In this essay, human rights will be defined as the ideals belonging to all mankind, inherent to personhood, by which cultures attempt to preserve human dignity[1]. I will begin from the assumption that human rights are a universal concept and not just a western construct, and I will counterargument the two notions that challenge my initial assumption. These notions relate to the religious conception of human rights and the transactional conception of the Soviet Union. These two different interpretations were used by Jack Donnelly[2] to argue that human rights as we understand them today are a strictly western notion not shared by any other culture. My essay will instead strive to show how the concept of human rights is consistent, although not identical, across cultures, by highlighting the flaws in Donnelly’s arguments.
Firstly, a point must be clarified: there exists a distinction between the substance of a concept and its institutionalization. Human rights describe what all people could recognise as a value in general, i.e. without qualifying context. The right to liberty as an idea is easily recognised as inherent to life, and therefore is an absolute in substance. The institutionalization of this fact, however, balances the right to liberty against other fundamental human rights, allowing for its restriction in practice, such as when a murderer is jailed. Like all legal concepts, human rights can be said to be in competition with each other, in terms of the extent to which they apply, given a qualifying context. I will focus on the substance of the concept and the implications of that substance on its institutionalization, without looking at instances when ideas surrounding human rights are used in a corrupt or harmful way[3]. Such a discussion is necessary for policymakers to have, but not for declaring the universality of the concept.
The universality of human rights can be established on the basis of them forming part of most cultures through religion. According to Khadduri[4], “human rights in Islam are the privilege of Allah, because authority ultimately belongs to him.” The implication of this is that the focus in Islamic societies is on duty to God rather than the inherent rights of man. Donnelly argues that this conception is irreconcilable to human rights as understood in the West and as laid down in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which outlines human rights as intrinsic to the individual, and devoid of the concept of duty. The West, the argument goes, has defined human rights as owed to every individual, without the individual having any duty to a higher being or to others, so religious societies cannot be said to have human rights in this sense. However, an analysis of the UDHR has in its preamble that “all human beings are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in the spirit of brotherhood[5]”. The reference to action suggests that there is a duty intrinsic to human rights; it represents an acknowledgement that while human rights are inherent and greater than everyday interactions, they are upheld among human beings, and this represents a constant and mundane responsibility on behalf of every human towards other humans. This, I would argue, is commensurable with the religious perspective on fundamental rights: the Bible and the Koran both speak of the duty we have towards each other in upholding our obligations towards a greater being. Moreover, the mention of “reason and conscience” suggests that human rights arise exactly because of our ability to have agency and understanding of our actions: the fact of being able to deliberate places an obligation on us to do it cautiously, as well as a right to expect caution from others. A religious conception only differs because it sees reason and conscience as God-given. Donnelly moreover seems to ignore the fact that the Declaration of Independence, which most explicitly speaks of “self-evident” rights, reads “all men are…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights[6]”. The only significant argument towards the incommensurability of religious rights to human rights is the inequality women face in Islamic countries because of interpretations of the Koran[7]. I would argue, however, that this is a matter of the application of human rights. The Bible also sees man and woman as unequal[8], but as societies evolved they shrugged off this limitation to human rights while holding strongly onto the concept.
