On historiography of human rights: Reflections on Paul Gordon Lauren's the evolution of international human rights: Visions seen

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 1-67

  Afshari, Reza ^a  

^a PACE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; HUMAN RIGHTS;

EID: 34047173654     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2007.0000     Document Type: Article

References (263)

1. Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2d ed. 2003). I have used and will continue using the book in my courses. What appears here is largely based on notes that I wrote for and discussed with my students. Without this major contribution to historiography, I would not have been able to form the views that I hold today. Professor Lauren may disagree with many of my observations; the book can elicit different commentaries from other colleagues. It is a book deserving of detailed attentions by many human rights scholars.
2. Id. at 1.
3. Id. at 10.
4. Id. at 71.
5. Id. at 75.
6. Id. at 12.
7. Id.
8. Should we accept the imposition of the often stifling monotheism as a progression in the evolution of human rights? Did not monotheist religious discourses at the moment of their divine articulation denigrate and suppress, sometimes by force, the existing animistic, pantheistic, shamanistic religious paradigms? Jonathan Kirsch noted, "To worship the wrong god, according to the value system of biblical monotheism, is not only a sin but a crime, and a crime that is punishable by death." Jonathan Kirsch, God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism 10 (2004).
9. Lauren, supra note 1, at 11.
10. Id. at 8.
11. Id. at 11.
12. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab People 78 (1991).
13. Shlomo Pines, Philosophy, in The Cambridge History of Islam Vol. 2B 798 (P.M. Holt et al. eds., 1970).
14. Id. at 809.
15. Id. at 795.
16. Lauren, supra note 1, at 9-10.
17. Id. at 9-10.
18. Id.
19. Id.
20. Id. at 13.
21. Jack Donnelly, Western Perspectives, in A Force Profonde: The Power, Politics, and Promise of Human Rights 31 (Edward A. Kolodziej ed., 2003).
22. Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice 49-50 (1989).
23. Id. at 49.
24. Id. at 49-50.
25. Rhoda Howard, Human Rights and the Search for Communiy 82 (1995).
26. Id. at 67.
27. Id. at 82.
28. Lauren, supra note 1, at 38.
29. Howard, supra note 25, at 79.
30. Lauren, supra note 1, at 39-40.
31. Id. at 32.
32. Id. at 51.
33. Allen S. Rosenbaum, Introduction: The Editor's Perspective on the Philosophy of Human Rights, in The Philosophy of Human Rights: International Perspective 5 (Allen S. Rosenbaum ed., 1980).
34. For a case study see Reza Afshari, Human Rights in Iran: Abuse of Cultural Relativism (2001).
35. Lauren, supra note 1, at 38-39.
36. David Brion Davis observes: Political independence forced merchants to find new markets and routes of trade, while simultaneously opening new opportunities in business, banking, and manufacturing. Interurban rivalry spurred local leaders to improve transportation facilities and to found, by various charters and acts of incorporation, institutions for public service (the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was officially incorporated in 1789). In both Philadelphia and New York, the abolition societies were thus parts of an interlocking network of public and private organizations designed to give order and direction to municipal life. In both cities the leading abolitionists could also be found in the chambers of commerce and in companies promoting canals and improved inland navigation. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, at 240-41 (1975).
37. Lauren, supra note 1, at 33.
38. Id. at 38.
39. Id. at 39.
40. Id. at 34.
41. Id. at 40.
42. Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves 13-34 (2005).
43. Davis, supra note 36, at 247.
44. Steven M. Wise, Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial that Led to the End of Human Slavery 34 (2005).
45. Id. at 221.
46. Davis, supra note 36, at 274.
47. Id. at 207.
48. Davis observes, "The Quakers were a highly exclusive sect, intent on purifying their own lives in accordance with in-group norms." He adds, "As representatives of the emerging capitalist order, extending charity to the lowliest segment of laborers, Quaker reformers could not view Negroes as even potentially autonomous beings. Most of the Negroes freed by Quaker masters were quietly dissuaded from trying to join the Society of Friends." Id. at 254.
