Universalism and Relativism in Human Rights

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).

The OHCHR cites such rights as the right to work, the right to self-determination, to social security and education, to equality before the law and to freedom of expression (OHCHR, 2016). How these broad concepts are to be operationalized is not specified by the OHCHR. Indeed, there are some inherent contradictions immediately apparent between the definition set forth by the OHCHR and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundational document for the modern neoliberal concept.

As an example, Article 2 states "no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs," which conflicts with the principle of equality under law, given that each territory has its own laws, and these differ dramatically; we cannot all have the same equality, when living under different laws.

There are further pragmatic issues not conceived in 1948, such as the reality that the world's resources are finite, yet to meet the rights of all humans, if the number of humans continues to grow exponentially, will eventually take us to a zero sum game where the rights of some must inevitably be sacrificed to meet the rights of others. Beyond such pragmatic issues, there are philosophical critiques of the human rights concept, in particular how it manifests today. Broadly, such critiques come from universalist considerations, or from relativist considerations.

This paper will concern itself with these critiques, and seek to answer the question of whether these positions are reconcilable. Since the Universal Declaration, the apparent conflict between universalism and relativism has characterized debate about the nature of human rights (Perry, 1997; Donoho, 1990). Fundamental Underpinnings of Human Rights The idea of human rights is rooted in the idea of natural rights, that human beings have specific rights by their very nature.

In Western culture, these rights have traditionally only extended to dealing with other human beings, but in other cultures such as Native American, these rights also govern our relationship with the environment. In the West, then, human beings have such special rights as a distinct class of rights from those of anything else on this planet, which alone gives rise to several conflicts that are subject to critique (Wenar, 2015). The UN's vision of human rights largely evolves from Western tradition.

Influences on this tradition include "the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the United States Constitution" along with philosophical roots in Suarez, Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke and Kant (Nickel, 2014). Shestack (1998) points out the human rights are intended to trump other rights, including the rights inherent to one's culture; a culture is a subset of humanity, its rights important, but lesser. The universality of human rights is one of the most fundamental underpinnings.

The idea that all humans have these rights is critical to the political dimension, wherein state actors are responsible for providing such rights to all those within their borders. However, universality is also one of the most important sources of conflict within the understanding of human rights, because it gives rise to relativist arguments. Rights can conflict with one another.

How the rights of women or minorities can be reconciled with the right to practice religion, knowing that some religions actively practice discrimination in various forms, is one of the unresolved tensions of the UN's definition of human rights. Such conflicts arise because both universality and relativism are built into the concept of human rights, and scholars have used a variety of case studies to highlight such conflicts, a classic one being in the Middle East (Halliday, 1995).

Another underpinning is that human rights are of high priority, that is to say that they are trumps, more important that other rights (Nickel, 2014; Wenar, 2015). Human rights are more important than corporate rights, than state rights, and rights that apply to humans but are not among those considered to be universal human rights. Again, this concept is important for the implementation of human rights by state actors, but give rise to conflicts.

An example of such a conflict is that in a democratic state, the people elect officials to set policy. Thus, policy should reflect the will of the people. As Mill argued that one person in disagreement with all other people has equal rights to all the other people, in any political system there is a trade-off between the right of people to determine their own course, and the demand that, say, water or education must be provided for all.

Both are human rights, both can exist in conflict with one another, and there is no resolution yet proffered by the bodies that have taken it upon themselves to declare the definition of human rights. Universalism As universalism is at the root of the modern conception of human rights, it is naturally one of the points where critics examine the notion. The universalist perspective not only holds that human rights are universal, but that they can be defined, and that they are always right.

Such an approach does not leave room for interpretation. This brings about conflict with the ability of cultures to self-determine, where such cultures define their own ideas of human rights differently. The concept of universalism is critical to the idea of human rights, which specifically seeks to protect the rights of minorities, women and other groups to whom such rights have not traditionally been extended -- there are many cases studies tackling this challenge (James, 1994).

