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¶ … film A Force More Powerful shows how nonviolent political protest has a universal component. Although the most famous nonviolent movements include those of Gandhi and King, there are many other lesser-known movements that have created meaningful and lasting change without the use of brute force, war, or weapons. These movements began with a commitment to human rights, and were inherently based on improving human rights in their respective locations. In so doing, nonviolent movements have radically altered political paradigms and points-of-view worldwide.
Nonviolent political movements have changed the discourse of human rights, allowing for a fusion of universalist and relativist approaches. For example, the Gandhi movement was unique to India and the needs of the subcontinent. Without diverging from the fundamental tenets of Indian morality and worldview, Gandhi nevertheless created a universal movement based on the ultimate view that all human beings are equal and that colonialism is erroneously based on artificial social or political hierarchies. Although Gandhi worked within a specifically Indian framework, his actions became the universal model for human rights movements worldwide. When King adopted Gandhi's philosophy, he also adapted the form of political protest used in India for the needs of Americans in the middle...
Nonviolent movements champion the rights of women, people of color, and other groups considered "underclass." As Campbell, MacKinnon and Stevens point out, cultural relativism can too often be used to "excuse the denial of basic human rights to a group or groups," (103). There can be universal standards of social justice without denigrating indigenous cultures or promoting homogenization. It is not a perpetuation of colonialism to suggest that women and the poor deserve basic human rights, because basic human rights are not "western" values; they are the values that promote welfare and quality of life. The film A Force More Powerful essentially shows that universal human rights are a more powerful force than the outmoded social norms that perpetuate injustice and inequality.
It is therefore important to recognize the value of universal declarations of human rights, to change the minds and hearts of future generations. By making sexism, racism, and other injustices intolerable, it becomes possible to witness greater equality worldwide without sacrificing the integrity of culture or society. For example, the film shows how a small group of Danish political activists sought…
Works Cited
A Force More Powerful. {Feature Film}
Campbell, Patricia J., MacKinnon, Aran, and Stevens, Christy R. An Introduction to Global Studies. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Human Rights The closest thing to a universally-accepted definition of human rights comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). That body's definition is founded on the principle that human rights are inalienable and universal. That is, they apply to all human beings and that all are entitled to these rights without discrimination. The UN definition also holds that human rights are "interrelated, interdependent and indivisible" (OHCHR, 2016).
Human Rights The concept of Human Rights has a long history of over two thousand years and its origin can be traced to the moral philosophies of Aristotle and the Stoic philosophers. The theory of human rights, however, has broadened in concept over the centuries and its contemporary form reflects the development in human thought over time. In the present day world, Human Rights aim to secure for individuals the necessary
But merely because such policies are codified in law means nothing -- unless individuals within the nation are willing to enforce such laws and unless institutions are created to support the administration of such human rights laws on a regular basis. Human rights must be enforced from the grass roots up, according to an-Na'im -- the rights are universal, but the administration is nationalistic and culturally specific. Thus, dialogue must
Human Rights What is the biggest problem in constructing a theoretical justification for the idea of human rights? Be as precise as possible, and try to show how this problem plagues at least two theories. (These two theories would be relativism and universalism.) Relativism vs. universalism. Since the very beginning of the idea of 'universal' organizations that transcended national borders came into being, this debate has plagued theorists of international human rights.
Cultural relativism contends that no one culture possesses a more correct value system than any other. "There is no one standard set of morals," Sullivan (2006) argues, which one can use as a base to: "objectively judge all cultures, so comparing morality between cultures -- which retain independent and distinct histories and influences -- is basically futile" (¶ 9). As the movement is rooted in the world community's response to
Michael Ignatieff's book Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry: Does Ignatieff's analysis of the politics surrounding human rights shed any new light on the relativism/universalism question? Why or why not? The language of human rights is often couched in the language of universalism, even when that rights-based language is really specific to a particular nation and a particular worldview. For instance, the idea that everyone is created equal and is therefore