49. He also observes: Abolitionist activity allowed many of Benezet's "rich and great" Quakers to "be esteemed" religious men, and in accordance with moral criteria which Benezet himself had helped establish. It also brought them into contact with the rich and great of other denominations, enabling them to escape some of the exclusiveness and inwardness of their sect. To moralists and reformers of other faiths, the Quakers demonstrated that testimony against slavery could be a social correlative of inner purity which seemed to pose no threat to the social order - at least to that capitalist order in which the Quakers had won - so enviable a "stake." As a social force, antislavery was a highly selective response to labor exploitation. It provided an outlet for demonstrating a Christian concern for human suffering and injustice, and yet thereby gave a certain moral insulation to economic activities less visibly dependent on human suffering and injustice. Id. at 251.
50. Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830-1860, at 118 (2000).
51. Lauren, supra note 1, at 33-34.
52. Davis, supra note 36, at 274
53. Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, at 350 (1968).
54. Id. at 351.
55. Id. at 375.
56. Id. at 403.
57. Quoted in Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1869, at 21 (1960).
58. Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-65, at xi (1960).
59. Louis Filler notes, In 1826, when the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was formed, a number of significant agencies concerned for spiritual and moral well-being had been ambitiously inaugurated. The American Home Missionary Society, the American Peace Society, the American Tract Society, the Society to Improve the Condition of the Sailors - these and others sought to instill Christian principles into Americans.... Increased population and multiplying communities made for increased drinking, for deteriorated social standards of dignity and diminished social controls. Filler, supra note 55, at 38.
60. Griffin, supra note 56, at 22.
61. John L. Thomas, Antislavery and Utopia, in The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists 246 (Martin Duberman ed., 1965).
62. Lauren, supra note 1, at 43.
63. Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery 224 (1998).
64. Id. at 229.
65. Id. at 228-29.
66. The Liberator, 1 Jan. 1831.
67. The Liberator, 7 Jan. 1832.
68. William Lloyd Garrison 31, 37 (George M. Fredrickson ed., 1968).
69. David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights 54 (2005).
70. Id. at 54.
71. Id. at 51.
72. John L. Thomas, The Liberator William Lloyd Garrison: A Biography 458 (1963).
73. Quoted in William Lloyd Garrison, supra note 66, at 48.
74. The Liberator, 15 Dec. 1837.
75. Quoted in Thomas, supra note 70, at 227.
76. Id.
77. Quoted in Mayer, supra note 61, at 220.
78. Thomas, supra note 70, at 228.
79. Id. at 229, 457.
80. Mayer, supra note 61, at 261.
81. Lauren, supra note 1, at 44.
82. Reynolds, supra note 67, at 221.
83. Id.
84. Id. at 129.
85. Davis, supra note 36, at 287.
86. Id. at 246.
87. Reynolds, supra note 67, at 129.
88. Id. at 256. Frederick Douglass, the most celebrated African-American abolitionist, observed in 1856, "Opposing slavery and hating its victims has come to be a very common form of abolitionism."
89. Quoted in Charles T. Davis & Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Slave's Narrative xviii (1985).
90. The racial tenors of the time allowed the most radical abolitionists only a narrow scope for conciousness-raising activities, and they did their best to expand its limits. Within such a limited range, Lydia M. Child was self-reportedly successful and Elizabeth C. Stanton was ultimately not. And to assume that Garrison had entertained a "color-blind ideal," (Mayer, supra note 61, at 351) is to read the sensitivities of the 1960s unto the improbable milieu of the 1860s. Wendell Phillips, John Brown, and Lydia Child could perhaps rise above the prejudices of their culture. As exceptions, however, they proved the rule, i.e., it was almost impossible to free oneself from the racial presuppositions of the time. The associations they belonged to cannot be considered human rights organizations.
