Whose “Human Rights” Agenda?

A famous biblical verse states: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." I find this admonition by Jesus Christ relevant to the human rights movement in many ways. Not everyone who professes human rights does so with an objective commitment to human rights ideals. A look at the history of the human rights movement bears this out.

One of the legacies of the Cold War for human rights was the creation and intensification of the boundaries between civil and political rights on one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. These boundaries reflected the East West polarization in international relations which reduced human rights to a weapon of propaganda and political ideology in a bi-polar struggle. The West emphasized civil and political rights pointing the finger at socialist countries for denying these rights. The socialist (and many developing countries) emphasized economic and social rights criticizing the richest Western countries for failure to secure these rights for all its citizens.

In a post-Cold War era where the world is no longer that sharply divided between East and West, much of the propagandist human rights language of the Cold War era has lost its relevance. More countries across the former East West divide are now better disposed to affirming the interrelatedness, interdependence and indivisibility of human rights. However, the co-option of human rights by both state and non-state authority structures for parochial ideological and propagandist purposes did not cease with the end of the Cold War. International discourses on the right to development, for instance have continues to be underscored by similar manipulation of rights language to serve the political and economic agendas of states, ruling regimes and other non-governmental authority structures. The ideological fault lines may be less rigid than they were during the Cold War, but the language of human rights continues to be appropriated and invoked in ways that sell it short.

We must therefore continue to seriously consider the morally troubling outcomes that arise when human rights is co-opted by authority structures in ways that serve more to enhance their power than to alleviate human suffering. As we celebrate the many progressive developments that have been brought about by the post Second World War human rights movement, we must also pay attention to how the misuse of human rights can undermine its claims to universalism, inalienability and normative objectivity.