The Universality of Human Rights

Following up the 'Asian values' debate at the last meeting, here's a not-so-old essay of mine - minus footnotes, introduction and conclusion - on drawing the line between human rights and culture. This issue happens to be getting the media glare right now, with the impending execution of an Afghan citizen for converting from Islam to Christianity.

I'll try to follow this up with something more specific on 'Asian values', assuming I have any energy left to think after homework, job applications and LSS tutes.

Cross-posted, as usual.

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Human rights must have legitimacy if they are to be realised within a given community. The widespread perception in Muslim countries that human rights are ‘un-Islamic’ or a tool of western imperialism, for example, makes it difficult for governments to implement human right or for rights advocates to gain social and political traction. In developed states like the US, opposition to judicial enforcement of economic and social rights stems more from perceptions that they are not bona fide ‘rights’ than from persuasive separation-of-powers arguments. Attempts to give human rights an objective basis, for instance by linking them to economic development, have met little success; implementation of human rights depends on a cultural choice by the community in question, a choice that can only spring from cultural legitimacy.

The basic problem faced by the global human rights movement is that the very concept of human rights, defined as inalienable claims by an abstract individual upon society, lacks legitimacy outside the western world. If one attempts to ground human rights in religion or moral philosophy, they appear as a western cultural construct. Even accepting that numerous belief systems recognise the inherent human dignity on which human rights are founded, many manifest practices that are inconsistent with ‘international’ human rights norms; certain principles in Islamic jurisprudence, for example, conflict directly with the rights to freedom of belief, freedom of speech and equality before the law. A strong argument can be made that other key concepts underpinning human rights – the individual’s autonomy from society and the cosmos, for instance – are specifically western cultural developments. As such, their introduction into non-western societies presupposes that these societies are either culturally deficient or on an evolutionary path that will turn them into facsimiles of the contemporary west.

Nor have positivist approaches to human rights given non-western peoples the sense of cultural ownership that grounds legitimacy. The core of international human rights, expressed in the Universal Declaration, was articulated by western states in the context of the ideological struggle with communism. On an ongoing basis, Western states are perceived to serve vested commercial interests by promoting civil and political rights over economic and social ones, abandoning even the former when inconvenient (take Australia’s reservations to the ICCPR regarding federal implementation and juvenile detention). Non-western governments stand accused of using communitarian conceptions of human rights to justify internal repression. In this context, the non-western world at large has unsurprisingly developed a cynical understanding of human rights.

Yet despite the rhetoric of cultural distinctiveness from their elites, non-western societies are taking an evolutionary path similar in many respects to that of the west: industrialising, evolving powerful bureaucracies, developing market economies. In this changing social context, human rights are necessary to shield ‘authentic human life’ – whatever cultural expression that life may take – from the corrosive effects of modernity. Freedom of speech and association, for example, may be needed to protect traditional social structures or cultural practices from exploitative employers, corrupt bureaucrats and callous state policies.

Critiques of human rights as exclusively ‘western’ also employ an excessively static notion of culture. Muslim rights advocates have argued that the Shari’a provisions referenced above are a historically contingent interpretation of Islamic texts, which should be reinterpreted consistently with contemporary conditions. Torture and poverty were once considered legitimate by virtually all societies (including western ones) but are now widely rejected, at least in theory. These are instances of a global cultural evolution towards recognition that certain practices and conditions diminish human personality in any cultural context. Critics of the universal rights discourse correctly assert that ‘personality’ is culturally defined, but miss the point that it attaches to a universal ‘individual’ who is the subject of human rights. If the individual’s integrity is compromised, for instance through torture or poverty, personality cannot be fully realised. Pace Douzinas, the ‘human’ in human rights signifies a physical and mental core on which all cultures operate.

Human rights thus have a universal moral basis, notwithstanding their initial conception in the west, and as such are universally applicable. The global human rights machinery serves a legitimate role in monitoring adherence to human rights within all states, including their western progenitors; consider the Human Rights Committee’s (HRC’s) declaration of a US reservation to ICCPR subordinating that treaty to the US constitution as invalid, or the UN High Commissioner’s finding in 2002 that Australia had breached the ICCPR and the ICESCR. However, the precise content and means of enforcement of human rights must correspond to social organisation and conditions, which differ between nations and cultures. The right to freedom from arbitrary interference with privacy or family, for instance, may need to countenance traditional forms of community supervision and authority (for example the role of village elders in regulating social relationships).

Implementation of human rights should therefore take place as locally as practicable, for instance through national or regional human rights commissions, rather than via international treaty mechanisms such as the HRC’s individual complaints mechanism. Localised implementation avoids the charge of western cultural imposition, and allows rights to become ‘foundations for actions and policy’ rather than meaningless abstractions. It is only through such ‘concretisation in the [local] context’ that human rights will acquire the legitimacy needed to take root in a particular community.

Another take on Labor's woes

Here is my take on Labor's woes, as ignored by Op-ed editors from The Age, The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald:

A glance at the Labor caucus reveals a depressing site. Amongst its ranks are a chorus of those in the 'political class', whose professional lives have been spent mostly or entirely within the Labor party or the labour movement. Whilst their political opponents might boast of lawyers, entrepreneurs and a variety of other white collar professionals, the same cannot be said of the Labor Party. According to a Parliamentary Library research note (no. 24 2005-2006), 34% of Labor parliamentarians had as their previous occupation ‘party and union administrators and officials', whilst just 7% worked in the law and 11% as business managers. Amongst the coalition, only 2% were in this first category.

