This contribution is trying to underline the evaluation of human rights concepts in south Mediterranean countries after 10 years of launching Barcelona process. And how the ethics and principals at human rights chapter at the process be accepted theoretically and practically among neighbors at Mediterranean region.
This study consisted of two parts: firstly the chapter about the human rights concepts in south Mediterranean countries, and one can find easily that there is a great agreement between north- south Mediterranean countries Concept at human rights by focusing upon some main points like: what are human rights? why are they important? taking universality for granted – why protection of international human rights? scope of international law protection guarantees,the case for the prosecution – the case for the defence, development and human rights understanding universality, evolution of human rights in different cultures , international human rights in the universally transforming civilisation, the task of cultural “appropriation” of the human rights retrospective view and outlook and human rights as inter cultural task.
That means we have some good opportunities and strong base for understanding and bridging gaps among partners but that is not enough, if we look at second part about some models in human right practice at south- Mediterranean countries, the study presents some exchange experiences for NGOs activities at human rights field from the sides taking mostly, joint projects between Freidrich Naumann Stiftung-( liberal party from Germany) as north Mediterranean region and Arabic organisation for international cooperation from Egypt as a model for south Mediterranean region with liberal form Egypt as a part of some activities .
The study contains some successful projects like: enhancing gender/women’s equity culture in Egypt, strengthening civil society cooperation in human rights process: the academic freedom program media and enhancing the special needs children rights”- for more understanding to liberal ideas media and freedom of expressions, human rights education, the role of society in promoting democracy culture in Egypt, how to teach democracy and the role of society in promoting democracy culture in Egypt by the role of media and public participation, in brief one can conduct that there is an active NGOs in south Mediterranean region are playing the major role to applied the ethic and concept of human rights chapter at Barcelona process, in compare to governmental role. but more success the process gains , if there is a co-operative relation between governmental and non governmental organisations at society not a competitive clashing one.
That could give a sign to more support for south-civil society, by more flexibility trustful vision to them from their governments and European partners as well for more enhancing the human right chapter principles to a better peaceful world empty from violence and terrorism, full with liberty and human rights respect.
Dr. Hanan yousef
In Barcelona, on 27-28 November 1995, the governments of 27 countries, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission (the Partnership) established the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) with the overall objective of turning the Euro-Mediterranean basin into an area of dialogue, exchange and co-operation guaranteeing peace, stability and prosperity.
On a multilateral level, they adopted the Barcelona Declaration, composed of three pillars for developing the main elements of a political and security partnership, an economic and financial partnership, and a partnership in social, cultural and human affairs. The best known aspect of the Declaration is the creation of a free trade zone by the year 2010. However, the signatory Partners have also committed themselves to respect a number of human rights principles, in particular:
Moreover, they have recognized “the essential contribution that civil society can make to the development process of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership” and have stressed the importance of exchanges between civil societies.
On the bilateral level, the main instruments of the EMP are Association Agreements between the EU and the Mediterranean partners. Following the general EU policy, they include a human rights clause (article 2) which holds that respect for democratic principles and fundamental human rights constitutes “an essential element” of the agreements.
Substantial inputs into the Barcelona Process are provided by the EU institutions, based on the EU’s general human rights policy.
The European Neighbourhood Policy has two objectives: strengthening stability, security and well-being for EU member states and neighbouring countries, and preventing the emergence of new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and its neighbours.
The main difference between the strategy of democracy promotion in the framework of enlargement and the strategy of democratisation in the framework of Barcelona Process has to do with incentives, as only the first foresees the prospect of full EU membership, which is widely recognised to have a powerful positive effect on the process and outcomes of democratic transformation and consolidation.
The emerging question is whether Barcelona Process incentives will make neighbours accept political conditionality. But external incentives are not enough for a strategy of democratisation to be successful. It is very important to stress, that to be successful, an external strategy of democracy promotion needs some internal aspects. Most importantly the will of the people concerned to political reforms.
Studies on the Barcelona Process have in particular stressed the EU’s reluctance to implement the human rights and democracy clauses of the Barcelona Declaration and the bilateral association agreements, and pointed to the fact that the EU has pursued a very soft and regime-friendly approach in terms of selection and support to NGOs and civil society organisations.
The EU has, it is often concluded, favoured security and regime stability in the short run, at the expense of the long-term goal of democratisation and proliferation of human rights norms. To a large extent the EU has prioritized cooperation on issues of illegal immigration, organised crime and terrorism, while also seeking to accommodate fears from the Southern Mediterranean states that the EU would impose its own political system and values on the Mediterranean states or even engage in outright intervention. Moreover, the EU has also itself feared that too strong pressures for political reforms – e.g. in the form of punitive top-down conditionality – could lead to violent and troublesome transition processes, or result in Islamists taking over government power
Southern Mediterranean countries feel that improving human rights and democratic reforms would destabilize their societies whilst sceptics point out that it would perhaps deprive southern elites of a great part of their present political power.
Human rights are rights that entitle people to the protection of their pride and personality. This statement implies acknowledgement of people as legal persons and their pride through the law.
A distinction is to be made between the protection of the basic rights, which has emerged and was developed further on state level and on the other hand the protection of human rights on internal state level. What we understand in this regard is the obligations the states are to abide by on the basis of international law that is international law contracts, i.e. agreements, international customary law or general right bases with regard to respecting human rights. To know which content these human rights guarantees have, one is to derive such from the respective norm. One should be quite alert in order to avoid giving the emotions the upper hand when it comes to human rights –being emotional about this matter is quite obvious- or to project ones aspiration. Not everything that one considers fair and necessary is part of the positive law and order. This applies for the international law as it does for the internal law of a state.
at least of how it should be? Specifically, aren’t human rights an essentially western concept, whose imposition on the developing world would involve – at the very least – ignoring the very different cultural, economic and political realities of the third world? Can the values of the consumer society be applied to societies that have nothing to consume? Wouldn’t a starving, sick and ragged man gladly trade his right to oppose the government or move the courts for a full bowl of rice and a roof over his head? Isn’t talking about universal rights rather like saying that the rich and the poor both have the same right to fly first-class and to sleep under bridges? Can developing countries afford to contend with the assertion of individual rights when they are coping with the overwhelming priority of mass uplift? Don’t human rights as laid out in the international covenants ignore the traditions, the religious and the socio-cultural patterns of the third world? When you stop a man in traditional dress beating his wife, are you upholding her human rights or violating his?
There are, of course, no easy answers to any of these questions. But that does not mean they are not worth asking, for they underpin much of the problem with the human rights debate today. When I talk to human rights professionals in the UN system and out of it, I am struck by how much they take for granted. For most of them the universality of human rights in principle and in law is beyond argument; the attitude is, that’s really a non-issue, let’s get on with the real problems. Yet, as a perusal of the scholarly and theoretical writings on human rights today would confirm, the universality of human rights is in fact questioned on philosophical, ideological, religious, cultural, moral and practical grounds. The danger of assuming that there is nothing to prove, and that any opposition to human rights must be tendentious and cynical, is that the real progress being made in the arena of human rights can be undermined by motivated attacks on the validity of its basic assumptions.
