Introduction

Human rights are rights that are held by every person on the fact of being human. “Universal” just means that everyone has them. Simple, right? Turns out, not so much. The question of whether there are human rights, and what they are, has been debated pretty much from the moment people started using the phrase. Let’s focus here on the last 75 years or so since the end of the Second World War. As globalization has connected the world, human rights have become the common international language of what is right or wrong. However, as they’ve spread, so have arguments over what they mean and where they apply. This article will explore those debates and ask whether globalization has made human rights more universal.

The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of international organizations like the United Nations. There were also non-government groups known as NGOs. Countries signed international treaties designed to solve the problems of war, mistreatment, and prejudice. Among these treaties were the first international documents addressing human rights. These rights are universal to every human regardless of their race, religion, gender, or address. However, the twentieth century also witnessed horrible acts of violence. Genocides and ethnic cleansing in Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Bosnia, and elsewhere all happened alongside the spread of human rights.

Universal Declaration

In December 1948, 48 national governments agreed to recognize the “dignity” and equal rights of “all members of the human family.” Recognizing equal rights for all was “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” These rights include the rights to liberty, to expression and freedom of thought, to assemble peacefully, to work and own property. They include the rights to an education and social protection, to not be arrested without a reason, and to not be enslaved or tortured.

In 2018, the United Nations celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). On that anniversary, Ved Nanda, a human rights scholar at Denver University, warned that the UDHR is under threat:

“massive gross violations of human rights persist… from China, Vietnam, The Philippines, and Myanmar to Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guatemala, Syria, and several countries in the Middle East and Africa. Extreme nationalism and populism are rising in Europe and authoritarian rulers on every continent often violently suppress protestors. However, the declaration has inspired those fighting for civil rights. It encompasses the simple yet powerful idea that that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

This op-ed was penned by a man who was born in India while that country was still under British rule. His message was a warning: the world is failing to meet the ideals of the Declaration of Human Rights. But it was also a message of hope: the document itself is a guiding light.

Universal Tensions

Human rights activists around the world responded quickly to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). India challenged South Africa in the UN General Assembly over its racist apartheid system, which was similar to segregation in the United States. In 1950, the General Assembly passed a declaration saying that apartheid is wrong. The civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP brought charges against the U.S. government in the UN General Assembly over segregation. The subjects of European empires in Asia and Africa used the UDHR to demand their right to self-determination.

The governments in question, however, pointed to the UN Charter. As you’ll remember from Unit 7, the UN Charter both proclaimed the importance of human rights and reaffirmed the right of state governments to do whatever they wanted in their own borders. Supporters of human rights claimed that the new UDHR placed human rights abuses outside national sovereignty and into the realm of international law. They faced one significant problem, though. The UDHR was just a declaration, it was not a binding treaty or international law.

Supporters of human rights face another problem. It’s very hard to make someone do something they don’t want to do if they also command an army. This is why human rights abuses continue to happen into the twenty-first century, despite documents like the UDHR.

This hasn’t stopped people from trying, though. Since 1948, most nations in the UN have agreed to dozens of different treaties relating to human rights. The UN considers nine treaties as the “core” of international human rights. That’s not even counting conventions on genocide, refugees, and other issues.

Beginning in 1961, Amnesty International was the first NGO to focus on human rights issues. Thousands of other NGOs work with the UN. Their advocacy is crucial to protecting and spreading human rights.

Universal or relative?

As human rights have spread around the world, two opposed perspectives emerged: universalists and cultural relativists. Universalists believe that human rights are the same everywhere and should be applied the same in every place and condition. Cultural relativists, on the other hand, believe that human rights should be interpreted differently in different places and under different conditions.

Cultural relativists argue that human rights are based in the values and norms of Western Europe and North America. Therefore, they say, human rights are a form of cultural imperialism. In other words, a way for more powerful countries to force their culture on others. Universalists claim that cultural relativists want to continue problematic traditional practices. They say that many of these practices restrict or abuse the rights of women and minorities while using “culture” as an excuse.

It is true that the language of human rights reflects many values from Western culture. In particular, individual political rights stand out in many human rights treaties. Many of these rights got their start during the Enlightenment. In fact, you may recognize some of them from the United States Bill of Rights or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Many non-Western belief systems promote collective rights held by groups, though documents like the UDHR often put less emphasis on those.

Still, many non-Western people played key roles in shaping the UDHR and later treaties. The Chinese scholar, P.C. Chang, for example, helped write the UDHR. He was joined by representatives from Lebanon, the Philippines, India, and Chile, alongside Western representatives like Eleanor Roosevelt. The group that drafted the treaty enlisted the help of the “Committee on the Philosophic Principles of the Rights of Man” This committee consulted belief systems around the world to advise the writers of the UDHR on universal norms and values.¹

Globalization and human rights

You’re reading a lot about globalization in this unit. Globalization has certainly helped spread the idea of human rights. As the United States played a key role in 20th century globalization, American notions of human rights, and especially individual political rights, came along with new economic systems. In the end, though, has globalization actually improved human rights?

Unfortunately, the answers to this question are not clear. Globalization has connected more of the world than ever, ensuring that abusers of human rights cannot hide in the dark. Activists like those in Iran’s Green Movement, Egypt’s Tahrir Square, and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement can tweet and livestream abuses and coordinate protests. However, governments also have access to the same technology. States that abuse human rights have used new technologies to misinform and monitor their citizens.

Globalization has definitely changed the material conditions of most people in the world, and this has important consequences for human rights. Many argue that, as a result of globalization, more humans than ever before have been lifted out of poverty. Access to healthcare, clean water, and technology has spread to new regions. Democracy has spread around the world. Today, more than half of all people live in a democracy.

However, in the era of globalization, inequalities have only increased. One percent of its population owns over half of the world’s wealth. Large corporations endanger workers, especially in poorer parts of the world. So, while fewer people live in deep poverty, almost half the people alive today live on less than $5.50 a day, or about $2,000 a year. As many as 1.5 billion people get by on less than $1.25 a day. This has led some people to ask if universal human rights are a nice idea, but not the lived experience of millions of people around the world.

1 Historians still debate the validity of the evidence found by this committee. Some argue that the committee created a “myth of universality” by linking these old and diverse belief systems to twentieth-century human rights.