The Attack on Human Rights
By Michael Ignatieff. 2001
Since 1945, human rights language has become a source of power and authority. Inevitably, power invites challenge. Human rights doctrine is now so powerful, but also so unthinkingly imperialist in its claim to universality, that it has exposed itself to serious intellectual attack. These challenges have raised important questions about whether human rights norms deserve the authority they have acquired: whether their claims to universality are justified, or whether they are just another cunning exercise in Western moral imperialism. The cultural challenge to the universality of human rights arises from three distinct sources?from resurgent Islam, from within the West itself, and from East Asia. Each of these challenges is independent of the others, but taken together, they have raised substantial questions about the cross-cultural validity?and hence the legitimacy?of human rights norms. The challenge from Islam has been there from the beginning. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted in 1947, the Saudi Arabian delegation raised particular objection to Article 16, relating to free marriage choice, and Article 18, relating to freedom of religion. On the question of marriage, the Saudi dele gate to the committee examining the draft of the declaration made
Subfields: Social Sciences & Humanities
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Citations in the corpus
- Artificial Intelligence, Values, and Alignment (2020, background): “Do principles of this kind exist? For many theorists, the answer is yes, and the principles in question can be found in the doctrine of universal human rights (Cohen 2010; Donnelly 2007; Ignatieff 2001).”