Universality Of Human Rights

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After 1948 when the Universal Declaration of human rights was form under the supervision of the United Nations, it has begun a large debate over the universality of human rights. Human rights it is almost certain that they do not have a universal application today. Because there are a vast number of crimes happening all around the world against them, for example Amnesty International's 2009 World Report and other sources show that individuals are: Tortured or abused in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in at least 54 countries, restricted in their freedom of expression in at least 77 countries. This essay will focus and analyze on how universality of human rights shrinks day by day, owing to the political games of countries of the…show more content…
The people are “by nature free, equal and independent”, “they have natural rights” to life, to freedom and property, and man cannot be subordinate to the arbitrary power of someone else, or even the state in what respect of these natural rights. Nowadays, Donnelly based upon the ideas of Locke and other philosophers after him, who believed that human rights are pre-political, determines the Universal Declaration of human rights the foundation on which to build "contemporary consensus on internationally recognized human rights". According to this point of view, human rights are enclose fundamental values that should be universal and should be adopted by every culture and state of the…show more content…
Cultural relativism can be defined as the position which argues that “local cultural traditions (including religious, political and legal practices) properly determine the existence and range of civil and political rights enjoyed by people in a given society.” It is suitable to focus mainly in Southeast Asia and in relation to Islam, where the cultural relativism eminently formulated with intense. Historically, there is some non-Western cultures that are not envisage human rights as Western countries do. For example, in the Confucian or Vedic traditions, duty is considered more important than rights . Also, in Africa the community is responsible for the protection and nurture of the individual. This philosophy is summarized in the words of The African writer John S. Mbiti: "I am because we are, and because we are therefore I am.” Many African societies believed that group rights are more important than individual rights. According to them the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has many ethnocentric values of the time which western countries tend to ignore. They also argue that “universal” human rights are smokescreen, so that the Western countries can more easily involve and control internally the rest of the world, so they namely constitute a new form of western colonialism. One critic (Panniker) in the 1970s wrote of his fear that “Human Rights might turn out to be a Trojan horse,

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