Forging a global culture of human rights: Origins and prospects of the international bill of rights

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 416-437

  Kabasakal Arat, Zehra F ^a  

^a STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURE; HUMAN RIGHTS; INTERNATIONAL LAW; UNITED NATIONS;

EID: 33745052680     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2006.0014     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. U.N. Charter, signed 26 June 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No 993, 3 Bevans 1153 (entered into force 24 Oct. 1945).
2. Id. art. 1.
3. Id. art. 55.
4. Id. art. 56. It would not be wrong to claim that despite the wording of Article 1 of the UN Charter, the member states have treated human rights as inferior to the goals of maintaining peace and security. The recognition of human rights as a goal and normative framework for international affairs gained a momentum later and largely as a result of the dedicated work of individuals and non-state actors.
5. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 Dec. 1948, G.A. Res. 217A (III), U.N. GAOR, 3d Sess. (Resolutions, pt. 1), at 71, U.N. Doc. A/ 810 (1948),
6. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted 16 Dec. 1966, G.A. Res. 2200 (XXI), U.N. GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 993 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into force 3 Jan. 1976);
7. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted 16 Dec. 1966, G.A. Res. 2200 (XXI), U.N. GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171 (entered into force 23 Mar. 1976).
8. Robert F. Drinan, The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights (2001);
9. Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World (2000);
10. David P. Forsythe, Human Rights in International Relations (2000);
11. David P. Forsythe, American Exceptionalism and Global Human Rights (University of Nebraska Distinguished Lecture Series, 1999);
12. Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities (Adamantia Pollis & Peter Schwab eds., 2000);
13. Human Rights in Global Politics (Tim Dunne & Nicholas J. Wheeler eds., 1999);
14. Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights (2d ed. 1998);
15. Tony Evans, Introduction: Power, Hegemony and the Universalization of Human Rights, in Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal 1 (Tony Evans ed., 1998);
16. David Gillies, Between Principle and Practice: Human Rights in North-South Relations (1996);
17. Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and the U.S. Foreign Policy (1987).
18. Norberto Bobbio, The Age of Rights xi (Allan Cameron trans., 1996).
19. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) argued against the possibility of universal human rights and warned the drafting UN Committee about the futility of its efforts. See Johannes Morsink's introduction for a brief review of challengers who have considered the notion of human rights or the Universal Declaration as based on Western culture. Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (1999). It should be noted that the AAA later changed its position in favor of universalism; its 1999 declaration defines the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international law as the baseline of human rights, which are evolving.
20. See AAA, Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights, Committee for Human Rights, American Anthropological Association (June 1999), available at http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/humanrts.htm.
21. Micheline R. Ishay, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (2004);
22. Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (1998);
23. Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches, and Documents from the Bible to the Present (Micheline R. Ishay ed., 1997);
24. Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Abdullahi An-Na'im ed., 1992);
25. Rhoda E. Howard, Dignity, Community, and Human Rights, in Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives 81 (Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im ed., 1992).
26. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government 47-48, ¶ 85 (Liberal Arts Press 1952).
27. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty 69 (Penguin Books, 1975).
28. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Whether Woman Should Have Been Made in the First Production of Things (Fathers of the English Dominican Province trans., 1920), available at http://www.newadvent.org/ summa/109201.htm.
29. See Lauren, supra note 10, at 1-36. On the continuation of the dehumanization of "the other" in our age of human rights (e.g., the Serbian treatment of Muslims in the 1990s) and its philosophical implications, see Richard Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality, in On Human Rights (Stephen Shute & Susan Hurley eds., 1993).
30. see Richard Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality, in On Human Rights (Stephen Shute & Susan Hurley eds., 1993).
31. John P. Humphrey, Human Rights & the United Nations: A Great Adventure (1984);
32. Morsink, supra note 9, at 1-35. Susan Waltz accepts the role of the Nazi Holocaust but, by pointing out that there were various episodes of international human rights discussions that predated World War II, she objects to the notion that the Universal Declaration was a response to the Holocaust and calls this prevailing notion "a myth." Susan Waltz, Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 23 Third World Q. 437, 438-40 (2002).
33. Susan Waltz, Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 23 Third World Q. 437, 438-40 (2002).
34. Louis Henkin, The Age of Rights 27-28 (1990).
35. The eighteen-member Commission would include five Great Powers (USA, USSR, UK, France and China) and thirteen other UN members that would rotate at three-year intervals. The first Commission, which was established in 1946, included delegates from Australia, Belgium, Byelorussia, Chile, China, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Lebanon, Panama, Philippines, Ukraine, USSR, UK, USA, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia. Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New 32 (2001).