The extension of such rights has to some extent been considered a precondition of acceptance into the international community, at least on paper, the idea of human rights being used as a framework for negotiating minority rights in conflict resolution, for example (Ghai, 2000). One criticism of the universalist approach to human rights lies within its strong Western influence. Different cultures have sometimes varying perspectives on the ideas of human rights, and even the ideas that such rights are universal.

Universality is, some view, a Western concept, which without the balance of relativism leads the concept of human rights to be something of a Trojan horse to promote Western values across the world (Renteln, 2013 ). This view is at odds with the fundamental concept of human rights, however. The general idea is that all human have equal rights, that cultures cannot simply pick and choose which people have which rights.

Universalism is necessary to counterbalance the entrenched structures of power and privilege that exist -- that power and privilege do not give any human or any sovereign entity the right to dictate or devolve rights to people. One of the other issues with universalism, something to which relativists cling, is the idea that there is no inherently superior culture in this world.

That each of the world's cultures has arisen from its own context, has its own value, and can reasonably make its own determinations about many issues of rights and justice. The world's different cultures can be compatible with the notion of universal human rights under this thinking. Some cultures, for example, are more collectivist, about community, and it is to the community that human rights accrue. This seems at odds with the universalist approach, which favours the idea that human rights accrue to the individual (Basnet & Albalooshi, 2012).

There is substantial inherent conflict between these two ideas, in particular with respect to the rights of women, to minorities within a community, and to the LGBTQ community with many of the world's societies. Human rights are, in a sense, defined as "human" and not "community" for a reason. It is only in the way such rights are defined that some rights are described more as individual and some more as community -- the human rights concepts are sufficiently vague in their description that both interpretations are reasonable.

Relativism The idea of relativism is therefore embedded in some of the dictates of the Universal Declaration. Societies have the right to self-determination, which goes hand-in-hand with the ability to define themselves. Yet, ultimately, the right to define whether one belongs to a society or not is an individual choice.

It cannot be ascribed by anybody else that one must belong to a society simply because of where he/she was born, or lives, in particular where such a definition would subject that person to discrimination and a denial of other rights. At its core, relativism is optimistic. Relativists seek to see the world as it could be, where different cultures can exist side-by-side and still all maintain basic human rights. The problem with relativism is not in this starry-eyed optimism, but in its practical application.

Relativism inherently places things in context -- what is acceptable in one culture might not be acceptable in another. Without two different views, relativism cannot exist, as there will always need to be multiple variables at play (Baghramanian & Carter, 2015). Relativism stands inherently at odds with universalism precisely because it sees that different cultures, and in particular the differences that define those cultures as valid. Consider the oft-cited case for universalism, the apparent conflict between religious freedom and oppression conducted in the name of religion.

Relativists argue that there is something parochial in proclaiming that adherents of a given religion are inherently discriminated against, rather that they ascribe to their own cultural codes voluntarily. The role that they play within their societies is thus of their own choosing, every bit an expression of free will as any other expression (Abu-Lughod, 2011). A critique of relativism is that it inherently relies on a definition of culture, an area not without its own problems.

For a cultural view to be accepted, that culture and its views need to be defined. A culture can have many defining features, but ultimate self-defines, and can do so in any number of different ways (Cowan, Dembour & Wilson, 2001). The world's cultures are rooted in a variety of geographical, ethnic, religious and other elements. There is no one clear way to define a culture; it is one of those things where those who belong to one recognize it when they see it.

This, ultimately, is difficult to reconcile with the reality that it is the nation-state that is to operationalize the notion of human rights on behalf of its culture, on behalf of all the cultures living within its boundaries -- an important tension in the modern concept of human rights (Santos, 1999). There is often inherent conflict between human rights and local law, regardless of how those rights are conceived at the level of supranational politics (Merry, 2006).

Yet within a nation-state, power structures exist, and those power structures will inherently favour the disposition of resources among some cultures over others. Only by the inalienable rights, by universalism, can the perils of relativism be overcome, become relativism too often denies even fundamental rights, especially when the nation-state and the political people who run it, encourage the shield of relativism for their actions.

Analysis The debate between universalism and relativism that has characterized the topic of human rights since the Universal Declaration ultimately is one between those who see a world with universal truths, and those who see everything within existence as being relative in nature, inherently. Even within the scientific fields, this dualism exists. Scientific truths as said to be absolute, yet we know that even time and space are relative concepts.

