SOCIEDADE ATUAL

Human rights are often held to be universal in the sense that most societies

and cultures have practiced human rights throughout most of their history.

“All societies cross-culturally and historically manifest conceptions of human

rights.”3 This has generated a large body of literature on so-called non-western

conceptions of human rights. “In almost all contemporary Arab literature on

this subject [human rights], we find a listing of the basic rights established

by modern conventions and declarations, and then a serious attempt to trace

them back to Koranic texts.”4 “It is not often remembered that traditional

African societies supported and practiced human rights.”5 “Protection of human

rights is an integral part” of the traditions of Asian societies.6 “All the

countries [of the Asian region] would agree that ‘human rights’ as a concept

existed in their tradition.”7 Even the Hindu caste system has been described

as a “traditional, multidimensional view[s] of human rights.”8

Such claims to historical or anthropological universality confuse values

such as justice, fairness, and humanity need with practices that aim to realize

those values. Rights—entitlements that ground claims with a special

force—are a particular kind of social practice. Human rights—equal and

inalienable entitlements of all individuals that may be exercised against

the state and society—are a distinctive way to seek to realize social values

such as justice and human flourishing. There may be considerable historical/

anthropological universality of values across time and culture. No

society, civilization, or culture prior to the seventeenth century, however,

2. This section draws directly from and summarizes Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in

Theory and Practice (2d ed.), supra note 1, at ch. 5.

3. Adamantia Pollis & Peter Schwab, Human Rights: A Western Construct with Limited

Applicability, in Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives 1, 15 (Adamantia

Pollis & Peter Schwab eds., 1979); compare Makau Mutua, The Banjul Charter and

the African Cultural Fingerprint: An Evaluation of the Language of Duties, 35 Virgina J.

Int’l L. 339, at 358 (1995); David R. Penna & Patricia J. Campbell, Human Rights and

Culture: Beyond Universality and Relativism, 19 Third World Q. 7, at 21 (1998).

4. Fouad Zakaria, Human Rights in the Arab World: The Islamic Context, in Philosophical

Founda tions of Human Rights 227, 228 (UNESCO ed., 1986).

5. Dunstan M. Wai, Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Human Rights: Cultural and

Ideological Perspectives 115, 116 (Adamantia Pollis & Peter Schwab eds., 1979).

6. Ibrahim Anwar, Special Address presented at the JUST International Conference: Rethinking

Human Rights (7 Dec 1994) in Human Wrongs 277 (1994).

7. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Human Rights Research and Education: An Asian Perspective,

in International Congress on the Teaching of Human Rights: Working Documents and Recommenda

tions 224 (UNESCO ed., 1980).

8. Ralph Buultjens, Human Rights in Indian Political Culture, in The Moral Imperatives of

Human Rights: A World Survey 109, 113 (Kenneth W. Thompson ed., 1980); compare

Yougindra Khushalani, Human Rights in Asia and Africa, 4 Hum. Rts. L. J. 403, 408

(1983); Max L. Stackhouse, Creeds, Society, and Human Rights: A Study in Three Cultures

(1984).

2007 The Relative Universality of Human Rights 285

had a widely endorsed practice, or even vision, of equal and inalienable

individual human rights.9

For example, Dunstan Wai argues that traditional African beliefs and

institutions “sustained the ‘view that certain rights should be upheld against

alleged necessities of state.’”10 This confuses human rights with limited government.

11 Government has been limited on a variety of grounds other than

human rights, including divine commandment, legal rights, and extralegal

checks such as a balance of power or the threat of popular revolt.

“[T]he concept of human rights concerns the relationship between the

individual and the state; it involves the status, claims, and duties of the former

in the jurisdiction of the latter. As such, it is a subject as old as politics.”12

Not all political relationships, however, are governed by, related to, or even

consistent with, human rights. What the state owes those it rules is indeed

a perennial question of politics. Human rights provide one answer. Other

answers include divine right monarchy, the dictatorship of the proletariat,

the principle of utility, aristocracy, theocracy, and democracy.

“[D]ifferent civilizations or societies have different conceptions of human

well-being. Hence, they have