36. The third influential person was René Cassin from France. The core of the drafting group included also Eleanor Roosevelt (the chair of the Committee), John Humphrey (the appointee from the UN Secretariat), and the delegates of Australia, Chile, UK, and USSR.
37. Glendon, supra note 17; Morsink, supra note 9; Humphrey, supra note 15.
38. Morsink, supra note 9;
39. Humphrey, supra note 15.
40. Susan Waltz, Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States in the Construction of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 23 Hum. Rts. Q. 44, 47 (2001).
41. Glendon, supra note 17, at 143-44.
42. The fifty-eight members of the UN at the time were Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Byelorussia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Luxemburg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Siam, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Union of South Africa, the USSR, United Kingdom, the USA, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yemen, and Yugoslavia.
43. Morsink, supra note 9; Waltz, Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States in the Construction of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, supra note 20; Waltz, Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, supra note 15; Susan Waltz, Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States, 26 Hum. Rts. Q. 799 (2004).
44. Waltz, Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States in the Construction of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, supra note 20;
45. Waltz, Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, supra note 15;
46. Susan Waltz, Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States, 26 Hum. Rts. Q. 799 (2004).
47. Humphrey, supra note 15.
48. Morsink, supra note 9; Glendon, supra note 17.
49. Glendon, supra note 17.
50. Glendon, supra note 17; Morsink, supra note 9; Humphrey, supra note 15.
51. Morsink, supra note 9;
52. Humphrey, supra note 15.
53. Bobbio, supra note 8; T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development (1964); Seymour M. Lipset, Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy, 53 Am. Pol. Science Rev. 69 (1959).
54. T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development (1964);
55. Seymour M. Lipset, Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy, 53 Am. Pol. Science Rev. 69 (1959).
56. Glendon, supra note 17, at 147.
57. Id. at 165.
58. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures 5 (Basic Books 1973) (2000).
59. The next section of this articles addresses the selective treatment issue. However, a neglected, or deliberately ignored, aspect of the International Bill of Rights should be addressed briefly here. The equality and anti-discrimination principles, when applied to all aspects of life, make certain economic and political organizations incompatible and directly in conflict with the advancement of human rights. While authoritarian politics is often addressed as inappropriate for or a source of violations of civil and political rights, capitalism, more benignly defined as a market economy, is seldom identified as an obstacle for the realization of human rights or as a target of change for the human rights project. Noticing the same void in human rights debates, Michael Freedman points out that there has been no "political economy of human rights." Michael Freeman, Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach 173 (2002). We may argue that the implementation of full spectrum of human rights call for a social democratic model, if not a substantial democracy (as opposed to procedural) that can be actualized only in a socialist economy. The radicalism embedded in such an argument, however, makes human rights less palatable to some people. This may explain why the study of human rights has been short on political economy and why many advocates of human rights strategically avoid controversy.
60. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999).
61. Kemal Karpat, The Ottoman Rule in Europe From the Perspective of 1994, in Turkey Between East and West: New Challenges for a Rising Regional Power 1 (Vojtech Mastny & Craig R. Nation eds., 1996);
62. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (Benjamin Braude & Bernard Lewis eds., 1982);
63. Roderick Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (2d ed. 1973);
64. Arnold J. Toynbee & Kenneth P. Kirkwood, Turkey (H.A.L. Fisher ed., 1976) (1927).
65. Reeva Spector Simon & Eleanor H. Tejirian, Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921 (2004).
66. The current treatment of globalization as an economic phenomenon is both narrow and a-historical. Globalization entails the development of common norms, as well as integrated markets, and it has been an ongoing process that peaked at certain junctures as a result of technological advancements in transportation and communication, as well as socio-political developments such as colonialism or the end of the Cold War. See Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, Human Rights and Globalization: Is the Shrinking World Expanding Rights?, 5 Hum. Rts. & Hum. Welfare 137 (2005).
67. Evans, supra note 7; R.W. Cox, The Crisis in World Order and the Challenge of International Organization, 29 Cooperation & Conflict 99 (1994).
68. R.W. Cox, The Crisis in World Order and the Challenge of International Organization, 29 Cooperation & Conflict 99 (1994).
69. Michael W. Doyle & Anne-Marie Gardner, Introduction: Human Rights and International Order in The Globalization of Human Rights 1, 9 (Jean-Marc Coicaud et al. eds., 2003).