On the face of it, the case for universality is clear. In all human societies, people who are in a position of power or influence over other people treat them in certain ways – well or badly, decently or cruelly, fairly or arbitrarily. At one time, perhaps even up to the second world war, how societies treated their own people was largely considered to be their own business; but such an attitude did not survive the horrors of Nazism. The rapid development of international human rights law thereafter assumes, in the language of the Universal Declaration about 60 years ago, that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” and that the violation of human rights anywhere is properly and legitimately the concern of the whole world; further, that such violations can be examined and judged against the standards laid down by the international community. While some did argue that the Universal Declaration was an expression of values and ideals rather than legally binding norms, the fact that it was adopted without a negative vote (despite eight abstentions), and that most of its provisions have later been included in formal international agreements and national constitutions, is seen as having largely nullified this argument. This, coupled with subsequent reaffirmations of the Universal Declaration by larger numbers of countries (as at Tehran in 1968), confirm that the Declaration is widely accepted as establishing “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations” and its contents regarded as binding norms of state behaviour.
That is not all. Human rights, the case for their universality goes on, are not just the assertion of inalienable rights that spell out the areas where the state cannot intervene at the expense of individual freedom; they include rights to the redress of injustice or inequality that can only be realised through active state intervention. Human rights in this larger sense have taken in the rights of individuals and groups – including peoples and minorities – and the rights to peace, to development, to disarmament, to self-determination. How, then, could their universality be in question? No wonder that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, no great controversialist, declared unequivocally in 1985 that “the international standards of conduct which are contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants on Human Rights are applicable to and binding upon all societies without exception”.
Why is there a need from the start for an international protection dimension? Human rights protection is certainly important with regard to great endangering, i.e. where people –standing alone- are helplessly subject to powers. This applies primarily to the state community, in which people live or with which they may come in contact in certain situations and accidentally. Therefore, it is the monopolized power of states, which represents the decisive menacing potential for submissive people. But dangers can also derive from private powers of all kinds, to which the physically, economically or socially weak are subject to. In so far, it is the duty of the state, especially through its legislative power, to guarantee the protection of the private persons among each other but also from each other. Therefore it applies that the state is to be organized in a manner so as not to be too strong in a way that threatens the freedom of the citizens, but it should be strong in asserting itself, enabling it to control the socially private power. These organizational duties are subject to the constitution, and the catalog of basic rights which are included today in all modern constitutions define the relation of people to the state and endows it with the guidelines to shape the life of people among each other in a socially well tolerated manner.
Yet, when we have the basic rights protection “on site”, why then are there also flanks, i.e. supporting measures of international law? The answer to this question comes from a point of view of international law as well as from the viewpoint of the states.
From the point of view of international law, the international obligation of the states is important because the internal law of a state, and also the basic rights guarantees, support in principle, i.e. keep to, the state disposition, whereby the attempt of a state, to get rid of its international obligations, depending on the organization of the international law guarantee norm is to fail or at any rate would draw attention to the states which is often only too difficult to bear. At least it is as much important to reach out the hands to touch upon the connection between observations of human rights and keeping the peace, which is the main duty of human rights today. Each loss of peace leads inevitably to enormous violations of human rights and all human rights violations bear the danger of war breaking out. Therefore it is not by mere chance that Art. 1 of the UN-Chart declares the keeping of world peace and the international security together with the respect of human rights and the basic freedoms as being among the objectives of the United Nations.
The motives of states, to adopt obligations of international law, are very different. The states that take the matter seriously, accept such obligations in order to build trust internally versus its citizens and externally versus the world of states. The international law obligations will also be partly quite consciously used as an instrument of internal policies in order to bring about a (gradual) change of behaviour, of state and social structures. This phenomenon is more or less to be partly noticed in connection with the east European reform states regarding the accession to the European Human Rights Convention.
A further motive is of a foreign policy nature. One accepts the obligations in order to move other states to take over the identical obligations. The larger the number of participation, the stronger the rules of the international law become, and the more respect and attraction they have.
Of course there are also states that join the human rights protection guarantees only out of propaganda reasons. Thus, most Latin Americans have ratified the International Agreement for Civil and Political Rights, and that at a time, where military regimes had almost covered the whole of those states. Correspondingly, it was valid, is valid respectively for all communist states –with the exception of the People’s Republic of China- and also for numerous African states, that have by no means related the accession to the decisive Agreements with the political will, that would decisively improve the human rights situation within the country. Although such kinds of accession give other contracting states (i.e. other member states to the agreement) the possibility to request the adopted obligations, and the respective citizens are given a role too with regard to their states, being a role based on commitment to the cause, at least in the sense that individuals can address their states politically with regard to its international legal obligations.
The human rights to be guaranteed by the international law are to be derived from the valid human rights norms. The classical international law includes regulating interventions in the relation between the citizen and his state. Only as far as a state has violated international laws towards foreigners, that are not its own citizens, then the international law empowers the country of the concerned (person) to call for diplomatic protection, because the home country as such is considered as being violated in its own rights.
The concept of human rights is another. Here, human is protected for his own sake, not only as belonging indirectly to a state. The traditional viewpoint leaves the following persons without protection, namely persons not belonging to a state, or those which the state does not give care to or of which it wants to get rid of (de facto-stateless). On the contrary to this, they participate in the protection of human rights according to the measures of the available set of valid norms.
Not before the end of the Second World War has this set of valid norms substantially been set up. It was triggered by fright from the horror of millions and millions of mass murder carried out by the National Socialists in Germany to persons who are merely different in their definition of State. This lead to the organized Community of States, the United Nations, drawing the consequence from those facts and –as previously mentioned- declaring its objectives as being the protection of human rights besides peace keeping. On the 9th of December 1948, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide. A day later it declared with 48 Yes-votes and 8 abstentions the General Declaration of Human Rights, a catalog comprising 30 Articles, which include guarantees of classical political defense rights, but also social, economic and cultural rights. The declaration is a recommendation of the General Assembly and thus does not have direct effect of a legal norm. Yet it represents an important political-programmatic statement of the world community, thus setting the fundamentals that are valid up to this day in terms of universal human rights codification. As a side comment it is to be said that this statement had a direct effect on the debates that took place concerning the basic rights catalog of the constitutional law. It furthermore had a strong impact on the formulation of the European Human Rights Convention which was signed less than two years later.
The realisation of the codification program that has been introduced by the General Statement was delayed due to the East-West conflict and the quite different assessment of civil-political rights on the one hand and economic and social rights on the other hand. It was not before 1966 that a consensus had been reached over two separate contract sets, the International Agreement on Civil and Political Rights and the International Agreement on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, that both came in force after ten years, at first for quite a limited number of participants. At present the number has reached about 150 committed states.
In order to present a clear statement on the content of these guarantees, it would be necessary to analyse the abundance of norm materials in detail. This cannot take place neither with regard to the regulations of both Human Rights Agreements, nor with regard to the multitude of further universal and regional human rights agreements, i.e. treaties that have been concluded up till present and have come into force. Among them –and to mention only a few examples- is the International Agreement on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1966), the Agreement on the Elimination of all Forms of Gender Discrimination (1979), the Agreement against torture and other cruel, inhuman or humiliating treatment or punishment (1984) and the Agreement on the Rights of the Child (1989). To mention on regional level are especially the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms (1950) with its eleven additional Protocols, the European Social Charta (1961), the European Agreement for the Prevention of torture and inhuman or humiliating treatment or punishment (1987), as well as the American Convention on Human Rights (1969) and the African (Banjul) Charta of Human Rights and the Rights of Nations (1981). All of these are only examples and are by no means exhaustive of the existing Agreements of Human Rights –not to mention the various political statements that in spite of the lack of legal binding have often the greatest practical importance; I am referring only to the Agreements of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (KSZE).
