To my family: Peter, Patrick, and Tae

Copyright © Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann 2019

The right of Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2018 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1353-6

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1354-3(pb)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E., 1948- author.

Title: In defence of universal human rights / Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann.

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018001625 (print) | LCCN 2018015985 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509513574 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509513536 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509513543 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Human rights. | Human rights and globalization.

Classification: LCC JC571 (ebook) | LCC JC571 .H6854 2018 (print) | DDC 323–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001625

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Several colleagues read an earlier version of this work: I am most grateful to Reza Afshari, Susan Dicklitch-Nelson, Ari Kohen, Karen March, Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Andrew Robinson, and Joanna Quinn. If I failed to accept their advice when I should have, that is entirely my own responsibility. I am also grateful for their comments to two anonymous reviewers, and to my editors at Polity Press, Louise Knight and Nekane Tanaka Galdos, for their advice and encouragement.

Chapter 3 draws in part from my chapter, “Social Change and Human Rights,” in Anya Mihr and Mark Gibney, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Human Rights, Sage (2014), pp. 977–93. The section on feminist critiques of human rights in chapter 2 draws from pp. 435–49 of my article “Universal Women's Rights since 1970: The Centrality of Autonomy and Agency,” Journal of Human Rights, vol. 10, no. 4, (2011), pp. 433–9. I am grateful to Taylor and Francis for permission to reprint parts of these pages. The sections in chapter 5 on freedom of speech and on indigenous rights draw in part from two short commentaries I published in the Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law. They are “A Defense of the International Human Rights Regime,” vol. 1, no. 1 (2014), pp. 627–36, and “The Charlie Hebdo Murders and Freedom of Speech,” vol. 2, no. 2 (2015), pp. 467–80.

Finally, I am grateful to all those colleagues, students, activists, private citizens, family, friends, and acquaintances with whom I have discussed human rights over the last 40 years. Whether they accepted or rejected universal human rights, their thoughts and opinions have influenced everything I have written in this book.

This book defends universal human rights; that is, rights for all biological human beings everywhere. Human rights may not be limited by social criteria of humanity, such as beliefs that slaves or women or black people are lesser beings than free people or men or white people. Nor may human rights be limited because an individual is unable because of age or disability to assert his own rights. I particularly defend civil and political human rights, often erroneously identified as “Western.” Everyone in the world needs civil and political human rights. Moreover, economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as collective rights, are as much Western as civil and political rights.

In making this argument, throughout I use the rather clumsy geographical terminology frequently used by critics of human rights, referring to the “West” as opposed to the “global South.” Many critics of the “West” actually mean the United States, which is not a representative Western power. Sometimes, critics also mean former colonial powers, especially Britain and France. The “global South” refers variously to countries that were once colonized; that physically lie south of the equator (except Australia and New Zealand); and/or that are inhabited by people who are not of European origin. It is a clumsy term, not acknowledging the differences between developed and developing Asian societies such as Japan and China, middle income Latin American countries such as Chile, and sub-Saharan Africa. I use these terms because they are common in the debate on human rights universality, not because I agree with them.

I take as a starting point the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which includes rights that are both civil and political, such as freedom of the press or the right to vote, and economic, social, and cultural, such as the right to food or the right to enjoy one's own culture. In chapter 1, I define human rights and discuss the concept of human dignity in which they are grounded. I then discuss the origins of the concept in religion and philosophy, before introducing the international law of human rights. In this chapter I show that although the formal articulation of civil and political rights may have first emerged in the Western world, people from all parts of the world were engaged in drafting the UDHR and subsequent international human rights documents.

I conclude chapter 1 with a brief introduction of the conflict between sovereignty and human rights, a recurring theme of this book. The chief obstacle to full realization of universal human rights is not their allegedly Western origin or nature, but rather the universal principle of state sovereignty. States deny human rights to their citizens, present specious “cultural” reasons for the inappropriateness of human rights to their societies, appropriate rights in their own interests, and deny that they have any human rights responsibilities to citizens of other countries. Often they do so in the name of national security or protection against terrorism. All states, not only Western ones, engage in these practices.

