Thio Li-ann*

 

Abstract: This paper explores the basic framework for cross-cultural dialogue on human rights. Such dialogue implicates differing understandings of the content of human rights as well as differing interpretation of the concept of human rights itself. The challenges confronting the universality of human rights arguably stem from people’s fear of radical individualism, secular fundamentalism and political radicalism. While the universality of human rights should not be denied, cognizance must be taken as well of the gap between theory and practice during the realization of those rights and the selectivity pertaining to such realization. Dogmatism and uncompromising ideological stances is an obstacle to dialogues and cross-cultural exchanges on human rights.

 

Key words:   Human Rights    universality of human rights   cross-cultural exchanges

 

 

Underlying the call for a cross-cultural exchange of human rights is a suspicion towards international human rights law whose core doctrinal tenet is the universality of human rights. It carries with it both hope and fear, generating advocacy, ambivalence and antipathy, sometimes all three impulses simultaneously. 

 

This is unsurprising in a plural, postmodern would, where civilizational diversity is celebrated and where “grand narratives” are deemed unfashionable. Are human rights then the last utopia,¹ in their call for a universal if not transcendent/objective standard of treatment? Does universality require uniformity or is plurality accommodated? The answer to this question will determine the utility or redundancy of “cross cultural exchanges of human rights.”[page]

 

This paper sketches out the landscape of human rights discourse with a view to asking: Do “human rights” unite us (crossing divides) or do they divide us (crossing swords), or do they do both? Challenges to the universality of human rights may be inspired by a fear of radical individualism, secular fundamentalism and militant politics. It considers that states do not reject the universality of the concept and recognizes the gap between theory and practice in realizing rights, which are also selectively implemented.²

 

However, it is clear that the interpretation of accepted human rights is not monolithic. A global margin of appreciation may be appropriate in the task of balancing rights against competing rights, duties and goods.

 

Thus, cross-cultural exchanges regarding human rights relate primarily to the content and interpretation of human rights, which engages law, politics and philosophy.

 

 

As a form of global ethics, human rights carry the potential of unifying humanity insofar as human rights are predicated on human dignity and seek to advance human freedom and human welfare. At this abstract level, “human rights” carry the potential of “crossing divides,” whether of race, sex, civilization, or other cleavages that divide humanity into clans, tribes and interest groups. The idea of the universal reach of human rights norms that regulate and channel state power is powerful and compelling, considering the abuses vulnerable individuals and groups face from states and non-state actors. It bypasses the racist premises of colonial-era international law, where the articulation of a “standard of civilization”³ divided the world into “civilised states” and non-civilised entities.⁴ This was an era of unself-conscious institutionalized moral tutelage where “advanced nations” undertook as a “sacred trust of civilization”⁵ to tutor those territories “inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” The mandate (trust) “must differ according to the stage of the development of the people, the geographical situation of the territory, its economic conditions and other similar circumstances.”⁶[page]

 

Consider the opening of the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which proclaims that the UDHR should be “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations,” such that “every individual and every organ of society” should strive to promote it:

 

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, . . .”

 

The idea of “inherent dignity” is presented as a self-evident truth, an attempt to assert rather than to argue for a foundational basis for human rights - this would be difficult, even in the immediate post-Holocaust era where traumatic wartime barbarism generated broad consensus on human rights norms, embodied in the UDHR.⁷ The subject of the UDHR is “all members of the human family,” rather than the state, which Lauterpacht considered a positive move towards mitigating state-centricity, conceiving the law of nations as “the universal law of mankind.”⁸ To the consternation of many colonial powers, Article 2, of the UDHR extended its application to “everyone” in every territory “whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”

 

This push against civilizational gradation reached its apex in the 1960 General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This declared in Article 2 that “all peoples” (without distinction) have the right to self-determination and that “immediate steps” must be taken to transfer “all powers” to the peoples of all non-independent territories (Article 5). This was a call for similar or uniform treatment of all peoples, regardless of level of development or civilizational standard. The relation of anti-colonialism to human rights went a long way towards earning support for human rights, from the Afro-Asian Third World at the Bandung Conference in 1955.⁹[page]

 

In an age of egalitarianism,¹⁰ no state publicly resists the idea of human rights insofar as they are predicated on the human dignity of all human beings and therefore universally apply to all human beings, as a matter of prescription, rather than empirical realization.