Although the majority of international human rights guarantees are in the form of agreements, yet the customary rights of nations or the guarantees based on the general basics of rights play an important role too. This is due to the fact that the Agreements are only binding to the Agreement parties; no state can be forced to become a member to the Agreement.
Yet, today there is a general consensus that the state should, under all circumstances respect certain human rights, even without contractual binding (i.e. without becoming a member to an agreement, which is then binding to the member state). Belonging to this “hard core” of the minimum standard of human rights, is the prohibition of genocide and torture, the prohibition of racial discrimination, the acknowledgement of human as a legal person, the prohibition of despotic arrest and the prohibition of full denial of legal protection (deni de justice), to all of those a.m. belongs also the discrimination on the basis of religion or faith. But especially in this field one should preserve oneself from wishful thinking. After all, it would no doubt be a better world, if all states observe and abide at least by this “core”.
I would like to summarise the available set of human rights norms as follows: based on agreements or customary rights, the human rights include almost all guarantees that are adopted by the basic rights catalogue within the state and does even partly not considerably exceed them; this applies for fair trial and protection of the minorities. The status of creating norms is therefore in essence satisfying; occasionally it has already reached a problematic saturation level, also concerning assertion. To be still established are deficits in the field of Group Rights, yet also unsatisfactory are some very far reaching restriction potentials, that can easily be abused for a full undermining of human rights guaranty.
What are “Human Rights” – and why are they important?
this theme raises many interesting questions. Is anything in our pluri-cultural, multiple world truly universal? Does the very concept of universality not presuppose a rather unitary view of the world, or at least of how it should be? Specifically, aren’t human rights an essentially western concept, whose imposition on the developing world would involve – at the very least – ignoring the very different cultural, economic and political realities of the third world? Can the values of the consumer society be applied to societies that have nothing to consume? Wouldn’t a starving, sick and ragged man gladly trade his right to oppose the government or move the courts for a full bowl of rice and a roof over his head? Isn’t talking about universal rights rather like saying that the rich and the poor both have the same right to fly first-class and to sleep under bridges? Can developing countries afford to contend with the assertion of individual rights when they are coping with the overwhelming priority of mass uplift? Don’t human rights as laid out in the international covenants ignore the traditions, the religious and the socio-cultural patterns of the third world? When you stop a man in traditional dress beating his wife, are you upholding her human rights or violating his?
Unfortunately, saying it does not make it so. There are a number of serious objections to the assumption of the universality of human rights. In order to facilitate our discussion I have divided them into nine categories, though there is obviously considerable overlap amongst some of these and an alternative typology might be equally valid. I propose to outline these nine types of objections in what one might call “the case for the prosecution”, and to examine their merits individually while defending the concept of universality in the latter part of my speech.
Amongst the principle objections is what we might call the philosophical one, which finds that the case I have just outlined relies excessively on legal positivism. The philosophical argument against the universality of human rights takes two possible forms. In one, it asserts that nothing can be universal; all rights and values are defined and limited by cultural perceptions; there is no universal culture, therefore there are not universal human rights – unless we are crass enough to confuse the limits of our vision with the limits of the universe. Perhaps the proponents of this thesis argue that the concept of human rights is founded on an anthropocentric view of the world, whereas what one needs is a cosmo-theo-andric vision of reality, one that combines the divine, the human and the cosmic: an impossible task for the UN Human Rights Commission. The other variant of the philosophical argument is that universal rights exist, but are so limited as to be virtually meaningless in practice. Thus, during a 1947 survey on human rights, a Chinese sage, Chung-Shu Lo, suggested that there are “only three basic claims valid for every person in the world, namely: the right to live, the right to self-expression and the right to enjoyment”. This sounds as if it owes less to Confucius than to Thomas Jefferson – the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – but it still leaves out a lot we would include in any conception of human rights today.
The second set of objections to the universality claim centres round the origin of human rights as currently codified. The Scholars Pollis and Schwab have pointed out that “the San Francisco Conference which established the UN in 1945 was dominated by the West and the Universal Declaration was adopted at a time when most third world countries were still under colonial rule”. The Declaration and the whole corpus of human rights therefore reflect “a moral chauvinism and ethnocentric bias” that makes them irrelevant to non-western societies. An additional dimension to this argument is the further exclusion of various sub-groups – national minorities, indigenous peoples, etc – from the process that produced the Declaration.
A third objection is what we may call the foreign policy argument, emerging directly from the use of human rights as an element in the foreign policies of a number of western states, notably the USA since 1977. “The issue of human rights, by definition, breeds confrontation”, warned American analyst Stanley Hoffman. “Raising the issue touches on the very foundations of a regime, on its sources and exercise of power, on its links to its citizens or subjects”. Indeed, raising the human rights issue has inevitably led to fears of western interventionism in the affairs of the developing world, and concomitant charges that human rights are merely an instrument of western political neo-colonialism. And not just political either: one critic wrote of his fear that “human rights might turn out to be a Trojan horse, surreptitiously introduced into other civilisations, which will then… be obliged to accept those ways of living, thinking and feeling for which human rights is the proper solution in cases of conflict”. It is bad enough for some that human rights are used at all as a foreign policy issue. What is worse is the way in which they are used, with human rights violations merely serving as another stick to beat a favourite enemy with, while being downplayed where national interest so dictates. The selectivity with which human rights has been applied in foreign policy carries the corollary risk of human rights becoming a pawn in global politics, whether east-west or north-south. As Hoffman added, “It is a dangerous issue”.
The danger is particularly apparent in what I would call the ideological objection, though another term might do just as well. This is the objection that human rights are predicated upon an individualistic view of man as an autonomous being whose greatest need is to be free from interference by the state, free to enjoy what one writer summed up as the “right to private property, the right to freedom of contract and the right to be left alone”. Such a view clashes with the communitarian one propounded by other ideologies and cultures. Leaving aside the cultural case against individual rights, which we shall consider separately, the ideological case, is the Marxist view of man and society, which posits the primacy of economic and social needs and duties, and argues that society is more than the sum of its individual members; it has rights of its own that transcend those of individuals. What price human rights in any clash with the rights of society?
The fifth objection to be considered is the cultural one. This is also based on a rejection of the separation of the individual from society, on which the notion of human rights is said to be built. In a number of non-western cultures, notably Hindu society, the Islamic and Arab worlds, and African traditions, individuals are not accorded rights as in the west: in the Confucian or Vedic traditions, duties are considered more important than rights, while in Africa it is the community that protects and nurtures the individual. In an Indian approach, human rights would, inter alia, not pertain only to individuals, not be considered in isolation from duties, and not be treated as absolute. In many non-western cultures, conflict resolution would also not necessarily be based on the assertion and defence of legal rights.