70. Donnelly, supra note 7.
71. Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, U.N. GAOR, World Conf. on Hum. Rts., 48th Sess., 22d plen. mtg., part I, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.157/24 (1993),
72. Bernard Mayo, What are Human Rights?, in Political Theory and the Rights of Man 68 (D.D. Raphael ed., 1967);
73. Maurice Cranston, Human Rights, Real and Supposed, Human Rights: A Reply to Professor Raphael, in Political Theory and the Rights of Man, supra note 43, at 95; R.S. Downie, Social Equality in The Philosophy of Human Rights: International Perspectives 127 (Alan S. Rosenbaum ed., 1980).
74. R.S. Downie, Social Equality in The Philosophy of Human Rights: International Perspectives 127 (Alan S. Rosenbaum ed., 1980).
75. D.D. Raphael, The Rights of Man and the Rights of the Citizens, in Political Theory and the Rights of Man 101 (D.D. Raphael ed., 1967);
76. D.D. Raphael, Human Rights, Old and New, in Political Theory and the Rights of Man, 54 supra note 40, at 54; Peter Schneider, Social Rights and the Concept of Human Rights, in Political Theory and the Rights of Man, supra note 40, at 81; Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (1980); John Charvet, A Critique of Human Rights, in Human Rights 31 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1981); Frithjof Bergmann, Two Critiques of the Traditional Theory of Human Rights, in Human Rights 52 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1981); Susan M. Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (1999); Michael C. MacMillan, Social Versus Political Rights, 19 Canadian J. Pol. Science 283 (1986); Ruth Gavison, On the Relationship between Civil and Political Rights, and Social and Economic Rights, in The Globalization of Human Rights, supra note 41, at 23.
77. Peter Schneider, Social Rights and the Concept of Human Rights, in Political Theory and the Rights of Man, supra note 40, at 81;
78. Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (1980);
79. John Charvet, A Critique of Human Rights, in Human Rights 31 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1981);
80. Frithjof Bergmann, Two Critiques of the Traditional Theory of Human Rights, in Human Rights 52 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1981);
81. Susan M. Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (1999);
82. Michael C. MacMillan, Social Versus Political Rights, 19 Canadian J. Pol. Science 283 (1986);
83. Ruth Gavison, On the Relationship between Civil and Political Rights, and Social and Economic Rights, in The Globalization of Human Rights, supra note 41, at 23.
84. Philip Alston, The Importance of the Inter-play between Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Civil and Political Rights, in Human Rights at the Dawn of the 21st Century 59, 61 (1993).
85. Zehra F. Arat, Human Rights and Democracy: Expanding or Contracting, 32 Polity 119 (1999).
86. Evans, supra note 7, at 6-7.
87. Id. at 7.
88. See, e.g., Gavison, supra note 41; Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999); Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (1992); Susan M. Okin, Liberty and Welfare: Some Issues in Human Rights Theory, in Human Rights, supra note 41, at 230; United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report (2002); United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report (2000).
89. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999);
90. Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (1992);
91. Susan M. Okin, Liberty and Welfare: Some Issues in Human Rights Theory, in Human Rights, supra note 41, at 230;
92. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report (2002);
93. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report (2000).
94. Negotiating Culture and Human Rights (Lynda S. Bell et al. eds., 2001);
95. The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (Joanne R. Bauer & Daniel A. Bell eds., 1999);
96. William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "A Curious Grapevine" (1998).
97. Morton E. Winston, Introduction: Understanding Human Rights, in The Philosophy of Human Rights 1, 15 (Morton E. Winston ed., 1989).
98. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, in The Philosophy of Human Rights, supra note 48, at 104.
99. Id. at 105.
100. While government officials in Singapore, Malaysia, China, and Indonesia tend to adhere to the cultural relativist position, the leaders of Taiwan subscribe to universalism. See, e.g., Lee Teng-hui, Chinese Culture and Political Renewal in Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges 192 (Larry Diamond et al. eds., 1997).
101. Negotiating Culture and Human Rights, supra note 47; The East Asian Challenge For Human Rights, supra note 47; Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges, supra note 51, at 3-176.
102. The East Asian Challenge For Human Rights, supra note 47;
103. Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges, supra note 51, at 3-176.
104. Tatsuo Inoue, Human Rights and Asian Values, in The Globalization of Human Rights, supra note 41. For a discussion of individualism within Islamic religion (which is also often treated as a communitarian tradition that rejects individualism), see Zehra F. Arat, Women's Rights in Islam: Revisiting Qur'anic Rights, in Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities 69 (Peter Schwab & Adamanta Pollis eds., 2000).