91. Id. at 82.
92. This is how Reynolds summarizes what Brown envisioned for the moral restructuring of his country: Profane swearing, filthy conversation, indecent behavior, or indecent exposure of the person, or intoxication, or quarrelling, shall not be allowed or tolerated; neither unlawful intercourse of the sexes. So much for free speech and civil liberties. Public officials who got drunk could be removed. Rape of female prisoners was punishable by death. Divorce was discouraged; incompatible couples must make every effort to stay together. School and churches [were to be] established, as soon as may be, for the purpose of religious and other instructions; and the first day of the week regarded as a day of rest appropriated to moral and religious instructions and improvement. Like rebellious Calvinists from Anne Hutchinson to Wendell Phillips, he defied established laws in the name of what he regarded as Christian justice. Like conservative Calvinists from Cotton Mather to Lyman Beecher, he insisted on moral rectitude. His imagined society featured racial and gender equality but also strictly enforced morality. Id. at 253. This is how Reynolds summarizes what Brown envisioned for the moral restructuring of his country: Profane swearing, filthy conversation, indecent behavior, or indecent exposure of the person, or intoxication, or quarrelling, shall not be allowed or tolerated; neither unlawful intercourse of the sexes. So much for free speech and civil liberties. Public officials who got drunk could be removed. Rape of female prisoners was punishable by death. Divorce was discouraged; incompatible couples must make every effort to stay together. School and churches [were to be] established, as soon as may be, for the purpose of religious and other instructions; and the first day of the week regarded as a day of rest appropriated to moral and religious instructions and improvement. Like rebellious Calvinists from Anne Hutchinson to Wendell Phillips, he defied established laws in the name of what he regarded as Christian justice. Like conservative Calvinists from Cotton Mather to Lyman Beecher, he insisted on moral rectitude. His imagined society featured racial and gender equality but also strictly enforced morality. Id. at 253.
93. Carol Faulkner, Women's Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmens's Aid Movement 16 (2004).
94. Lauren, supra note 1, at 46.
95. Faulkner observes, Abolitionist men entered the war years as political outsiders, whose participation in the antislavery movement, and support for women's rights, unmanned them in the eyes of Northern society. With emancipation, abolitionists gained new political respectability. In addition, they no longer had to abjure the U.S. Constitution and the political process as tainted by slavery.... As their methods and philosophy became tied to the state and Republican politics, women became a hindrance. Close cooperation with female abolitionists threatened to feminize freedmen's aid, just as abolitionist men wanted to masculinize American reform. Faulkner, supra note 89, at 35-36.
96. Id. at 7.
97. Id at 79.
98. Faulkner offers many snapshots of the works of the radical Republicans in early Reconstruction. For example, Ideally, reformers believed that African Americans would move from wage labor to economic independence through land ownership. Until that time, they urged former slaves to support themselves and their families through paid labor on Southern plantations. Reformers wanted freedpeople to be independent, but they established an economic system that denied them opportunities for advancement, and kept former slaves subordinate to whites. Id at 12. Faulkner offers many snapshots of the works of the radical Republicans in early Reconstruction. For example, Ideally, reformers believed that African Americans would move from wage labor to economic independence through land ownership. Until that time, they urged former slaves to support themselves and their families through paid labor on Southern plantations. Reformers wanted freedpeople to be independent, but they established an economic system that denied them opportunities for advancement, and kept former slaves subordinate to whites. Id at 12.
99. Id. at 16.
100. Id at 19, 39.
101. Id. at 49.
102. Id. at 26.
103. Id at 151.
104. Id at 23.
105. Id at 151.
106. Id. at 14.
107. Quoted in Faulkner, id. at 48.
108. Bruce S. Jansson, The Reluctant Welfare State 109 (2001).
109. Lauren, supra note 1, at 46.
110. Id. at 75.
111. Id. at 44.
112. Id. at 46.
113. Id. at 49.
114. Kathryn Kish Sklar, Women'S Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870, at 19 (2000).
115. Id at 23.
116. Id at 36.
117. Id. at 34.
118. Anderson, supra note 48, at 13.
119. Id at 51.
120. Id at 12.
121. Id at 86.
122. Id.
123. Id. at 51.
124. Id. at 16.
125. Id. at 77-78.
126. Id. at 137.
127. Howard Zinn, Abolitionists, Freedom-Riders, and the Tactics of Agitation, in The Antislavery Vanguard, supra note 59, at 437.
128. Anderson, supra note 48, at 27.
129. Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1884-1850, at 54 (1969).