The Soviet conception of human rights is seen as diverging from the Western conception on largely the same grounds: as the constitution of the USSR said, “Citizens’ exercise of their rights and freedoms is inseparable from the performance of their duties and obligations[9].” Donnelly objects to the idea that rights and duties are coincident under the Western definition of human rights. He argues that in the West, these duties are not conceived as arising from the possession of one’s own rights, so for example: “the duty to respect another person’s liberty is imposed on me by his right to liberty, not mine[10]”. However, this conception ignores the importance given to agency in the UDHR and it also amounts to a flaw in reasoning. From the point of view of equality, having rights for all is morally equivalent to having rights for no one, as in both of those cases all human beings are equal. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to say that it is morally desirable to have rights for everyone rather than to not have rights at all. Therefore there must be a mechanism in place by which the rights of one person guarantee the rights of another. The only way that one person’s rights can logically lead on to mine is if that person, in enjoying rights, enjoys them conditionally, subjected to the duty of respecting my rights. This is the only way in which a society can ensure inherent rights for all; if my right implies only a duty on someone else’s behalf, and no duty on my own, then that is a tyranny on my side. The juxtaposition of duties and rights, which was heavily emphasised by the Soviets, is therefore perfectly consistent with the accepted Western conception of human rights. This can be clearly seen in practice: to use a Soviet example, it is your right to participate in society, meaning that no one can arbitrarily be excluded from participating. But it is also the duty of individuals to participate, as that is how a society is formed. In over 80% of countries[11], Western and non-Western, disrespecting someone’s’ right to life results in the state removing your right to liberty, and this shows the extent to which rights are conditional on duties, and in fact cannot exist in the absence of duties without the chain falling apart.
To say that rights exist independent of a person’s actions is preposterous if we consider that the very origin of fundamental rights lies in our being conscious of our actions. Rights may be unconditionally inherent to the neutral human being, but they are not absolute. They are instead a matter of degree and balance, often existing in competition with each other, as when a government must choose between protecting privacy and monitoring citizens to ensure their safety. The definition of human rights must therefore allow for this balancing act in practice, which means that Donnelly’s definition cannot be used to accurately represent the Western conception as distinct from the conception of other cultures. Seeing human rights as just a western construct ignores that the West applies similar qualifying factors to the concept as most other cultures. It is also a reductive way of dealing with human rights: the West perhaps has a history of using the narrative of human rights to pursue certain interests, but that is not intrinsic to the concept. As described above in two non-Western examples, all cultures attempt to protect human dignity[12]. I hope I have shown that the specific forms that protection takes do not vary significantly from culture to culture in concept. And through this analysis, I hope to have reminded the reader that the doctrine of human rights is essentially an enforcement mechanism, a way of saying: these rights that protect human dignity are permanently in danger, but as a global community we recognise them as universal ideals and strive to uphold them, which is what gives human rights their strength.
Bibliography:
Donnelly, Jack, Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Analytic Critique of Non-Western Conceptions of Human Rights, The American Political Science Review, Vol.76, No.2, 1982
Moyn, Samuel, Rights vs. Duties: Reclaiming Civil Balance, The Boston Review, 2016
Hart, H. L. A., Are There Any Natural Rights?, The Philosophical Review, Vol.64, No.2, 1955
Posner, Eric, The Case Against Human Rights, The Guardian, 2014, retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against-human-rights
Russell, Jonathan, Human Rights: The Universal Declaration vs The Cairo Declaration, LSE blogs, 2012, retrieved from: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2012/12/10/1569/
UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 1948
Khadduri, Majid, Human Rights in Islam, American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1946
US, Declaration of Independence, 1776
[1] This definition is based on ideas from Donnelly (1982) and Hart (1955).
[2] Donnelly (1982)
[3] Donnelly makes a similar distinction, but omits to acknowledge that the concept has implications for its application which are distinct from the abuses that arise when the concept is used to serve other needs. This is to say that some of the “form” a concept takes is implicit in the concept, but some is due to the imperfection of humans. This idea was brought to the fore by Eric Posner (2014)
[4]Khadduri (1946)
[5] UDHR, emphasis mine
[6] Declaration of Independence (1776)
[7] Russell (2012)
[8] Based on some interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve
[9] Constitution of the USSR (1936)
[10] Donnelly (1982)
[11] The other 20% remove the murderer’s right to life directly, according to The Guardian Datablog: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/29/death-penalty-countries-world
[12] For reasons of space constraints, the community-based interpretation of human rights in African society and some parts of Asia have been omitted, but the arguments against seeing these interpretations as fundamentally different from (what Donnelly claims) is the Western definition of human rights are similar.
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