We have long passed the point in Labor history when representing the party in parliament was a reward for achievements in the outside world. Instead it is merely a logical continuation of work within the labour bureaucracy.

The starting point for this "career", from want of a better word, are our university campuses. On campuses across the country, young, talented left-leaning students are sucked into the world of political machinations. For some this means playing the game of student politics, whilst for others it involves a plumb appointment as a staff member of a state or federal member of parliament. The idea of seeking to achieve things outside of the Labor machine is frowned upon.

Plenty has been said about the total lack of perspective held by many inside student politics. To its participants, student politics is a life or death struggle for power where every possible advantage is sought over one's opponent. To those watching from the outside, though, it's a remarkably silly battle of little consequence. Regardless of which perception is closer to the truth, the bearpit of student politics is considered a training ground for the real thing.

It's doubtful, though, that it's teaching the skills that are worth learning. Rarely does student politics involve serious policy discussion or a nuanced understanding of different points of view. Rarely does it involve the art of persuasion. Rarely does it involve the tricky business of reasoning and rational argument. Instead, it's a bombastic power struggle. Participants are encouraged to count numbers and stack their way to success whilst intimidation and deception are commonplace. Student politics involves the worst elements of the real thing, and that's just why it's such an unfortunate training ground, but one that lives on nonetheless.

It's also worth remembering that in student politics, the battle is rarely between Liberal and Labor. More often, it is between different factions of the Labor Party, who operate completely independently and consider each other to be their arch political enemies. The animousity between the left faction (Australian Labor Students and National Organisation of Labor Students) and the right faction (Student Unity) is the stuff of legends. In must be quite jarring for these junior pollies to leave university and find themselves shoulder to shoulder with fellow Labor members that they previously despised. There's little wonder, then, that the factional divide lives on.

All this is not to say, of course, that Liberal-minded students aren't engaged in the same shenanigans. To some extent they are, although the lack of a political gravy train of student political and union jobs prevents Liberal students from venturing further down this path. (Perhaps, ironically, the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism will help the Labor Party by reducing the number of cosy political positions within the student union movement.) There's also a clear realisation amongst aspiring young liberals that their path to Parliament House must invariably go via another profession. This realisation is part of the reason why the Liberals have managed to avoid the same malaise the Labor Party currently finds itself in.

There's no suggestion that factional warfare in the Labor Party is the result of factionalism in junior politics. The problem, though, is that the shallow gene pool of participants in junior politics seem to be the major source of future parliamentarians in the Labor Party. This depressing situation will continue so long as the caucus is filled with career politicians who spend their younger days wallowing in the pettiness of student politics and then make no attempt to learn skills or establish their credentials elsewhere. This trend is not unstoppable. The preselection of entrepreneur (and, incidentally, former student politician) Evan Thornley to a state Labor seat in Victoria and the preselection of lawyer Mark Dreyfus in the federal seat of Isaacs are steps in the right direction. What is necessary is that these preselections be the rule rather than the exception, in order to send a message out to aspiring young hacks and hackettes that they must broaden their skill base if they are to be successful in politics.

If Labor is to make a serious attempt at entering government, it will need to work hard to change the composition of its party room. Rewarding talent ahead of loyal service would be a good start. These hackneyed Labor groupies are surely not the basis of the next Labor Government.

Ari Sharp is a Commerce/Arts student at the University of Melbourne.

Iran's nuclear threat

It seems so incredibly obvious that Iran's current struggles with the IAEA mean that Iran dearly wants to develop nuclear weapons to destroy some of its archenemies like Israel or possibly even the US. What else would you expect from a head of a state that openly airs his desire to attack his neighbor Israel?

For me it seems suicidal to even plan attacks on Israel, one of the nations not caring about the NPT, because they officially not own nuclear weapons, even though they most likely do. Nevertheless, taking a strong stance against Israel is incredibly popular amongst the islamic oriented nations surrounding this country, and thus might be nothing more than a rhetoric figure to get acceptance for the Iranian government, no matter how determined and evil it might sound to foreign ears.

The current media coverage of Irans nuclear facilities, and the correlated spin of the threat imposed to World Peace (as if it ever existed in modern times) reminded me of the situation just before the invasion of Iraq. I got inspired to compare these two events by an essay of Georg Meggle, professor for philosophy at the university of Dresden, Germany.

Furthermore, I read an article about potential economic reasons for the US to start the 'Iran belongs to the axes of evil and needs to be incapacitated' spin, and to coerce international organisations into activity. The article I'm referring to is written by Krassimir Petrov and was published on 18. January 2006 on Energy Bulletin. Krassimir Petrov has received his Ph. D. in economics from the Ohio State University and currently teaches Macroeconomics, International Finance, and Econometrics at the American University in Bulgaria.

To cut a long story short, what we think to 'know' about the 'evil intentions' and the 'belligerence' of Iran is certainly more related to assertive propaganda than to hard facts. Irans society is so unwestern that we cannot easily rely on polls and media reports like we could with for example European countries. So I hesitate to simply assume than Irans plans focus on and intend nothing else than 'having the bomb'.

As yet, there is as much evidence of the development of nuclear weapons in Iran as there was evidence for the development and existance of WMDs in Iraq three years ago. Surely, I would appreciate some facts indicating that I'm (and more important, and Meggle and Petrov are) entirely wrong, and that the most belligerent nation since the 2nd world war, the USA, is right in assuming that the Iran (like the Iraq some short time ago) poses an unacceptable threat to the rest of the world.

More O-Week photos

Following on from John's post last week, here are some more fun-filled photos from the PIS O-Week table on 23 February: