PRINCIPLES

Human rights are commonly considered to be:

• universal; belonging to everybody regardless of race, nation, culture, sex, age, ability, beliefs or behaviour

• indivisible; unable to be separated from each other, but belonging together as a package

• inalienable; unable to be taken away from an individual or group

• inabrogable; unable to be given away, voluntarily or as a trade-off for some other privilege.

In reality, none of these principles applies in the way we understand and enact human rights. Perhaps the most contentious of the four is universalism which, if applied uncritically, can lead to a denial of the importance of culture and diversity and the imposition of one form of human rights (usually a very Western construction) in cultures that do not accept its assumptions (Douzinas 2000, 2007, Pereira 1997). Such an approach to universal human rights can become part of a colonialist agenda.

Clearly there is a need for a more nuanced approach to universalism (Brown 1999), taking account of cultural context while at the same time not succumbing to the dangers of an extreme relativism, which is as untenable as an extreme universalism. This issue of universalism and context is one of the most contentious in human rights discourse and it will be discussed in some detail later in this chapter. A naïve and uncritical universalism is problematic, and hence the assertion that human rights are universal cannot be allowed to go unchallenged, and is not always observed in practice.

The indivisibility of human rights is also potentially problematic.