Abstract:
Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a proliferation
of international human rights treaties, both within the United Nations
system as well as at the regional level. These instruments are aimed at
protecting individual rights and are based on the principle of universality.1
They depart from the premise that the rights they guarantee apply to
all individuals everywhere, regardless of factors such as race, ethnicity,
gender, language, religion, national or social origin. The rights in these
instruments are intended to transcend different cultures and societies
and it is accepted that ratifying states are endorsing instruments that
concretise universal values for all individuals on their territory. These
human rights instruments seem, by their very nature, to be irreconcilable
with arguments that the applicability of human rights depends on the
cultural context and/or that human rights are attributed to groups rather
than individuals.
Description:
The research for this article was undertaken as a fellow at the
Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities ‘Law as Culture’,
Bonn, Germany.