 

 

We are all in agreement when it comes to huge abstract ideas like the importance of “dignity,” “justice” and “human rights.” The devil is in the details and differences erupt over specifics.

 

Consider this classic and apparently anodyne liberal definition of human rights as the rights that every human being has by virtue of being human - they therefore do not vary across time, geography and culture. When pressed for the justification of human rights, references are made to notions of intrinsic worth and human dignity as the basis for universality, which are presented as self-evident ideas. As Carl Schmitt once quipped: “Whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat.”

 

However “human dignity” as the foundation for human rights is not self-evident. For example, who defines what human dignity is? Is it a violation or vindication of human dignity to wear a burqa or a bikini? This shows that cultural or religious worldviews will affect conceptions of human dignity.

 

The definition that “human rights are entitlements belonging to human beings” is not without its problems when we examine the foundations of the statement. How can you know what a “human right” is, unless you know what a “human being” is? Is an unborn child a person with a right to life? What implications might this have for abortion as a facet of “reproductive rights”?¹¹[page]

 

While claiming to be “minimalist”¹², liberal definitions¹³ of human rights are not neutral but culture-specific. Human rights are culture-specific, a substantive ideology predicated on the ultimate values of individual autonomy and human agency, and the contested concept of the “neutral state” that does not espouse a Common Good, but allows individuals to decide the good life for themselves. One might ask: Are “human rights” then a liberal project, a broad continuation of 18th Century European Enlightenment thought?¹⁴ What room is there then for constitutional orders that embody and promote moral solidarity or communitarian values, without descending into authoritarian collectivism?¹⁵

 

In addition, the liberal project, insofar as this is embodied in human rights, has and promotes a substantive theory of the good – liberalism. This does not liberate but in fact forms liberal individuals, with autonomist, experimental, choice-oriented predispositions.¹⁶ The world may be divided between those who value choice (the power of choosing) over those who value want they have chosen. 

 

Does human rights then require a “one size fits all” or uniform approach to political and economic systems? Or are there a range of systems that could live up to the objectives of human rights? In other words, as “human rights law” is itself a legal culture,¹⁷ how does it relate to competing cultures? Is human rights law plural or mono-cultural at its core? How does one assert the universality of human rights without imposing a homogenous moral imperium, or raise the particularities and priorities of human societies as legitimate qualifications, without becoming an apology for power?

 

There are various fault-lines of arguments that challenge the asserted universality of human rights, sometimes collapsed into a divide between the “West” and “Rest.” Within the West, communitarians, feminists and other critical legal scholars challenge the universality of the liberal conceptions of human rights. Beyond the obviously non-monolithic West, the challenges to universality have been cast as the challenges posed by Cultural Relativism (e.g., the so-called “Asian values” school of the 1990s) and Religion, which in some incarnations, is not a “relativism” but a competing “universalism.” The politicization of human rights also has led to divisiveness, not on the basis of disputes over Culture and Religion between states, but of disagreement about political ideology between and within states, which may draw from cultural and religious values held by disparate groups within a state, e.g., indigenous peoples and mainstream society.[page]

 

 

Where no objective theory of natural rights is accepted, human rights become captive to subjective political agendas, where contested claims seek the legitimating effect of being termed a “human right.” As Hall elucidates, to seek to elevate morally controversial and socioeconomic interests to positive legal status by characterizing such claims as human rights, this effectively places “a serious juridical and pseudo-moral obstacle” to challenging them, as it is “an attempt to load the dice of public discourse heavily in favor of a desired outcome.”¹⁸

 

Thus, in an age witness to the politicization and proliferation of rights, what qualifies as a human right remains a matter of dispute, whether as a matter of law (where the issue is sorted by an application of the doctrine of sources of international law) or of ideology and philosophy (where the issue is intractable or defies resolution). It becomes imperative to distinguish between “core” human rights as legal entitlements, which warrant robust protection, and “contested” human rights claims, which may be best resolved by domestic legislatures or courts, after the principle of subsidiarity.¹⁹

 

Where political claims are cast as human rights as a political strategy, they are as divisive as politics is divisive, e.g., agendas for the promotion of euthanasia, abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.²⁰

 