The African aspects of the cultural argument are particularly worth considering. The philosopher John S. Mbiti summed up the African philosophy of existence as: “I am because we are, and because we are therefore I am”. The African’s identity is not only not individualistic, but goes even beyond the nuclear family to the extended family, clan and tribe. In place of the simple opposition of rights and duties known to the west, the African sociologist Niara Sudarkasa has identified a more complex structure of communal entitlements and obligations grouped around four “R’s”: not “rights”, but respect, restraint, responsibility and reciprocity, all of which underpin the kinship system. The rights of the individual are subordinate to the well-being of the community, defined to include not just the living, but also the dead and the yet unborn. In a recent human rights study, Josiah Cobbah pointed to significant differences between African and western cultures on such matters as the ownership of land and methods of conflict resolution. In most African societies, therefore, group rights had precedence over individual rights, political decisions were made through group consensus, and wealth was held in common. How, then, could the conventional view of human rights apply to Africa?
Before attempting to answer that question, we must continue with our catalogue of objections. The sixth on our list is also of cultural origin, but not centred on the individual-versus-society theme: we could call it the ethnocentrism argument. This argument objects, essentially, to specific rights which are deemed reflective of cultural bias: the right, for instance, to political pluralism, the right to paid vacations (always good for a laugh in the sweatshops of the developing world), and most troublesome of all, the rights of women. At its most earnest, this objection points out that some societies are simply unable to provide certain rights to all their citizens – the right to work, for instance, or the right to education, are not easy for most developing countries to fulfil, much though they might wish to. At its most angry, this objection is to the promotion of rights explicitly emerging from western social values, notably the assertion of equality between the sexes. In most societies, the most sensitive issues are always those relating to women, and so it is not surprising that bitter polemics have raged in human rights circles over such questions as polygamy, female circumcision, bride price, abortion; or child marriage, arranged marriage, the taking over of a relative’s widow, and other practices contravening the principle of the “free and full consent of the intending spouses” provided for in article 16 of the Universal Declaration. How can women’s rights be universal in the face of such widespread divergences of cultural practice, when marriage is seen not as a contract between two individuals but as an alliance between lineages, and when the permissible behaviour of womenfolk is central to the society’s perception of its honour?
There is yet the religious argument. No, I am not just returning to the philosophical objections we have considered: theology has its own imperatives. At its most basic level, the religious objection avers that human rights can only be acceptable if they are founded on transcendent values, symbolised by God and sanctioned by the guardians of the various faiths. The Universal Declaration, of course, claims no such heritage, and a draft reference to the Creator was even consciously left out of the final text. That raises a problem for any scholar of divinity asked to admit to the self-evident universality of the human rights concept. So much for the basic level. There is also the problem of the conflict between the universality of human rights standards and the particularly of religious perspectives. Many religions assert that they are the only true religions: for them to accept a common denominator of human rights, universally valid and applicable, is to admit of the possibility of compromise on the basic tenet of their own exclusive infallibility. Both sets of problems have converged most notably in recent years over the question of Islam and human rights. An Iranian spokesman put it succinctly in 1984: “the Universal Declaration represents a secular understanding of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and cannot be implemented in its entirety by Muslims”, he declared bluntly if piously. If this is so, how can human rights notions be applied to societies practising the tenets of Islamic doctrine, which, in one interpretation or another, permit detention without trial, floggings, amputations and executions, stoning to death for adultery, and a judiciary subordinate in theory and practice to the sovereign?
The eighth in our typology of objections to the universality of human rights is the elitism objection. This points out that in most developing countries human rights would, in the words of an American scholar, appear “foreign” to the “average person”, who would have “the greatest difficulty in comprehending what is meant by human rights”. The concept would be understood, applied and argued over only by a small westernised minority, an educated elite whose posturings are worth less than they claim because they lack any real roots in the societies for which they speak. Universality in these circumstances would be a universality of the privileged, with western educated third worlders echoing the concerns of westerners – concerns they ignore the moment they leave the international conference rooms. They may believe what they say, or they may be paying lip service to a prevalent political ideology, or they may be unable to resist the pressures of playing the game of international diplomacy as an end in itself, but whatever the circumstances, human rights for them would not extend to the lowest rungs of the ladder, where universality must reach if it is truly universal. Just as the assertion of equality and freedom in the USA was hollow as long as it excluded the blacks, so also human rights in the third world would mean nothing as long as they omitted the poor, the uneducated, the minorities, the aborigines, and so on.
The nine types of objections I have described… are worth taking seriously. Too often… we have the converts preaching to the converted, and we risk losing sight of our own vulnerabilities. The arguments I have outlined are largely not frivolous; they deserve both understanding and rebuttal. The comments I shall offer do not pretend to be exhaustive, but I hope they will serve to stimulate your own reflection on the issue of universality.
To take the philosophical objection first, I think it is fair to state that concepts of justice and law, the legitimacy of government, the dignity of the individual, protection from oppressive or arbitrary rule, the participation in the affairs of the community are found in every society on the face of this earth. The challenge of human rights is to identify the common denominators, rather than to throw up one’s hands at the impossibility of universalism.
The argument that, in finding these common denominators, the third world was left out is weaker than it first appears. To begin with, a number of developing countries – notably India, China, Chile, Cuba, Lebanon and Panama – played an active and highly influential part in the drafting of the Universal Declaration. In the case of the Covenants, the developing world actually made the decisive contribution; it was the “new majority” of third world states emerging from colonialism – particularly Ghana and Nigeria – that broke the logjam, ending the east-west stalemate that had held up adoption of the Covenants for nearly two decades. In any case, philosophical precepts or principles must be judged on merit, by their appeal rather than the breadth of their provenance. The principles of human rights have been widely adopted, imitated and ratified by developing countries; the fact that they were devised by less than a third of the states now in existence is irrelevant. After all, the same is true of the United Nations itself, and no one questions its universality. On the plane of ideas, nationalism and socialism are also western constructs that the third world has not objected to borrowing; the most popular ideology in the developing world was invented by two Germans, and yet there is no complaint about its limited or alien origin.
In fact the ideological objection is the most unfortunate of the attacks on the universality of human rights, because it is premised on a false opposition between the primacy of the individual and the paramountcy of society. Those who emphasise this opposition tend to see the corpus of civil and political rights as the guarantors of the individual and economic and social rights as the protectors of society; regrettably, states who have promoted human rights in their foreign policies have largely tended to focus on the former. In reality the distinction is absurd because many of the civil and political rights protect groups while many of the social and economic rights protect individuals. More important, the two sets of rights, and the two covenants that codify them, are Siamese twins: they are inseparable and interdependent, sustaining and nourishing each other, and any attempt to give priority or exclusivity to either would destroy the credibility of the human rights crusade altogether. The only way to answer the ideological objection effectively is to refute the choice it implies – to ensure that neither ideological view prevails, but that both are accepted. To do anything else, as a principle of foreign policy or otherwise, would be a great disservice to the cause of human rights.
The same applies, of course, to the cultural argument, but here we have to say more. We can assert that conflict between group rights and individual rights is not inevitable, but it would be naive to pretend that conflict would never occur. While groups may collectively exercise rights, the individuals within them must also be permitted the exercise of their rights, which the group may not infringe upon. Within those limits, the specific interpretation and application of human rights in different cultural contexts may admit of variation: there is no doubt that the interplay and interpenetration of the globe’s cultures can only enrich our comprehension and implementation of human rights. In saying this we must by no means cede ground to the extremes of cultural relativism, or permit such latitude in interpretation that can be seized upon by opportunists and tyrants in the name of national traditions. One must not forget that culture is often cited as a defence against external advocates of human rights by authoritarians who crush culture domestically when it suits them to do so. In Africa, for instance, the All-Africa Council of Churches, studying human rights violations as early as 1975, condemned the practice by some rulers of “picking out certain elements of traditional African culture to anaesthetise the masses… [This] has little to do with a return to the positive, authentic dimensions of African tradition.”
