Rights and wrongs

guardian.co.uk ^ | Jan. 5, 2008 | Brian Whitaker

[forkinsocket]

The view that support for human rights around the world is tantamount to imperialism is based on a series of misconceptions

What - if anything - should we do about human rights abuses in other countries?

This may prove to be one of the key moral and political questions of the 21st century, not just because of the abuses themselves, but because whatever answer we give hinges on our attitude to several of the most crucial issues in international relations today: national sovereignty, cultural differences, the rule of law, globalisation and "liberal intervention" (the new term for what many would regard as an old-fashioned invasion).

Two recent articles on Cif have triggered some highly-polarised debate about this. In the first one, Soumaya Ghannoushi linked western concerns about Muslim women's rights to military imperialism:

"Just as there is a military machine of hegemony, there is a discursive machine of hegemony. When armies move on the ground to conquer and subjugate, they need moral and ideological cover. It is this that gives the dominant narrative of the 'Muslim woman' its raison d'etre."

In the second article, Salam al-Mahadin characterised the promotion of women's rights by westerners more in terms of cultural imperialism:

"Feminist agencies of western origin are, in the eyes of many Muslims, a postcolonial legacy. In the present climate of distrust between the west and the so-called east, there is hardly room for debates surrounding women if the sources of these emancipatory attempts are western feminist agencies.

"Human rights are hardly universal and, honour killings and stoning aside, there is a plethora of 'rights' of profound cultural nuance rendering it almost impossible to decontextualise them; what one western culture deems a gross violation is not so in another culture."

[BenLurkin]

We can’t really concern ourselves with the rights of women in Muslim countries. It is a matter of sovereignty.

But liberating them in the west should be made some kind of priority.

[Billthedrill]

A very interesting article given the source. Most of the commentary immediately devolves into "oh, evil us" but it is clear that the issues underlying can't be dealt with with the usual multisyllabic bromides - "anticolonialism, imperialism" and a pretty good one-two punch "discursive machine of hegemony." People using these terms evidently know, or think they know what they mean, but they use them primarily so the rest of us won't.

Simply put, the article fails in an open discussion of human rights for the same reason as the jargonmongers - it deals in abstractions, not specifics. Everyone is for "human rights" as long as only those rights the speaker intends are involved. Those are never specified.

I'm with the author insofar as the core question - at what level does a belief in a specific human right confer a sort of moral sanction to impose it on those who deny it? Does this stop at an international border? Does it stop at a cultural border? Does it stop at all?

These answers do not appear to reside within the framework of the economic relations loosely termed "globalization," and throwing that term at it serves only to confuse the matter. It is certainly not to be found in the amoral, corrupt framework of international diplomacy. The hope that it may be found in the philosophical heights of the secular academy results in precisely the sort of turgid mumbo-jumbo typified by "discursive machine of hegemony" - simply more vapid words that echo like mighty boulders clashing one against the other in seminars and conferences and turn out to be the actual semantic equivalent of pea gravel rattling in a tin can. Sound and fury all right, plenty of that, and signifying nothing.

We are led ineluctably to the source of human rights residing in that spiritual realm that is captured in religion. That is exactly the opposite direction intended by the relentlessly secular, and for good reason - it presents us with its own set of difficulties. Whose religion will act as the template? Is there room for compromise, or is the fact that religion is the source of human rights inherently limiting the nature of those rights to those expressed within the dominant religion?

These are serious problems, and papering them over with jargon isn't helping. The most effective method for the expression and defense of human rights is the sort of social contract typified by the Constitution, but its own authors stoutly proclaimed that the Constitution was not the source of those rights, only a formal recognition of them.

Inasmuch as there is no international equivalent of any such social contract (and I thank God for it) I am skeptical not only of the ability of the believers in universal human rights to enforce them, but also of their very existence. I'd love to be wrong about that, but it certainly doesn't look to be the way the world works. IMHO, of course, and subject to intense disagreement by people I respect. As usual.

[SatinDoll]

We in the west tend to believe that personal liberty is a universally held value. It isn’t, particularly in countries which have a tribal cultural background.

The one thing that we can do is encourage national freedom, which is accepted almost globally, and from there teach peoples of other nations how to grow their economies and put into place laws concerning property rights. It is truly staggering how many nations we believe to be ancient, like Egypt and China, have no system for transferring property, such as deeds. Property rights is the well-spring for individual liberty. That is how it happened here in the United States, and then into Europe.