Where there are debates over the substantive content of human rights, one might find oneself in the position of supporting some, but not all interests that are given the moral imprimatur of being a “human right,” e.g., one could support the right to life without supporting a right to die. The politicization of human rights and the proliferation of asserting political agendas as “new rights” breeds what many would consider an undesirable culture where “self-respect and human dignity really depend upon being in position to make strident, querulous, adversarial claims against other people . . . that my fulfillment, my freedom and self-realization depend on my muscular and self-assertive capacity to place limits on yours.”²¹[page]

 

 

The “universalism vs. cultural relativism” divide is one of the great divides in human rights discourse. This tension is apparent in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action²² adopted after the UN World Conference on Human Rights held in 1993. While paragraph 1 declares that “the universal nature of these rights and freedoms is beyond question,” paragraph 5 evinces the sort of “constructive ambiguity” diplomats favor to veil deep ambivalences and tensions:

 

All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural system, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms. 

 

What Upendra Baxi has called the “mantra”²³ of human rights includes the idea of universality and indivisibility, which are not without their problems.

 

The Cultural Relativism challenge against human rights law is actually a challenge to the perceived radical individualism it engenders or advocates. For example, the Singapore government in its white paper on shared values stated: “A major difference between Asian and Western values is the balance each strikes between the individual and the community” although this is “one of degree.” It was then asserted that Asian societies generally emphasized community interests while Western societies stressed individual rights.²⁴ As Singapore was an “Asian society,” group interests were weighted more heavily than individual ones and thus a communitarian emphasis was a key Singaporean survival value.²⁵[page]

 

The danger is twofold: First, where culture is cynically invoked to justify authoritarian practices, such as where “communitarian” and a commitment to group solidarity is misused as a vehicle for imposing collectivist values. Second, where culture is an elitist construct and not genuinely representative of the people, not taking into account that culture is not static but can evolve. Indeed, Ignatieff argues that it is the moral individualism at the heart of the human rights discourse that makes it attractive to oppressed groups and peoples in many different cultures, as an effective remedy against tyranny. Human rights is the only universal language that gives voice to the universal interest of the powerless and legitimizes protests against oppression, e.g., of women and children within patriarchical societies. Thus it serves as a “language of moral empowerment”²⁶ as “human rights have gone global by going local.”²⁷ Ignatieff's liberal views see human rights as protecting human agency, to thereby allow persons to freely shape the content of their own culture.

 

Are human rights irredeemably individualistic? The “dignitarian” drafting of UDHR rights clauses does not substantiate this critique. As noted by Professor Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School, the eventual formulation of the UDHR was not in terms of unqualified individualism; it expressly made reference to responsibilities and the qualification of private rights by public goods such as public order and morality.²⁸ Indeed, she argues that the UDHR was “foreign” to a large sector of the West (Britain and the US) as it was influenced more by “the modern dignitarian rights tradition of continental Europe and Latin America than by the more individualistic documents of Anglo-American lineage.”²⁹ This was more susceptible to more communitarian Afro-Asian societies as Anglo-American models (classical individualism) tended towards statement of rights in terms of absolute freedoms, without textual qualification, envisaging the autonomous rather than situated individual. Conversely, while rejecting collectivism, the dignitarian rights instruments situated right bearers in the context of community and family; rights had clear limits and express mention is made to the responsibilities owed by the citizen and state. Compare, for example, the unqualified nature of the U.S. First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press” with Article 13 of the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights.³⁰ This declares a right to free expression and then qualifies it in terms of, e.g., others’ reputation, national security interests, expressly providing that “hate speech” is punishable.³¹ This balancing exercise, built into the text, should mitigate the fear of the corrosive impact of individualistic values on Western social cohesion.

 

The bottom line with respect to cultural arguments is to recognize that human rights are themselves a cultural project and that not all particularities are objectionable, particularly when they enrich universal human rights standards and conceptions of human welfare and flourishing.³²[page]

 

 

Aside from the cultural argument, one facet of the “Asian values” argument addresses the priority of economic development. The key idea propounded by the “basic needs” doctrine, sometimes couched as the right to subsistence or development, was that civil-political rights may have to be curtailed, at least in the early stages of national development, to ensure political stability, which is crucial to attracting foreign investment and trade, and integral to building a strong economy. This in turn would facilitate the realization of socioeconomic rights, or human welfare. Thus, socioeconomic rights/welfare is prioritized over civil-political rights, in order to get economic take-off.

 

Such an approach would be seen to go against the broad idea of the indivisibility of human rights, which relates to a very strong form of interdependence between rights, i.e., securing human right A supports securing human rights B.