105. see Zehra F. Arat, Women's Rights in Islam: Revisiting Qur'anic Rights, in Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities 69 (Peter Schwab & Adamanta Pollis eds., 2000).
106. For a methodological analysis of this document and its comparison to the UN approach, see Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Universal Versus Islamic Human Rights: A Clash of Cultures or a Clash with a Construct?, 15 Mich, J. Int'l L. 307 (1994);
107. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics (3d ed. 1999).
108. Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 5 Aug. 1990, Islamic Conference, 19th sess., art. 6.
109. Id.
110. Id.
111. Id. art. 12.
112. Id. art. 25.
113. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted 18 Dec. 1979, G.A. Res. 34/180, U.N. GAOR, 34th Sess., Supp. No. 46, U.N. Doc. A/34/46 (1980) (entered into force 3 Sept. 1981), 1249 U.N.T.S. 13,
114. Zehra F. Arat, Promoting Women's Rights against Patriarchal Cultural Claims: The Women's Convention and Reservations by Muslim States, in Global Human Rights and Diversity: Area Studies Revisited 231 (David Forsythe & Patrice McMahon eds., 2003).
115. The diversity in interpretation and the different applications of religious beliefs to human rights surfaced when the draft Declaration was debated by the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly in 1948. It should be noted that representatives from different Muslim countries took positions that were different from each other's on the articles that maintained the equality of sexes in family relations and the freedom to change one's religion. Glendon, supra note 17, at 153-55, 168; Waltz, Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States, supra note 23, at 813-19.
116. Waltz, Universal Human Rights: The Contribution of Muslim States, supra note 23, at 813-19.
117. Sheikh Rached Al-Ghannouchi, Panal Discussion, in Islam and Justice: Debating the Future of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights eds., 1997);
118. Abdullahi An-Na'im, Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law (1990);
119. Mahmud Muhammed Taha, The Second Message of Islam (1987);
120. Amina Wadud, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (1999);
121. Anne Sofie Roald, Feminist Reinterpretation of Islamic Sources: Muslim Feminist Theology in the Light of the Christian Tradition of Feminist Thought, in Women and Islamization: Contemporary Dimensions of Discourse on Gender Relations (Karin Ask & Marit Tjomsland eds., 1998);
122. Barbara Stowasser, Gender Issues and Contemporary Quran Interpretation, in Islam, Gender, and Social Change 30 (Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad & John Esposito eds., 1998);
123. Nimat Hafez Barazangi, Muslim Women's Islamic Higher Learning as a Human Right, in Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation: Implementing the Beijing Platform 43 (Mahnaz Afkhami & Erika Friedle eds. 1997);
124. Reza Afshari, An Essay on Islamic Cultural Relativism in the Discourse of Human Rights, 16 Hum. Rts. Q. 235 (1994);
125. Asghar Ali Engineer, The Rights of Women in Islam (1992).
126. Bobbio, supra note 8; Marshall, supra note 27; Lipset, supra note 27.
127. Marshall, supra note 27;
128. Lipset, supra note 27.
129. Falk, supra note 7, at 62-63.
130. Convention Concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries (ILO No. 107), adopted 26 June 1957 (entered into force 6 Feb. 1959). This Convention was revised in 1989 by Convention No. 169. Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (ILO No. 169), adopted 27 June 1989 (entered into force 5 Sept. 1991).
131. Falk, supra note 7.
132. UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples, U.N. Doc. No. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/2/Add.1, 20 Apr. 1994.
133. Russell Barsh, The Fortunate Unmeasurability of Human Rights, Paper Presented at the Conference Towards an Indicators System in Human Rights, International Institute for the Sociology of Law (16 to 17 Sept. 1999).
134. For a variety of arguments on this last point, see Susan M. Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (1999).
135. Karen Engle, From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947-1999, 23 Hum. Rts. Q. 536 (2001).
136. See United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 6 (2000), which reports that "the distance between the incomes of the richest and poorest country was about 3 to 1 in 1820, 35 to 1 in 1950, 44 to 1 in 1973 and 72 to 1 in 1992" and "gaps between rich and poor are widening in many countries," industrial and developing.
137. Jacinta O'Hagan, Conflict, Convergence, or Coexistence? The Relevance of Culture in Reframing World Order, in Reframing the International: Law, Culture, Politics 187 (Richard Falk et al. eds., 2002).