130. Id. at 54.
131. Taking a long perspective, the influential historian Kraditor offered an insightful observation about the vicissitudes of the process of seeing links among the causes, comparing the antebellum attempts with those that took place during the Progressive Era. In both periods both movements based their claims in part on identical principles of natural rights, justice, and the Declaration of Independence. But the period in which woman suffrage became historically possible coincided with what Rayford Logan has called "the nadir" in the status of the Negro. If the suffragists of 1900 had defended the Southern Negro's right to vote (an impossible supposition in view of their own attitudes on the race question) they would have split the suffrage movement, destroyed its Southern wing, alienated many Northern supporters, and delayed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Aside from questions of justice and consistency, the suffragists had to consider the expediency of any position they might adopt on Negro rights. The abolitionists confronted the same problem in their day, but in reverse. Aside from questions of justice and consistency, they had to consider the expediency of any position they might adopt on women's rights in a period in which abolitionism was gaining many converts who would be repelled by anything so absurd as the equality of the sexes. In both periods the convenient divorce of the two causes was facilitated by the fact that most advocates of the more popular reform endorsed the prevailing disapproval of the other. Id. at 39-40.
132. Sklar, supra note 110, at 61.
133. Anderson, supra note 48, at 27.
134. Id. at 27.
135. Sklar, supra note 110, at 47.
136. Mayer, supra note 61, at 237.
137. Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History 478 (2006).
138. Quoted in Kraditor, supra note 125, at 26.
139. The examples are given by Anderson, supra note 48, at 140.
140. Lauren, supra note 1, at 54.
141. Davis, supra note 36, at 266.
142. Id. at 254.
143. Daniel Lazare, L'Amérique, Mon Amour, 29 Nation (26 Apr. 2004).
144. William Goodell writes, When the private and the public purse were replenished, when prosperity had succeeded to poverty, when wealth, at the opening of the present century, rolled in upon the nation, the former habits of disinterested or even of patriotic devotion to public affairs and the interests of human freedom did not return. The pursuit of wealth had begotten the inordinate love of it. Inattention to the demands of liberty and justice had resulted in the disregard of them. Inequality of possession, continually increasing and in striking contrast to earlier times, had undermined the spirit of equality, and introduced aristocratic tastes. Humanity and human rights were less valued than wealth. The concentration of capital created a new element of political power, and diverted it from its former channels. The possession of wealth, or of talents prostituted to the support of its claims, instead of a disinterested advocacy of human liberty, and equal justice, supplied passports to seats in the state and national councils, to places of authority and power. Quoted in David Brion Davis, Antebellum American Culture: An Interpretive Anthology 414 (1979).
145. Lauren, supra note 1, at 55.
146. Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America 108 (1993). The African-American abolitionists were aware of the predicaments that the freedmen faced seeking jobs in the labor market where white workers were as prejudiced against them as the rest of the population.
147. Frederick Douglass ... pleaded with the labor organizations and labor papers to educate white workers on the value of unity in the struggle for a decent livelihood, regardless of race or color. When his pleas fell on deaf ears, Douglass came out in support of Negroes who took the jobs of striking white workers.... He wrote bitterly, "Colored men can feel under no obligation to hold out in a 'strike' with the whites, as the latter have never recognized them." Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1973, at 7 (1974).
148. Chip Berlet & Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort 62 (2000).
149. Id. at 67-68.
150. Tony Judt, Goodbye to all That, 92 N.Y. Rev. Books, 21 Sept. 2006.
151. Davis, supra note 36, at 257.
152. Id. at 257.
153. Lauren, supra note 1, at 73.
154. Id. at 73.
155. Id. at 73-74.
156. Id.
157. June Grasso, Jay Corrin, & Michael Kort, Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to World Power 59 (2004). Through a skillful analysis of ancient sources, Kang tried to show that Confucius and other great Sages were innovators who had actually championed institutional change. By so arguing, Kang could use Confucius as a shield against the criticisms of conservatives. The thrust of his arguments was to integrate modern political and technological theories with Chinese civilization by demonstrating (always citing the appropriate text) that Western ideas and institutions had already been practiced in the Confucian tradition. This endeavor marked the beginning of a phenomenon in the East where intellectuals who were inheritors of an ancient civilization began to locate, through a rigorous search of historical documents, roots in pre-modern traditions that could support modernist beliefs. In the case of China, Kang grafted contemporary concepts onto the pre-modern paradigm and attempted to construct a new Confucianism outside its historical framework and free from its traditional confines - or to recast Confucianism in a modernist mold and rediscover a new meaning for it.