The point is also that the “traditional culture” that is sometimes advanced to justify the non-observance of human rights in practice no longer exists in a pure form at the national level anywhere. The societies of developing countries have not remained in a pristine, pre-western state; all have been subject to change and distortion by external influence, both as a result of colonialism and through participation in modern inter-state relations. Even if this represents, as the elitism objection would point out, only a veneer on the society, its impact has been profound. It has created problems in the lives of Africans and other third worlders, in the use of state machinery to govern them and in the standards of treatment applied to them in their exercise of what are, after all, non-traditional social and political relations. You cannot impose the model of a “modern” nation-state cutting across tribal boundaries and conventions and then argue that tribal traditions should be applied to judge the human rights conduct of that modern state. The increasing similarities in the way states organise themselves and regulate the behaviour of their citizens has led to the need for similarities in human rights expectations and standards everywhere.
Let me, in fact, go one step further and argue that there is nothing sacrosanct about culture anyway. Culture is constantly evolving in any living society, responding to both internal and external stimuli, and there is much in every culture that societies quite naturally outgrow and reject. Am I, as an Indian, obliged to defend, in the name of my culture, the practice of obliging widows to immolate themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres? The fact that slavery was acceptable across the world for at least two thousand years does not make it acceptable to us now; the deep historical roots of anti-Semitism in European culture cannot justify discrimination against Jews today. The emphasis on cultural differences overlooks the truth that, as Donnelly put it, “life, social order, protection from arbitrary rule, prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, the guarantee of a place in the life of the community, and access to an equitable share of the means of subsistence are central moral aspirations in nearly all cultures”. To that extent, basic human nature is universal, and basic human rights can be universally enumerated and defended.
My basic problem with the culture argument is that it is totalitarianism in the literal sense of the word – it admits of no objections when it subsumes all members of a society under a cultural framework that may in fact be inimical to them. If the cultural argument is only advocated with an escape clause – that is, if it seeks not to coerce the dissenters, but permits them to opt out and to assert their individual rights – then I have no problem with it. Those who freely choose to live by and to be treated according to their traditional cultures are welcome to do so, provided others who wish to be free are not oppressed in the name of a culture they prefer to disavow.
The point comes up again when we examine the objections to specific rights as emerging from a western ethos, particularly those against rights involving women. (It is no accident, of course, that the arguments against the emancipation of women are inevitably and vociferously made by men.) Let us concede that child marriage, widow inheritance, female circumcision and the like are not found reprehensible by many societies; but let us also ask the objects – since we cannot, as unbiased analysts, say “victims” – of these practices how they feel about them. How many teenage girls who have had their genitalia mutilated would have agreed to undergo circumcision if they had the human right to refuse to permit it? For me, the standard is simple: where coercion exists, rights are violated, and those violations must be condemned whatever the traditional justification. Coercion, not culture, is the test.
On religion, I have less to say. It is my belief that men allow God to be blamed for their own sins, and that human rights as we understand them are fully compatible with the secular understanding of all faiths. Every religion seeks to embody certain verities that are applicable to all mankind – justice, truth, mercy, compassion – though the details of their interpretation vary according to the historical and geographical context in which the religion originated. In the specific context of Islam, we have heard the official view of an Iranian, but there is also the conclusion of the Kuwait seminar organised by the International Commission of Jurists in 1980 and attended by eminent jurists from across the Muslim world. “Islam was the first to recognise basic human rights and almost fourteen centuries ago it set up guarantees and safeguards that have only recently been incorporated in universal declarations of human rights”. This is an interpretation of Islam that I find accords far better with the image of a compassionate, egalitarian faith, and indeed with the way it is practised in many, if not most, Islamic communities in the world today. One might well add that most religions have concepts of human dignity and of the just treatment of human beings, which parallel the secular rights we are discussing today.
If I have found so little merit in the numerous objections to the concept of human rights we have examined so far, I see none at all in the case for the suspension of human rights in the interests of paternalistic development. Indeed I need do no more than cite the memorable words of the great Filipino human rights crusader, José Diokno, who refuted western excuses for developing country autocrats as “racist nonsense”. Authoritarianism promotes repression, not development – repression that prevents meaningful change and preserves the structures of power and privilege. When Mrs Gandhi used this argument during her state of emergency in India, 1975-77, the people of India responded fittingly by voting her resoundingly out of office. When she returned to power three years later, there was no more talk of putting bread before freedom: the electorate in this developing country had made it clear that they were entitled to expect both. Let us not forget, either, that the argument that economic well-being is more important than political rights is used by the one regime no third world leader should want to be associated with: apartheid South Africa.
It is worth pointing out that the rejection of human rights as a western concept has been expressed usually in a western language by a western-educated third worlder at a western university or, worse, in a position of power created by western institutions.
But in considering the needs of developing countries, let me stress that I am not propagating the view that all human rights are always absolute. After all, not everyone can exercise, say, the right of assembly in the same place at the same time. Indeed, the Covenants themselves carefully and reasonably circumscribe the rights they proclaim. They largely limit themselves to outlining a number of basic guarantees for the benefit of the individual, leaving aside larger questions of social life, which are acknowledged as the sovereign right of every nation to determine. At the same time the notion of collective human rights, so dear to many third world theorists, is not ignored: the Universal Declaration does refer to peoples, nations, organs of society, the “community” and the “social order”; even the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights accords due importance to groups, referring to the family, to free associations, common religious practice, minority rights and self-determination. Some of the “fine print” is being painstakingly developed at the national and international level, with the full participation of governments and interested individuals, in institutions such as the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Social and Economic Rights Committee.
The basic principles of the Universal Declaration have also been reaffirmed in a number of instruments – from the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, to the 1981 African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights and the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development – which reflect and build upon the most profound aspirations of the developing world. It is therefore no surprise that a number of declarations of the Non-Aligned Movement, as well as several third world constitutions, regularly refer to human rights. Even a recent UN report on the New International Economic Order concluded that “in the establishment of [such an order] full respect for human rights must be seen both as an end in itself and as an essential means”. Much thought has been given to concepts such as the right to national and international peace and security, the right to economic, social and cultural development, the right to food and the right to a satisfactory environment. Even if these “rights” sometimes seem, in the acerbic words of Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, to “take on the character… of the letter to Santa Claus”, they complement and strengthen the notion of human rights in the developing world and should, for this reason, be welcomed.
The very concept of development, one might argue, evolved in tune with the concept of human rights; decolonisation and self-determination advanced side-by-side with specific references to the need to improve the standards of living of subject peoples. The idea that human rights could be ensured merely by the state not interfering with individual freedom cannot survive confrontation with a billion hungry, deprived, illiterate and jobless human beings around the globe. Human rights, in one memorable phrase, start with breakfast. For the sake of the deprived, the notion of human rights has to be a positive, active one: not just protection from the state but also the protection of the state, to permit these human beings to fulfil the basic aspirations of growth and development which are frustrated by poverty and scarce resources. We have to accept that social deprivation and economic exploitation are just as evil as political oppression or racial persecution. This calls for a more profound approach both to human rights and to development.