 

It is clear that socioeconomic rights cannot be recognized immediately across the board, as their fulfillment in large part depends on economic resources and their equitable allocation. States have varying levels of economic development, which is reflected in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Article 2 requires each state to ensure the progressive realization of Covenant rights, “to the maximum of its available resources.” It does not prescribe any particular form of government or economic system in this respect “provided only that it is democratic and that all human rights are thereby respected. Thus, in terms of political and economic systems the Covenant is neutral and its principles cannot accurately be described as being predicated exclusively upon the need for, or the desirability of a socialist or a capitalist system, or a mixed, centrally planned, or laissez-faire economy, or upon any other particular approach. In this regard, the Committee reaffirms that the rights recognized in the Covenant are susceptible ofrealization within the context of a wide variety of economic and political systems . . .”³³ provided the indivisibility of civil-political and socio-economic rights is affirmed.[page]

 

However, as Nickel has persuasively argued, “indivisibility” may be of limited relevance to poorer or developing countries that are “not in a position to fully implement all rights for everyone.” Rather than requiring developing countries to do “a little to implement every family of rights,” it should be possible “to pick and choose among rights in developing countries,” i.e., allow sequencing in creating some parts of a system of rights first, which may depend on country-specific factors.³⁴ For this reason, Eric Posner argues for 'human welfare' treaties rather than human rights treaties, to highlight the importance of allowing states to prioritise between competing choices and be held to account by an evaluation of welfare gains.³⁵

 

VI.Human Rights as Radical Secularism/Idolatry
 

Detractors against the universalist pretensions of human rights may argue it embodies a form of idolatry or a brand of anti-religious radical secularism that is not neutral between belief systems. Much of the literature comes from Islamic scholars, in polities where religion and politics are not separated but conflated. 

 

While all religions have a conception of human dignity, they are not necessarily uniform. The non-egalitarian tenets of aspects of Islam, for instance, would go against women’s rights, e.g., polygamous marriages. There are scholars who are anti-foundationalist and who want to avoid the question of the theoretical bases of human rights, while promoting the need not to think of human rights as trumps but as “a language that creates the basis for deliberation.”³⁶ Religion to them is a “conversation-stopper” and they refuse to entertain any effort to ground human rights in religious terms, probably because they caricature religion as “irrational” while celebrating their own secular rationality. Rationality may require immoral decisions, and human rights adopt the posture of a moral language.[page]

 

Such approaches fail to take religion seriously and usually emanate from voices in the post-Christian West who are unable to realize how integral faith is to living faith. If human rights clash with an Islamic tenet, why should a Muslim prioritize human rights (especially if seen as some sort of secular idolatry) over his faith? What prevails, where two universalisms clash?³⁷ Religion in religious societies is in fact a “conversation-starter.” Scholars like An-Naim insist that human rights advocates in the Muslim world must work within an Islamic framework to be effective, though there are interpretive differences between the various schools of Islam, as well as reformist initiatives to read primary Islamic sources in the modern context.³⁸ Thus, along with cross-cultural exchange, there needs to be internal dialogue to show that there is room for legitimate disagreement in interpreting Islamic texts, in finding resources within cultural traditions that support human rights norms.³⁹ This helps to bolster the cultural legitimacy of international norms within societal contexts, which might otherwise be perceived as alien impositions. It also helps to ensure the integration, not destruction, of cultural norms, into human rights protection, insofar as is possible. Obviously there will be interminable differences, so perhaps we have to focus on enlarging the sphere of overlapping consensus.⁴⁰ Religion thus has to be engaged to enhance intercultural dialogue where all parties expect to be treated as moral equals; the legitimacy of the process is important if individuals from across diverse traditions are to take human rights seriously.

 

Religion can provide a foundational base for justifying human rights, though only to its adherents. Freeman has shown how the origins of human rights in the West, insofar as they draw from Lockean natural rights theory, drew from a monotheistic religion. Locke wrote of the duty to obey the law of nature, such that the duty not to harm another gave forth to the right of everyone not to be harmed. This can be a bridge for dialogue on human rights with Muslims.⁴¹[page]

 

 

Dogmatism and intransigent ideological postures stand in the way of human rights dialogue and cross-cultural exchange. Ideology and demagoguery are anathema to the official Singaporean mindset, which favors pragmatism in the pursuit of ideals, and which celebrates results over self-righteous rhetoric and good motives. If human welfare is the same goal, Singapore succeeds according to “the more rigorous test of practical success,” being ranked 9th in the UNDP Human Development Report (2014). Rather than a right to housing, the vast majority of Singaporeans enjoy housing. It is important to do good and not merely feel good.