158. Peter K. Y. Woo, A Metaphysical Approach to Human Rights from a Chinese Point of View, in The Philosophy of Human Rights, supra note 33, at 122.
159. Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China 226 (1990).
160. Id. at 226.
161. Ying-shih Yü, The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century, 122 Dædalus: J. Am. Academy Arts & Science 128 (1993)
162. Stephen C. Angle & Marina Svensson, General Introduction, in The Chinese Human Rights Reader: Documents and Commentary, 1900-2000, at xvii (Stephen C. Angle & Marina Svennson eds., 2001).
163. Sun Yatsen, The Principles of the People' Power, 1924, in id. at 114-18.
164. The Chinese Human Rights Reader, supra note 157, at xxiii.
165. Lauren, supra note 1, at 80-81.
166. Renée Worringer, "Sick Man of Europe" or "Japan of the Near East"?: Constructing Ottoman Modernity in the Hamidian and Young Turks Eras, 36 Int'l J. Middle East Stud. 212-13 (2004).
167. Lauren, supra note 1, at 85.
168. Id. at 105.
169. Iran's Issa Sadiq, a liberal civil servant and a one-time Minister of Education under Reza Shah, could not break away from the statist paradigm that prevailed in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote about one of the goals, among many other similar ones, of the Iranian education system. It follows that an educational program must be built upon the following aims: (1) to create in the minds of the people a living consciousness of the past by showing the great achievement of the race; (2) to train boys and girls to become good citizens of modern Persia;... (4) to teach the rural people and the tribes how to live,... make a home,... prepare food and clothing,... prevent disease; (5) in secondary schools and ... the university the gifted youth must be trained for leadership and service in the State. They must be given a vision of Persia's place, past and present in the world, with the ideals of leading the country in culture, science, technology, business, statesmanship, and government to such heights as benefits a progressive State. Quoted in Amin Banani, The Modernization of Iran, 1921-1941, at 109-10 (1961).
170. Lauren, supra note 1, at 103.
171. Id. at 104.
172. Id.
173. Id. at 109.
174. Id.
175. Id. at 110.
176. Id.
177. Id. at 93.
178. Id. at 94.
179. Id. at 76.
180. Id. at 107.
181. Id. at 98.
182. Id. at 100-01.
183. Id. at 76-77.
184. E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality 136-37 (1991).
185. Id. at 136-37.
186. Lauren, supra note 1, at 83-84.
187. Id. at 107.
188. Id. at 216.
189. Meera Nanda, Breaking the Spell of Dharma: A Case for Indian Enlightenment, XXXVI Econ & Pol. Wkly 2552 (July 2001).
190. Lauren, supra note 1, at 90.
191. Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Vision Seen 106 (University of Pennsylvania Press 1988).
192. Lauren, supra note 1, at 135.
193. Id. at 136.
194. Id. at 182.
195. Id. at 174.
196. Id. at 182.
197. Id. at 173.
198. Id. at 200.
199. Quoted in id at 103.
200. Id at 170.
201. John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America 247 (2001).
202. See Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture 21 (1998).
203. Susen Waltz, Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States in the Construction of the Universal Declaration, 23 Hum. Rts. Q. 44, 49 (2001).
204. Quoted in Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roossevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 13 (2001).
205. Quoted in id. at 11.
206. Lauren, supra note 1, at 144.
207. Id. at 170.
208. Id. at 174.
209. Id at 176.
210. Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire 170 (2004).
211. Lauren, supra note 1, at 192.
212. Id. at 218.
213. Id. at 236.
214. Id. at 242.
215. Id. at 246.
216. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, Strategies for the International Protection of Human Rights in the 1990s, 13 Hum. Rts. Q. 155-59 (1991).