In my view, the two are inextricably linked in a more fundamental way than many realise. For whom, after all, is development? It is not an abstract endeavour of states, a set of figures on GNP tables. Development is about people – human beings with needs and rights. Without human rights, development becomes mere materialism, a subject for economists and planners rather than a matter of people. And if people are to develop, it is absurd to expect them to develop without rights, without being free, for instance, to express their views on their present lot and their future hopes. Development implies dynamism; dynamism requires freedom; freedom can only be guaranteed by rights. Human rights are not just compatible with development, but essential to it; without them, development would become distorted and non-participatory. This link is explicitly recognised in the General Assembly Resolutions promulgating the UN Development Decades and declaring the Right to Development. A number of international forums have also reaffirmed the inter-relationship of human rights, peace and development, asserting that the fostering of one strengthens the others. Similarly, the lack of one weakens the others: as President Museveni has argued, human rights violations “encourage instability, thereby detracting from a rational commitment to socio-economic development whose pre-condition is peace and stability”.
In turn, one could even argue that, without development, human rights could not be truly universal, since universality must be predicated upon the most underprivileged in developing countries achieving empowerment. We must not exclude the poorest of the poor from the universality of the rich. As the former Director of the UN Human Rights Centre, Theo van Boven, put it, “if a human rights programme has any relevance to people, it must be concerned with the vulnerable, the weak, the oppressed, the exploited”. As long ago as 1943, Franklin Roosevelt had declared the “highest” of his celebrated “four freedoms” to be “freedom from want”.
But in emphasising economic rights, I do not intend to minimise the equal importance of civil and political rights for developing countries. Ever since Manouchehr Ganji’s seminal study for the UN in the early 1970s, the relevance of economic, social and cultural rights to development has been beyond dispute. What still needs assertion is that civil and political rights are also vital for the nationals of developing countries. The human rights record of the third world should make this self-evident. We have spoken of Pol Pot and Idi Amin; but there are widespread horrors elsewhere. In Latin America, for instance, there have been more deaths in the last thirty years through “disappearances”, summary executions, police torture and death squads than in all military conflicts between states in that region in this century. There is an inbuilt philosophical question here: do some societies have the right to deny human beings the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations for growth and fulfilment legally and in freedom, while other societies organise themselves in such a way as to permit and encourage human beings freely to fulfil the same needs? On what basis can we accept a double standard that states that an Australian’s need to develop his own potential is a right, while an Angolan’s or an Albanian’s is a luxury? To accept this would indeed be ethnocentrism of the worst variety. The fact that most of the world’s twelve million refugees are from developing countries and in developing countries proves once again that the observance and denial of human rights is not just an academic issue in the third world, but one with real impact on the lives and futures of millions of human beings.
The recent thought being devoted by some human rights scholars to the concept of a “right to live” – going beyond the notion of a “right to life” – is an interesting conceptual development. Just as peace is not just the absence of war, living, they argue, is more than the opposite of dying: it implies the enjoyment of conditions of life conducive to the full development of the human person. These include food, shelter, adequate medical attention, education, productive employment, freedom to move about and express oneself freely, and the chance to grow in a healthy, tolerant and peaceful environment free from ill-treatment and persecution – in other words, a combination of both sets of human rights. In the concept of the “right to live” may lie the essence of what human rights can mean to developing countries. It is the individual counterpart of what developing countries are claiming for themselves on the international plane – the “right to development” proclaimed by the UN, which is really a synthesis of existing human rights.
The concept of “non-discrimination”, which is so central to international human rights law, is also particularly relevant to developing countries. Some of the world’s worst violations of human rights have been the result of discrimination – against racial or ethnic minorities, women or linguistic groups, believers in religions disapproved of by the rulers. Discrimination against members of such groups remains amongst the central political problems of most developing countries; its persistence voids many of the most important achievements of these states. Protection against discrimination and guarantees of free and equal treatment benefit not only the individuals protected, but the state itself, which is freed to concentrate its energies on the advancement of all its citizens, and therefore of the society as a whole.
In conclusion… it is worth stressing that universality does not presuppose uniformity. In asserting the universality of human rights as I have done today, I do not suggest that our views of human rights transcend all possible philosophical, cultural or religious differences or represent a magical aggregation of the world’s ethical and philosophical thought systems. Rather, it is enough that they do not fundamentally contradict the ideals and aspirations of any society, and that they reflect our common universal humanity from which no human being must be excluded. Universality in human rights need not mean more than general agreement on certain transcultural principles – those embodied in the Declaration and the Covenants, collectively called the International Bill of Human Rights. We must accept that not all societies understand these in the same way, nor does each accord them the same priority, but these divergences, if kept within limits, can be positive. In the last forty years the vision of the Declaration has been strengthened by the new perspectives that have been brought to bear on it, notably by developing countries. The progress being made in the building up of international human rights law and machinery through the various committees I have cited is proof of this.
The standards being proclaimed internationally can become reality only when applied by countries within their own legal systems. Any attempt to impose a one-sided interpretation of human rights would lead to the exclusion of, or rejection by, some states and would thus undercut rather than uphold the imperatives of universality. If different approaches are welcomed within the established framework – if, in other words, we can encourage eclecticism as part of the consensus and not a threat to it – such flexibility can guarantee universality, enrich the intellectual and philosophical debate, and so complement, rather than undermine, the concept of world-wide human rights.
Ultimately, of course, what matters is that human rights are vital for the poorest woman in the poorest developing country. There is an old Indian story about the glass of milk. Who knows more about milk – the chemist who can analyse its contents and identify the precise proportions of water, sugar, fat, etc that it contains, without drinking it, or the little child who understands none of this but drinks the milk, knowing instinctively that it is good, that it fortifies him? Many theoreticians of human rights and articulate developing country officials can give us learned reasons why they do not apply in the third world. Those who have experienced the enjoyment of human rights in third world countries – and in some cases, tasted the loss of them – know what it means and why they do not wish to be denied the share of their universality. Human rights are not just “relevant” for all of us; they are essential.
Human rights organizations must live with the accusation by governments that they are ideologically or politically biased. They can refute such reproaches by means of a consistent onset for the practical realization of the human rights all over the world. However, beyond that an objection will be occasionally raised against commitment to human, which goes deeper and puts as such the human right-concept in question. It is the thesis that human rights are exclusively affiliated with the “western” legal-culture and consequently may be called in opposition to other cultures.
By all means, there are reasons in favour of this view by asking the following questions: Are human rights not originated in Europe and North America? Is it not true that the general explanation of human right made by the United Nations in 1948, which also marks the inclusion of human right standards into the international law, has not been mainly compiled by the western states? We all know that most of the countries of the Third World were still under colonial tutelage of the West in the year 1948 and they were not at all represented in the United Nations as states. Is it not correct that the claim of universal human rights was then not the expression of a culture-imperialism? Finally, the attempt was then made to put western legal ideas upon foreign people and cultures as binding world right.
Such questions and objections are raised and addressed to human right organisations not only from outside but they are also tossed up by the members and comrade-in-arms of these organisations themselves many a time. These arguments and objections cannot be weakened by means of a hint on pre-determined international rights; rather they necessitate an historic and philosophical awareness to the claim of validity of the human rights. This should be tried in the first part of the following statements. In the second part the Islamic explanation of human rights is discussed; it should be shown as an example, how does the thought of human rights effect on a non-western religion and culture today. These statements are finally concluded with a short retrospective view and outlook.
