modern times, these are embodied in purest form in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR; originating in Paris at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in December 1948).46 The document asserts:
recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world … [D]isregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.
Here, core notions of equality, justice, freedom, peace, dignity and rights are all brought centre stage in a document that haunts all major contemporary humanist thought and writing. In one clear sense, this movement for ‘rights’ can be seen as a tremendous success; it has established a universal language that has gradually moved across the world over the past half century. And there is much evidence of a sort of success: a ‘justice cascade’.47 The world has become infused with a human rights culture, some even claiming that it has radically changed the nature of our human world. With the idea of rights, humanity has been given a major common language, an equality of dignity for all. And it has provided a strategy for political change that has already had far-reaching consequences for the lives of many peoples all around the world.48 Given that the document was only introduced seventy years ago, it has achieved much, and for a wide variety of groups. Box 1.2 suggests a little of this.
Despite considerable achievements in a very short period of time, human rights are under attack from many directions. First, some major countries (including Russia and China) have in practice shown little interest or regard for human rights (they also take little interest in the United Nations or use it for their own ends). Most recently, the USA, under President Donald Trump, stopped using the language of rights; Trump publicly expressed his dislike of the UN on a number of occasions, even withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO). But there have also been many schisms and factions within the UN, leading to blocks of voting against rights. For example, although there has been considerable action for women’s world rights, there have also been alliances between Catholic and Muslim countries to prevent advances on certain issues (like health and reproductive rights). Likewise, gay and lesbian issues are on the agenda, as are protocols from the Yogyakarta Principles; but religious alliance (between Muslims and Christians) have again prevented any advance in this area.
Many academics have also highlighted human rights failures. Samuel Moyn claims that human rights campaigns have deflected attention from world inequalities; Philip Cunliffe suggests they have led to a cosmopolitan dystopia; and Stephen Hopgood suggests: ‘We are on the verge of the imminent decay of the Global Human Rights Regime.’51 But most seriously, human rights are seen as a Western invention, another form of colonialism, forcing many countries once more to fall in line with Western ideals. This means that, for example, although the struggles faced by non-Western women are different from those of Western women, they are being colonized by Western rights feminism. Likewise, the Western way of being gay, lesbian and queer is being universalized. Specific cultural differences and problems of being a woman or gay become undermined as the world is shaped by the ideals of Western feminists and queers. In addition, indigenous peoples have not, until very recently, been recognized as having rights.52
Box 1.2: An expanding concern over human rights
Debates on ‘rights’ have expanded from individual rights to collective rights;49 and this has meant the gradual inclusion of different groups and people into the official world orbit of what it means to be human, alongside the monitoring of their progress. Full of controversy, they are still not always fully recognized in practice.50
Children In 1946, UNICEF was established; in 1959, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child; in 1989, Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Women International Year of Women, 1975; Decade of Women, 1976–85. The Beijing Platform for Action, adopted at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, included ‘the elimination of all forms of violence against women’ as a key objective. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the 23rd special session of the UN General Assembly, 2000. The creation of UN Women, and the monitoring of their progress in the world: https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/brief-survey-womens-rights.
Ethnic persons In 1969, the UN International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Discrimination/Pages/discrimination_racial.aspx.
Disabled persons In 2006, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPDS) was adopted, to eliminate disability discrimination round the world (that is, for roughly 1 million people, 15 per cent of the world’s population): https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Discrimination/Pages/discrimination_disabilities.aspx.
Refugees The 1951 Refugee Convention: https://www.unhcr.org/uk/1951-refugee-convention.html. And its 1967 Protocol, which defines the rights and duties of refugees.
Indigenous persons In 2007, the UN adopts the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP): https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Discrimination/Pages/discrimination_indigenous.aspx. Publication of a major report, State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (4 vols, 2009–19). Survival International formed in 1969.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender persons In 2011, Human Rights Council and Resolutions on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Discrimination/Pages/LGBT.aspx. The Yogyakarta Principles, originally launched in 2007 (UNHRC).
So it is a complex problem. As rights are argued for, so traditional Western modes are established. As rights are critiqued, so they become undermined. And with this, so too the quest for humanity. Critical humanism recognizes the failings of rights theory and work, but claims that human rights have only been taken seriously for a couple of generations. There are many future battles to be fought for the strong and vital future of human rights.
Humanism as dignity
Closely intertwined with ideas of rights are ideas of equality and dignity. Dignity has featured in discussions of humanity over the centuries. Most religions and discussions of ‘human nature’ will at some point raise the issue of human dignity. Closely linked to ideas of honour, dignity involves the right of all people to be equally recognized, respected and given worth as human beings. It is a claim that can be found in Cicero; it is developed in much religious writing; it gets its humanist flourishing from the 24-year-old Pico della Mirandola in his Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486); it is central to Kant’s belief in human agency; and, as we have seen, it has been embedded in most of the fundamental human rights documents since the 1940s: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ Versions of dignity can be found across cultures, originating as a term for those with elevated status from China to Persia, who required respectful treatment, but trickling down from this bourgeois use to the masses.
That
