SIXTY-FIVE years ago, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
On Dec 10, 1948, when the UDHR was put to vote, the UN had 58 member states. It was adopted by 48 votes, with eight abstentions (South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Byelorussia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Yugoslavia) and none opposed. Two countries (Honduras and Yemen) were absent.
The task of drafting the UDHR took two years to complete, and it is the only official international document with the title “Universal”, as it was meant to be morally binding on everyone and not only the governments that voted for its adoption.
The goal was not the affirmation of one and the same conception of the world, of man and of knowledge. Article 1 of the UDHR asserts: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience, and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” The first line of the article neither refers to nature nor God, and leaves it to each culture to share its own account of the philosophical underpinnings of being human.
The UDHR was drafted to present a framework embodying only the most basic ideas to be supplemented and elaborated by different nations, in their own ways.
To illustrate, Article 3 of the UDHR, which states that “(e)veryone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”, reflects the decision of the Human Rights Commission to state the general principle without taking an explicit position on either abortion, euthanasia or the death penalty.
In a culturally diverse world, what is the role of culture in defining the parameters of the application of human rights?
Cultural relativism is the assertion that human rights, far from being universal, vary a great deal, depending on the introduction of different cultural perspectives. For the purposes of this article, a broad understanding of culture is adopted, so as to encompass religion. In other words, culture, in this context, refers to a way of life.
In Islam, man’s dignity is an affirmation of God’s love for human beings. Islam constitutes the guide and the way of life for those who submit their life to Allah. A Muslim is committed to following this way of life, to bear witness to it by word and deed, and to strive to make it prevail in the world. The idea of human duties is, for Islam and syariah, inextricably integrated into every facet of life.
There is, however, increasing literature on Islam and human rights, which claim that certain syariah-based duties, as interpreted 1,400 years ago, appear to contradict human rights in the present century. The examples, in particular, are cited in the arenas of discrimination against women, freedom of religion and apostasy.
In response to a tendency on the part of human rights advocates to impose a standardised way of thinking and a single way of life, it may be argued that the development of the human personality need not be applied in one specific manner for all communities. Not only do rights conferred on an individual entail individual liberty, but they confer duties and responsibilities on the community at large, as well.
There is the idea of duty, which recognises the interests of others as coming before one’s own. It is this duty that governs the parameters of human rights of a person claiming to exercise rights. It is essential for human duties to be envisaged in relation not only to the state, but also the different social groups to which one belongs, including religion, whose sanctioned modes of life shape one’s behaviour.
The UDHR does not elaborate on the meaning, origin and enumeration of such duties, so much so, that they are open to interpretation and incorporation, according to varying religious norms.
It was observed by J.M. Kelly in A Short History of Western Legal Theory (1992) that human rights, as perceived and applied in the Occident, trace their ancestry to the philosophical and intellectual development starting from the moral theories of natural law of the ancient Greeks and Stoics, and continuing with the divinely appointed natural law of Aquinas and the medieval Catholic.
The Renaissance period saw two major events that influenced intellectual life: the revival of the Graeco-Roman tradition in art and literature, which influenced the disintegration of the old Catholic unity of Western Europe, and the Protestant Reformation. Both events led to the secularisation of public life and the emancipation of the individual from spiritual control.
There was reduced stress to confront the new state with universal religious or moral norms, but the shift heightened the emphasis on confronting the state with the freedoms of the individual. The central theme is that all people have certain inherent natural rights, such as “life, liberty and happiness”, which are not dependent on a sovereign grant or legislative action.
The idea of a transcendent system of values was gradually disassociated from Christianity, which had previously given it shape, and acquired a secular existence of its own, based on reason. While the medieval Christian knew a theory of natural law that stressed on man’s duties to his sovereign or to his fellow men, a system of values based on reason gave new meaning by encompassing man’s rights, independent and autonomous of his sovereign. The stress on the unique importance of the individual led not only to a change of emphasis from natural law to natural rights, but also from man’s duties to that of man’s rights.
The human rights movement in the Occident is based on the tenets of liberal democracy and is a natural product of this political system. There are two different roots of democracy, as embodied in the Occident. The first is the universal desire of people to manage their own affairs or, at least, to have a say in who manages their affairs.
The second root is that of liberalism, defined as a set of social and political beliefs, attitudes and values that assumes the universal and equal application of the law and the existence of basic human rights superior to those of state and community. It implies that the state’s interests cannot override those of the citizenry.
Liberalism affirms the basic worth of individuals, their thoughts and their desires. In the liberal canon, no one person, whether king or majority, has the right to direct or dictate to people how to think or even act (except in instances of imminent threats to social wellbeing).
During the drafting of the UDHR, one of the lengthiest and most heated debates involved political philosophy, including the fundamental question whether the human person comes first, or society. In the end, the UDHR reflects a vision of ordered liberty, grounded in an understanding of human beings as both individual and social. The reference to “the community in which alone the free and full development of the personality is possible” in Article 29(1) is an important recognition of the role of the community, which is often misconceived as the epitome of individualism.
The UDHR is silent on the meaning of “community” in the provision cited above. Thus, a community may be based on religious affiliation, cultural affinity, demography, the state, the international community or mankind.
In conclusion, although the UDHR was adopted in 1948 as “a common standard for achievement for all peoples and all nations”, the parameters of human rights are absolutely dependent on man’s acceptance of human duties and their application, which are shaped and defined by religious, legal and political discourses.
Thus, in any discussion of the parameters of human rights that entails, inevitably, the issues of the state, religion and human duties, it cannot be presupposed that the UDHR requires the separation of religion and state, nor can it be assumed that syariah necessarily stands in conflict with human rights norms.
The UDHR offers a framework succinctly definite to enjoy true significance, both as an inspiration and a guide, but sufficiently general and flexible to apply to all men. What was sought by its drafters was not cultural hegemony, but cultural diversity, for guidance in human action and behaviour.
The UDHR accommodates divergent religions, philosophies and even economic, social and political theories, allowing their contributions to the delineation of the parameters of human rights embodied therein. Human rights, in terms of their parameters, are not a one-size-fits-all concept and must be seen through the context of a country’s political, social and cultural dimensions.
After all, the UDHR 1948 is, indeed, not a culture unto itself.