Today the technical civilisation of the television stations, power stations and computers unfolds its dynamics in the entire world – with its partial “progress” but also with destructive effects. It has taken its start from Europe and has become independent since long and today asserts itself across the borders of cultures. The shocks, which stride along the modern civilisation, are apparent in the entire world. Especially the Third World countries are threatened by the crisis of political, economic and cultural modernisation: by the confrontation between centralised state bureaucracy and particular forces of dominance, which can grow up to civil wars; by the flight from land (rural exodus) and population drift to the cities, which results into social uprooting and proletarianising; by one sided exporting and importing of economy, which often goes ahead at the cost of traditional self sufficiency; by changes of communication behaviour under the influence of electronic media, which are mostly run and controlled from foreign soil.
Human rights have not taken their rise in the West as answer to the crisis of this type and their inhumane after-effects. They are an attempt to ensure elementary prerequisites of dignified human existence and co-existence under the conditions of modern civilisation – a civilisation, in which the traditional ways of overcoming conflicts and formation of social consensus are often not easily practicable. The dilemma is apparent today in many countries of the Third World: For instance, how should the “PALAVAR”- the African institution for building communal will – get a change to become an urban society, in which the people can only communicate in the language of their former colonial lords. And how the traditional forms of governmental control should become effective, if more ethnic groups with different norms and customs have to live together in a modern territorial state.
Today liberal political, social and cultural human rights offer the chance – perhaps the only chance – to ensure dignified human life in the universally transforming modern civilisation. Certainly the consciousness to pre-modern forms of ethics and traditional legal institutions for the cultural identity of the people cannot be abandoned. However, they cannot replace recognition of modern human rights, because a retreat from the modern world and its problems is ultimately no more possible: The territorial borders of African and Asian states drawn by the Europeans without consideration of cultural and ethnic realities, cannot be changed, because any change may result into endless civil wars. The technically perfected possibilities of ruling modern states, once they are established, cannot be done away with. They demand institutional control, which goes beyond the traditional mechanism of political rule. The modern means of communication draw foreign cultures closer to each other in a wanted or unwanted neighbourhood, against which no country can permanently resist.
Today the task presents itself more than ever before to shape co-existence of the people and cultures worthy of human being in a world getting more and more closer. This necessitates a prescriptive / normative basic consensus, which has to be found equally “across” different cultures and religions. It cannot be derived exclusively from a certain culture or religion, but must be achieved in the culturally overlapped communication. Here the idea of the human rights is offered. It has come up in fact for the first time in the West and today wins plausibility even outside the western legal cultures.
Human rights are increasingly called in indeed all over the world, in fact not only under the influence of the West but not rarely also against the West. So ever since the seventies of the 20th century the human right-debate in the framework of the United Nations has been more strongly shaped by specific concerns of the so-called Third World. Their people and humans have suffered for long time under European colonialism; imperialism and racism and subsequently they do not want to be taught now in human right issues unilaterally. On the contrary they refer to their own experience of historical injustice and struggles for freedom and consequently show an independent and authentic understanding of human rights. This must be accepted in principle as a requirement, even if the concrete awareness to human rights does not become simpler. Whether this awareness or consensus finding will be successful and survive, nobody can predict it. Only one thing is sure that today it is posed to us as a task. Obligatory idea of guidance is thereby the inalienable dignity of each human.
In the measures, in which human rights unfold their effects of forming awareness, they will be noticed and accepted in each case as component of own legal-culture. Now this seems in the West to be achieved in future: Human rights stand in the centre of the norm-consensus of the Western societies. This is not called unfortunate that they are always taken seriously in the political practice. Moreover, the new start of the nationalism and racism in Europe shows that the human rights consensus in the West is also much less consolidated, as one would have considered it possible some years ago.
These and other motives of the Jewish-Christian Bible, which let the western idea of equality of the people brighten up, were originally not thought as human rights; because they did not aim at political reforms in the direction of equality of freedom. It is nevertheless legitimate, if one interprets them today again as “roots” or “points of liabilities” of the thoughts of human rights. Because the person as a cultural being in the totality of his historical tradition will always be changing his abode and places and also understand new experiences and insights from the sources of his religious or cultural tradition. This happens to individual in finding common identity in an open process again and again, which is difficult and can be painful, but necessary. The ideas of fundamentalism throughout the world are a dramatic signs of warning for it that this process can also admittedly fail.
The retrospective view on the own – “western” – history and culture of the human rights is meaningful as prerequisite for the confrontation of human right with other cultures. Not that the western understanding of human rights should be stylised to the paradigm of human rights at all. A self-critical awareness is also required against the difficulties and resistances, which were to be overcome in the West, rather being removed at present. In this way one can become sensitive to some irritations, misunderstandings and fears, which possibly also stand in the way of accepting the ideas and thoughts of human rights by other cultures. And for other matter the possibilities may be found, how such reservations can be removed.
The opening of the Christian churches for the human rights concern is in this context of principal interest: namely as for instance how human rights, which had been initially viewed sceptical or refused massively, can finally become even decisive for the identity. After a continuous struggle of several generations the Christian churches have finally learned to recognize a very own concern in the human rights: They just understand human rights as a political consequence of any untouchable human dignity, which is also proclaimed by the Jewish-Christian Bible.
Going back to the Starting question: Are human rights component of the western legal-culture? If one can answer this question at all, then only with a complex “yes, but”.
Yes: because human rights are originated in America and Europe and initially belong to the western history consequently. Meanwhile they are today components of the legal-consensus in the western societies and are also understood in the line of the western tradition as a whole. Their acknowledgment by the Christian churches, which took place after long resistance, is an example for a successful intercession between tradition and modern.
BUT – and this BUT is not less important: Western “monopoly-claims” regarding the human rights are not driven from their history. Because the human rights were always not belonging to the western tradition. They are specifically modern as political claim, and their reception into the western culture as well as into the western awareness to law has been initially the result of vehement confrontations. These confrontations are in no way locked in the remaining. Because just in the last years it has become visible, how startlingly influential are the anti-human rights movement in the West now – or they can be as such again.
Now a further question is asked, whether the cultural process of acquisition of the human rights, as it, to the defiance of many resistances, has been carried out in Europe within 200 years, is analogously perceivable in other culture-regions: Can human rights mediate with other than western religious or cultural traditions and their essential sources? This question cannot be answered simultaneously for all world-cultures in the abstract form, rather it necessitates the concrete confrontation with the respective cultures as well as religions, with their positive references and their contradictions to the ethics of freedom of the human rights. It is not compatible with human right-like thinking in principle.
The realization of human rights is an international task today. Therefore there can be no exclusively Western or Eastern, Christian, Islamic, African or Buddhist human rights in the end. The human rights must be recognised as international standards across different cultures and religions. Multi-culture-organisations of human rights are evidence for it that such a supra cultural consensus is principally possible. Nevertheless, understandings and interpretations of human rights collide with each other differently again and again. This is inevitable, because the cultural existence is not merely an addition or luxury for the human being, which he could abandon, rather it shapes his own person and world affairs, even the understanding of his rights and duties in the society and against fellow human beings. The understanding of human rights is always culturally mediated.
