over their internal affairs
and that includes how they deal with rights and human rights.
Because human rights have been globally accepted as a standard that should be followed
countries often talk the talk in terms of
human rights to gain international legitimacy, but don't always follow through in terms of protecting those rights
and so then it becomes the job of the global community, and states, and NGOs
and all of the different actors in order to put pressure on
human rights abuses that do harm the dignity of humans in different parts of the world.
Cultural practices that could be deemed to be harmful to the dignity of individuals
like female genital mutilation or LGBT discrimination
are often left unchecked by states claiming that those are cultural norms.
But again, the idea that we do have a universal standard, even though it can be
interpreted differently in places around the world, but has been globally accepted
is inevitably a good thing to create a more just and equal society.
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