In chapter 2, I discuss several conceptual and theoretical challenges to universal civil and political human rights. These include claims that human rights are a Western, imperialist venture, akin to colonialism in its missionary zeal; claims that they are too abstract; claims that they are rights for men that are irrelevant to women's concerns; and claims that they undermine non rights-based attempts at social change. I defend universal human rights against all these criticisms.

Chapter 3 addresses the question of how societies actually attain human rights in practice, and asks whether civil and political rights are irrelevant to this achievement. A very small number of states, mainly Northern social democracies, actually protect the entire range of human rights. Long-term social changes enabled the evolution of such societies. These changes include legal, ideological, and philosophical evolution, as mentioned in chapter 1. They also include institutional evolution, particularly the protection of private property within a market economy, the creation of stable governments and of militaries and police forces subject to government control, and democracy and the rule of law. Historically, citizen action – protected by evolving civil and political rights – has been necessary to achieve these institutional protections. Citizen activism and institutional stability are also necessary protections against the excesses of market capitalism. Rights-protective societies also require a political culture of social and community commitment of citizens to each other. Instances of human rights regression show that there is no inevitable progress to rights-protective societies.

Chapter 4 turns directly to civil and political rights, which are fundamental to the entire human rights regime. Without the capacity to speak their mind and organize politically without fear of negative repercussions, citizens are recipients of privileges, not holders of rights, even if their governments adequately protect their material needs. I first discuss the strategic value of civil and political rights in protecting economic human rights, before continuing with a discussion of their intrinsic value. I then continue with a section on the “right to have rights,” in which I discuss the contradiction between states’ sovereign right to define who is a citizen and the principle of universal human rights. Although human rights are in principle universal, in practice only those who enjoy the protection of their state can look forward to their realization.

In chapter 5 on culture and community, I assess the claim that universal civil and political human rights violate cultural and religious beliefs and practices. Since one of the chief criticisms of civil and political rights is that they are too individualistic, I begin with a discussion of community and responsibility, and show how civil and political rights actually protect community. I then proceed to criticisms that human rights undermine cultures, and show how cultures are constructed entities that can accommodate human rights. As examples of cultural clashes around human rights, I discuss women's rights, children's rights, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights. I conclude with discussion of clashes between freedom of speech and religious rights, and the debate about whether universal human rights should be applicable to indigenous collectivities.

Other challenges to universal human rights emanate from the real world of economics. Chapter 6 begins with a discussion of economic and social human rights, continuing with critiques of their viability as rights, as opposed to matters of public policy. I consider how globalization and capitalism affect economic human rights, as well as some recent developments to protect people from the rights-depriving aspects of the capitalist marketplace. I also consider whether material equality should be considered a human right. Finally, I revert to the debate about the relationship between civil/political and economic human rights by discussing “growth first” development models that deny civil and political rights until wealth is achieved.

Chapter 7 considers so-called collective human rights, which are vulnerable to criticisms that they are redundant, inflationary, and sometimes mere tools of state sovereignty. I begin with the right of self-determination, which I argue is in practice a right of states, not an individual human right. Similarly, I argue that the right to development is in practice a right of states, not a right of individuals. Moreover, the right to development is redundant, as is the right to peace, which I also consider in this chapter. By contrast, the emerging “right to environment” is an important step forward in human rights thinking. None of these rights, I argue, is achievable without the exercise of civil and political rights. Otherwise, state sovereignty takes precedence in any debates about how to develop, how to maintain peace, and how to ensure a sustainable healthy environment.

Chapter 8 discusses Western responsibility, or lack thereof, to protect human rights in the global South. I first investigate attempts to remedy human rights violations via mechanisms of international justice, including both legal mechanisms to punish human rights violators and extralegal means to make amends for past human rights violations. I continue with a discussion of the West's obligation to promote economic and social rights in the global South, both via changes in the international capitalist system and via foreign aid and the activities of international human right nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). I also discuss the role of human rights in foreign policy. Returning to the contradiction between sovereignty and human rights, I note that states can reject all attempts by outsiders to remedy their internal human rights violations, just as they can outlaw all forms of internal activism to promote or protect human rights. Thus, I conclude this chapter, and the book as a whole, by arguing for the urgent need for universal human rights.

This book was completed in December 2017, and does not reflect any events that may have happened since then.