217. Lauren, supra note 1, at 244.
218. Id. at 248.
219. Id. at 244.
220. Id. at 246-47.
221. Id. at 247.
222. Robert A. Mortimer, The Third World Coalition in International Politics 7-8 (1980).
223. Id. at 9.
224. Roland Burke, "The Compelling Dialogue of Freedom". Human Rights at the Bandung Conference, 28 Hum. Rts. Q. 947 (2006).
225. The Challenge of Human Rights: Charles Malik and the Universal Declaration 138 (Habib C. Malik ed., Charles Malik Foundation, 2000).
226. The Lebanese-born scholar Fouad Ajami has described the country's political leadership in the 1940s and the 1950s: The leadership of the big man, al-zama, was the organizing principle of social and political life. ... An ideal zaim (big man) was the son of a zaim. There was a limited measure of mobility in the system.... A "real" zaim was Ibn bayt (literally, the son of a household), meaning the son of a noted family.... The country's Parliament, a body with a fixed quota for each of Lebanon's religious sects, was the gathering place of the zuama. Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon 63 (1986). In the 1950s, when new political groupings emerged brandishing modern ideologies of nationalism and socialism, the system faltered. Ajami again, Lebanon, the country of rival sects, had its way of dealing with the new movement and the new language. It persecuted them when it could, when it needed. The state, such as it was, may have been unable to pave roads or pay for education. But it could crack down on those who wanted to rock the boat. The state did another thing: something more effective, something it was good at: it turned the new conflicts,...the new grievances into the old tribal feuds which the country knew so well and felt it could handle.
227. Id at 73.
228. Charles Malik, Lebanon and the World, in Lebanon and the World in the 1980s 4 (Center for International Development, University of Maryland ed., 1983)
229. Nowhere in the Near and Middle East is human dignity as authentically respected, both by law and by tradition, and nowhere is freedom in all fundamental dimensions as authentically understood and practiced, as in Lebanon. It is these two characteristics that set Lebanon apart. Id. at 10.
230. Charles Malik, Man in the Struggle for Peace 230 (1963).
231. Id. at 211.
232. Burke, supra note 219.
233. Jonathan Rée, The Treason of the Clerics, Nation, 15 Aug. 2005.
234. Rey Chow, Ethics after Idealism: Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading 208 (1998).
235. A. W. Singham & Shirley Hune, Non-Alignment in an Age of Alignment 83 (1986).
236. Id. at 83.
237. Id. at 84.
238. Id. at 90-91.
239. Id. at 90.
240. Id at 31.
241. Id. at 91-92.
242. William Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East 308 (2004).
243. Rhoda Howard explains: In many cultures the social order stratifies "individuals" in ways that enhance dignity for some categories of people but leave other categories dishonored, without dignity or respect. Certain members have a higher moral worth than other members. Although some deserve honor, others do not. Howard, supra note 25, at 80.
244. Ian Buruma, The Indiscreet Charm of Tyranny, 36 N.Y. Rev. Books (12 May 2005).
245. Lauren, supra note 1, at 258.
246. In the 1990s, the government of the People's Republic of China enunciated "the right to development." "Ending poverty and social instability is precondition for promoting human rights. This explains the correct relationship between political rights and the right to development." Gu Chunde, Right to Development: A Basic Human Rights, 19 Beijing Rev. (10-16 May 1993).
247. Singham & Hune, supra note 229, at 227.
248. Id.
249. Id.
250. Id.
251. Id. at 135.
252. Id.
253. U.N. G.A., U.N. Doc. A/conf.157/pc/62/add.9, 20 Apr. 1993, at 5,
254. quoted in, Sidgi Kaballo, Human Rights and Democratization in Africa, XLIII Political Stud. 189, 191 (1995).
255. Lauren, supra note 1, at 247.
256. Id. at 247.
257. Alan Jenkins & Larry Cox, Bringing Human Rights Home, 29 Nation (27 June 2005).
258. Lauren, supra note 1, at 248.
259. Id. at 239.
260. Id.
261. Katarina Tomasevski, Responding to Human Rights Violations 1846-1999, at 24 (2000)
262. Lauren, supra note 1, at 48.
263. Tom J. Farer, The United Nations and Human Rights: More than a Whimper, Less Than a Roar in Human Rights in the World Community: Issues and Action 227 (Richard Pierre Claude & Burns H. Weston eds., 1992).