Beside the political-legal efforts about the standardization and enforcement of human rights, an inter-cultural dialogue is also necessary over their sense and contents. Such a dialogue is admittedly difficult, and nobody can know, whether a consensus once reached will continue permanently. A condition for success of the dialogue is the relinquishment on claims of monopoly regarding the human rights anyway. These are not the “property” of any culture or religion, even not of the West. In fact the human rights initially emerged in Europe and North America. However, they do not always belong to the continuance of the western legal consciousness, but have been secured first time in the modern time, in fact against resistances not only by the states but also by the churches. The cultural acquisition-process of the human rights in the West – and also looking from the side of the Christian churches – is the result of long and painful confrontations, which still continue partially, may be with new vehemence at present.
If it is tried today about the acceptance of the idea of human rights in the cultures outside West, so one comes to the conclusion that it happened not as bare takeover of a western concept. The acquisition of the human rights through other cultures is never possible on the way of passive reception, rather is only possible in the consideration on own historical injustice-experiences and struggle for freedom. All people and cultures have to contribute somewhat from their own to the human rights discourse. Cultural-imperialistic ignorance or complacency, no matter from what side, would blockade the necessary search for a human rights consensus in the beginning. An imperative prerequisite of the inter-cultural dialogue is therefore the willingness to the frankness with others, for example with the Muslims. One often presumes in western publications about Islam that it disagrees with the human rights basically, so that the realization of the human rights is condemned to fail in the Islamic world from the very start. Indeed one cannot dispute that there exist fundamental tensions between the Islamic tradition and the human rights. Whether and how they can be solved, whether or not permanent solutions are possible, nobody can predict. Beside fundamentalist refusal and changed explanation of the human rights, today there is a row of impressive examples for it indeed, like reform-oriented Muslim, who want to renew own religious and legal traditions in a self critical way. Also Koran has been understood in the perspective of modern Muslim theologians as a liberation message, which corresponds to the concern of the human rights internally and can lead more definitely to the critical revision of secondary Islamic traditions. Except for individual single Muslim forecasters the conservatively adjusted Muslim population has partially accepted human rights thoughts – may be there exists still uncertainty, how one can mediate with Islamic traditions and the Sharia in this respect.
Organizations which care for the practical realization of the human rights, can conduct the inter-cultural and inter-religious basis-dialogue directly. They can and should not argue with the Bible or with the Koran. The current international human rights standards are rather reference point for their work. This self-limitation on the political-legal level is meaningful, rather essential for an international and multi-cultural organization. However, the struggle for the realization of the human rights must always go around with the respect for other cultures and religions. Two practical consequences result from it: What is to be demanded first is critical as well as self-critical care before acceptance of the human rights – also from the part of the West; and secondly the willingness to the willpower of prejudices, above all from such prejudices, which deny other the ability to the respect of the human rights from the very beginning.
Form
Phase (1): survey study (random sample 2000 persons).
Phase (2):round table discussion with experts.
Phase (3):manual – style book (Enhancing Gender/ women’s equity culture in Egypt.
Phase (4): Capacity Building training courses.
The project:
Introduction:
A Gender and Development (GAD) note on Egypt was drafted by the RNE with the main objective of identifying the future direction of the Netherlands Development Co-operation Policy on Gender and Development. So the project seeks to focuses on strengthening NGOs to implement the Beijing Platform of Action, which is reflected in two large programmes implemented by UNICEF and the Alliance for Arab Women (AAW). It further strengthens and provides support to Gender Equality Measured through Statistics”. Trying to address women’s equity and equality in economic, social and political arenas including political participation and capacity building in different Governorates,.
Concept of the project :
enhancing Gender/women’s equity culture in Egypt through:
Target groups :
| Phase | form | Description |
| 1 | Survey study
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Survey study on 1500 –random sample- different demographic levels about the mage of woman in Egyptian society, how it could : enhancing Gender/ women’s equity culture in Egypt
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| 2 | Round table (experts)
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Discuses: the results of survey and ideas for enhancing Gender/ women’s equity culture in Egypt
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| 3 | Manual book
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Manual and training book about : enhancing Gender/ women’s equity culture in Egypt
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| 4 | Capacity Building training courses.
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To enhancing Gender/ women’s equity culture in Egypt.
At 5 levels: media- education-higher education- civil society- youth centers. -each level: 4 geographical areas- 3 weeks-4 days- 25 target participants
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The academic freedom program aims to monitor, expose, and mobilize concerted action to challenge threats to academic freedom worldwide, and to foster greater scholarly and media attention to the critical role played by institutions of higher education in the promotion of human rights and the development and preservation of civil society. The program brings together the expertise of Human Rights efforts of the academic leaders and prominent scholars whose educators, researchers and students are frequent targets of state-sponsored violence and repression.
In the most notorious cases, governments bent on imposing a monolithic state ideology have disproportionately targeted teachers and educated individuals for imprisonment, torture and murder. More commonly, governments use intimidation, physical abuse and imprisonment to silence campus-based critics and dissidents, and censor teaching, research and publication on important subjects. Many governments also continue to deny equal access to educational institutions to women and members of disfavoured minority groups.
Academic freedom work is based on the recognition that such violations have received too little attention in the international human rights community. The academic freedom program seeks to address this deficiency through casework on behalf of embattled academics, collaborative efforts with other human rights organizations and concerned professional associations, thematic research and reports, and publication of an annual overview of violations in the Human Rights.
Form
1- phase 1 : workshops discussion – – two sessions- – one day .
2- phase 2 : manual hand book with its applied part .
Concept of the project:
The project seeks for more understanding of handicapped and disabilities of the children , and how can media play a role to protect the rights of the children handicapped helping them to interlace with the society. Finalized media strategy for it to be applied to concern parts.
Objectives :
TARGET GROUPS :
Children handicapped- special needs- media people- families of special needs children
Participants:
50-70 participants from media people and special needs children expertise.
Place:
Egypt.
Concept of the project :
The view for the liberalism on Egypt and Arab world has changed profoundly over the last decade. The most radical events that have impacted this view are globalisation movements. The prevailing perception is the awareness of a widening gap between the levels pf population .
European model expressed ideas cultural identity, similarities and differences, a sense of reciprocal fascination and respect, even in times of conflict. Therefore the cultural platform is a fitting starting-point to create a dialogue on.
The project is depending on the liberalism idea project in some new activities for more spreading to the liberal ideas like:
-Dignity
-Gender equity. RESPONSIBLE media and diversity in media representations.
-Civil society and liberalism.
-Egyptian state and liberalism. Censorship and liberalism. Art and liberal ideas. How we can collect the liberals believers.
Target groups: young people from different categories in the society
Objectives:
All activities try to address some questions:
1 – Why it is important to believe in liberality ?
2 – Why is a liberalism necessary? Is there willingness from different sides to engage in it ?
3 – On what level should this liberal movement be conducted: government, academic, social and religious institutions?
4 – What are the subjects one needs to discuss during the frame of liberal concept?
5 – How should the liberal idea be shaped in organizational terms?
6 – What is The relation between the society and liberal concept?
7 – How we can Create ideal media message to enhance liberal ideas ( the strategy and implementations).
Formulating a model for a media message call for peace, acceptance and tolerance with more liberalism.
The following risks can be identified:
Short desribation of the action at year 1 ( 2005) :
It consists of a lot of activities with the following thematic priorities
theme a: freedom of expression between governmental and private media.
theme b: learning and teaching human rights culture.
theme c: gender equality and image of woman.
theme d: the freedom of parties and NGOs establishing.
theme e: Economic liberalism.
theme f: arts and liberalism.
The activities formats are underlined generally as following:
