Culture and Human Right

                Many people believe the Human Rights were first developed from the Western culture which does not always sit comfortably within the borders of many Asian societies. This view would have made people to think that “idea” of human rights is someway more privileges in Western societies. After World War II, The Untied Nation was dealing with international human right, and the issue of culture in human right had surfaced by the time of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Right in 1948. In this article, it will explain the relationship between culture and human right, also to debate surrounding the universality of human right and cultural relativism in human rights law.

                 The end of World War II was a significantly point of view of the resistance of those Western states which had protested to legally binding human right standards. After the World War II, “Western countries in particular seem to have realized that human right had to be part of the international system.” (de Varennes, 2006) The Second World war lead the East and West into a situation to find common moral, philosophical and legal grounds for a universal code of basic human rights which was neither uniquely Western or Asian. So, when we talk about human right, it generally mean to what is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In fact, “the Universal Declaration of Human Right is a product from a variety of traditions from around the world. Of the 58 countries participating in its genesis, 20 were from Latin America, 4 African and 14 Asian. Non-European countries were therefore very much a part of this process.” (de Varennes, 2006) “Even the right to equality, which many assume is so intimately linked to Western legal thinking, was mainly included in the Declaration through the efforts of Socialist and non-Western states including Asian.” (de Varennes, 2006) However, when we notion the first article that all men were created equal, that is something people want to but are not actually existed in our world. Think about that a man in Africa was equal to a European. This is what Jack Donnelly has claimed in his book that “These are universality in theory and relativism in the practice of human rights.” (Donnelly, 2013) This is a real challenge to a universal claim, when people argue about their culture that they believe in their own thought and do thing in their own way, it seem provided another normative standard based on the culture. This is difficult to judge to the certain behaviors as right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. Back in 1947, American Anthropological Association had tried to point out that “The rights of man in the Twentieth Century cannot be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture or be dictated by the aspirations of any single people.” (The Executive Board, American Anthropological Association 1947) This can be viewed as relativism. To think deeply, this could have applied to the black American issue in United States. In the past, they didn’t have much right being in United States, they have been discriminated as outside group, and some were not treated as human but slaves. They didn’t have the equal right as other whites. It happened to other countries too, like The Great Britain, Irish didn’t share the same right as British had. In today’s society, these issues are clearly advanced from the past which rightly qualifies as Donnelly said relative human right is needed in practice.