 

Human rights in this conception are seen as an important policy item and not a trump, and like all policy factors, are subject to a trade-off and resource allocation considerations. The utility of human rights as a normative template is appreciated, even if there is disagreement over the parameters of that template. Universality as a goal is something to be aspired to; the dogmatism of universalism is to be eschewed.

 

Human rights have great utility as a route to power for the disenfranchised, which can facilitate democratic politics and decision-making. Human rights are also a useful corrective in policy-making, as where women’s rights were not adequately protected. Human rights are certainly a component of good governance and mutually reinforce democracy and the rule of law; but to the mind of the Singapore government, human rights are not a final destination, but more akin to walking an eternal tightrope, where government policies cannot be codified in stone but must suit exigency and need. The cross-cultural exchange on human rights is part of that endless conversation and on-going experiment to secure the good of society, which includes the dignity and freedom of its members.

 

Thio Li-ann (张黎衍), Professor of the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, and Senior Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore.[page]

 

1.Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Belknap Press, 2012, p. 222.

 

2.This was one of the concerns articulated in the 1993 Bangkok Declaration on Human Rights. Para 7 stressed: the universality, objectivity and non-selectivity of all human rights and the need to avoid the application of double standards in the implementation of human rights and its politicization.

 

3.See generally Gerritt Gong, The Standard of Civilization in International Society, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. He argues that European expansion into the non-European world from the 19th century resulted fundamentally “in a confrontation of civilizations and their respective cultural systems.” It was against the supposedly superior European standard of civilization that non-European countries were measured. This set the stage for conflict as according to East Asian or Islamic standards of civilization, the Europeans were barbarians or infidels, pp. 6-7.

 

4.Antony Anghie, “Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in 19th Century International Law,” Harvard International Law Journal, Vol.40, 1999.

 

5.See C Alexandrowicz, “The Juridical Expression of the Sacred Trust of Civilization,” American Journal of International Law, Vol.65, 1971, p14. see also Nathaniel Berman’s discussion of the mandates system (22 League of Nations Covenant) and how civilizational gradations were made between mandated territories: “The International Law of Nationalism: Group Identity and Legal History” in David Wippman ed., International Law and Ethnic Conflict, Cornell University Press, 1998, p.38; David Fidler, “The Return of the Standard of Civilization,” 2 Chicago Journal of International Law, 2001, p.137.[page]

 

6.League of Nations Covenant, No.22, 1919.

 

7.Johannes Morsink, “World War Two and the Universal Declaration,” 15 Human Rights Quarterly, 1993, pp. 357-405. (discussing the influence of the events of World War Two on the substantive content of the UDHR).

 

8.Hersch Lauterpacht, International Law and Human Rights (Stevens 1950), pp. 68-72. For an analysis of how states, that often are the abusers of rights, are also needed as the protectors of human rights, see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1973, pp. 287-294.

 

9.Roland Burke, “The Compelling Dialogue of Freedom: Human Rights at the Bandung Conference”, 28 Human Rights Quarterly, 2006, pp. 947-965.

 

10.As opposed to,e.g., casteism; Aryanism. See Paul Gordon Lauren, “First Principles of Racial Equality: History and Politics and Diplomacy of the Human Rights Provisions in the United Nations Charter,” 5Human Rights Quarterly, 1983, pp. 1-26.

 

11.Rita Joseph, Human Rights and the Unborn Child (Brill, 2009); Angela Shanahan, “Human Rights and the Unborn,” Quadrant Online, Vol. LIII, No. 9, Sept.2009.

 

12.Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 1999. (for arguments that human rights is based on moral individualism).[page]

 

13.There is no singular model of liberalism, but many liberalisms though they are unified by their prioritization of individual autonomy. See ChandranKykathas, “Two Concepts of Liberalism,” The Liberal Tradition in Focus, Espada et al eds., 2000.

 

14.See, e.g., John Charvet and Elisa Kaczynska-Nay, The Liberal Project and Human Rights, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

 

15.See generally Li-ann Thio, “Constitutionalism in Illiberal Polities”, Oxford Handbook on Comparative Constitutionalism, Andras Sajo and Michel Rosenfeld, eds., Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 133-152; Graham Walker, “The Idea of Nonliberal Constitutionalism”, Ethnicity and Group Rights, Ian Shapiro and Will Kymlicka eds., 1997, pp. 154-184.