The best resolution to this issue, if it is true that these two concepts are incompatible, may lie with finding an entirely different framing. One of the issues with human rights is that it was felt that it needed to be framed as universalist, because of practical reasons. State actors hold particular power, and that power needed to be used to operationalize human rights. If people have the right to education, for example, it was believed that states would have to be responsible for the provision of schools.

Universalism in the context of the UN's Universal Declaration, was never intended as a philosophical matter, but rather a practical one. The difference between the two has been obvious as far back as Aristotle (Bernstein, 1983) yet the debate among scholars of human rights seems not to recognize this, leaving this unresolved issue and inadequate framing of the idea of human rights.

Universalism was a necessary condition for the Universal Declaration because a) the UN is comprised of state actors and they comprise the Universal Declaration's target audience, and b) the Universal Declaration was intended specifically to bring about certain consequences, or social conditions, within each of the world's nations (Nickel, 2014). The reason why it appears that universalism and relativism are irreconcilable is specifically because they are both concepts that can be applied to the same situation.

Inherently, applying two distinct concepts to any one situation will result in differences of interpretation, at least some of the time. Shih (2001) points out that the argument these two philosophies have been called upon to resolve is the fundamental argument of human rights, and that the universalism/relativism debate is a sideshow.

Shih argues that the fundamental question is "whether the forms of human existence and their meanings are decidable." This is to say, when one decides that there are such things as human rights, specific to all humans, one is also deciding that all humans are identical in their existence and meaning. This may not be so -- some humans believe that they are reborn many times, others have just the one existence. Some believe that there is no life but this one, others believe otherwise.

Different concepts of space and time exist in different cultures. These are fundamental differences that cut to the core of what it means to be human. A debate that fails to recognize that there is no one definition of what it means to be human may be a necessary outcome of a human rights concept that has determined the human experience to be equivalent and equal for all.

It may be, given that there are many different ideas of what it means to be human, that both universalism and relativism will need to exist as complementary philosophies for interpreting the idea of human rights.

It has been argued that universalism serves as a check on relativism (Danchin, 2016), knowing that relativism can be used as an excuse to deny rights for some people, to tell them that they deserve their oppression by their nature, as would be the case for women, members of the LGBTQ community, lower castes and other groups who face discrimination based on the nature of their birth.

Relativism, conversely, serves as a buffer against the imposition of Western notions about the nature of life and what it means to be a human being. Donnelly (1984) in fact argues that the juxtaposition of universalism and relativism appears as severe as it does because the extreme forms of these are being compared -- there can be no reconciliation between the two extremes, but there are views that accept elements of both principles.

Indeed, the two extremes are presented as dichotomy, with precious few advocates for a more complex vision of dualism (Rosenfeld, 1999). Renteln (1988) argues such dualism is possible, at least with certain human rights, but the core concept of human rights is that they are universal by nature, and it is not up to any group or body to pick and choose which rights are fundamental human rights. That the UN is a highly-politicized body does not offer any help to those wishing to resolve this central debate about human rights.

Different nations see their membership in the UN differently, with some preferring to use it as a means to an end. The original intent was this as well, of course, but that end was more neoliberal in nature, leading to a more universalist stance. Yet when all nations are invited to the discussion about rights, it can be near impossible to achieve any sort of consensus (Higgins, 1996).

While nations like to agree in principle about human rights, they mainly prefer to control for themselves how such rights are implemented in society. While relativists are earnest in their arguments, universalists are correct in charging that relativism acts as an out for those who wish to continue to deny rights to members of their population. Conclusions It is not likely possible to resolve the debate about universalism and relativism in human rights. The two concepts are opposites.

While some argue that they represent a false dichotomy, or that a resolution lies with a new framework, when looking at this particular framework for what it is, there can be no resolution between a view that rights are universal and a view that reserves the right to interpret rights for itself. Whether that conflict is political, as some universalists charge, or whether it is rooted in the fact that different cultures conceive the nature of humanity differently is open to question. The latter is certainly a.