 

16.Stephen Macedo, “The Constitution of Liberalism”, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 163-202.

 

17.This is a problematical concept but is understood broadly as attitudes and behavior patterns towards the legal system. See, e.g., David Nelken ed., Comparing Legal Cultures (Dartmouth, 1997); Ralf Michaels, Legal Culture in Basedow, Hopt, Zimmermann, eds., Oxford Handbook of European Private Law, Oxford University Press.[page]

 

18.Stephen Hall, “The Persistent Spectre: Natural Law, International Order and the Limits of Legal Positivism,” 12EJIL, 2001, p. 269.

 

19.See generally Paolo G Carozza, Subsidiarity as a Structural Principle of International Human Rights Law [2003], 97AJIL, pp. 38-79.

 

20.Marta Cartabia, The Age of “New Rights,” Straus Institute Working paper 03/10. As noted by Islamic scholar Shad Faruqi: “Cultural and religious considerations prevent any universal agreement on such explosive issues as same-sex marriages and the right of homosexual and lesbian couples to adopt children in the like manner of their heterosexual counterparts. There is also no agreement on whether freedom of speech includes the right to pornography and the right to burn one’s national flag; whether the right to speech, assembly and association includes the right of workers to go on industrial strikes as and when they please and whether the right to life includes the “right to terminate one's life” through euthanasia？…” Shad SaleemFaruqi, Human Rights, Globalisation and the Asian Economic Crisis (XXVIII No.1 INSAF: 1999), pp. 46-47.

 

21.Jeremy Waldron, “Nonsense Upon Stilts”: Bentham, Burke, and Marx on the Rights of Man, Princeton University Press,  p. 196.

 

22.A/CONF.157/23 (12 July 1993).

 

23.Upendra Baxi, “Too Many, or Too Few, Human Rights?” I(1) Hum Rts LR(2001), pp. 1-10.

 

24.Shared Values White Paper,  Paragrahp24, Cmd 1 of 1990.[page]

 

25.Ibid. , Paragraph 26.

 

26.Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 73-74.

 

27.Ibid., p. 70.

 

28.UDHR., Art 29.

 

29.Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ,New York: Random House, 2002, P. 227.

 

30.UNTS, Art.1144, p.123.

 

31.The “Everyone” referred to in the UDHR is not an isolated individual but in the words of a German court interpreting the Basic Law, the individual-society tension is resolved “by relating and binding the individual to society, without detracting from the intrinsic value of the person.” Glendon, supra, note 28, p. 228.

 

32.Vitit Muntarbhorn, “Asia and Human Rights at the Crossroads of the New Millennium: Between the Universalist and the Particularist?” Robert Patman, ed., Universal Human Rights?, Macmillian Press, 2000, p.81, pp. 86-90.

 

33.Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights General Comment 3 (1990), Para 8.[page]

 

34.James W Nickel, “Rethinking Indivisibility: Towards A Theory of Supporting Relations between Human Rights,” 30 HRQ, 2008, pp. 984-1001. For example, if resources are allocated to prioritize the building of a criminal justice system rather than education, and if an uneducated person was charged with a crime “temporary scaffolding” could be provided by providing free lawyers.

 

35.Eric A Posner, “Human Welfare, not Human Rights,” 108 Colum. L. Rev., 2008, pp. 1758-1763.

 

36.Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 77‐92.

 

37.AbdulazizSachedina, “The Clash of Universalisms: Religious and Secular in Human Rights,” Hedgehog Review, pp. 49-62.

 

38.Abdullahi An-Naim, “Human Rights in the Muslim World” 3 Harv. Hum. Rts J., 1990, p.13.

 

39.Ibid.

 

40.E.g., the Malaysian Prime Minister in 2012 declared LGBT is an enemy of Islam stating that human rights were to be supported “within the boundaries set by Islam.” HafidzBaharom, “Najib: LGBTs, liberalism, pluralism are enemies of Islam”, Malaysian Insider, 19 July 2012.

 

41.Michael Freeman, “The Problem of Secularism in Human Rights Theory,” 26 HRQ, 2004, pp. 375-400; See also Diane Orentlicher, “Relativism and Religion”, in Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 154‐157.