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Theories Of Human Rights

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ASIAN VALUES AND HUMAN RIGHTS:
A CASE FOR UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ASIA

MIDTERM PAPER:
HUMAN RIGHTS AND GENDER STUDIES

ZIVYA SYIFA HUSNAYAIN
016201200114
IR DEFENSE-2 2012
The origin of modern human rights can be traced back as far as John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government in 1688, which stated that rulers are bound by their citizen’s natural rights to life, liberty, and estates (Donnelly, 1999). Despite a major flaw in its universality (Locke’s natural rights theory is not applicable to women, servants, and wage labourers), Second Treatise of Government, along with the Magna Carta (1215) have established a basis for several other early human rights documents, including the American Declaration of Independence (1776) …show more content…

These rights, which include the rights to life, rights to self-determination, rights to equality of rights without discrimination, among several other rights, are characterized by their universality; they apply to all human beings, regardless of their race, sex, sexual orientation, or nationality (United Nations General Assembly, 1948). The notion of the universality of human rights, however, is a subject of various heated debates, which began during the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, on June 1993 (Kirchschläger, 2011). Several states, headed by People’s Republic of China, Syria, Cuba, and Iran, argued that the interpretation of human rights should be left to each state’s discretion, and that the so-called ‘universality’ of human rights is merely an attempt to impose Western values and to interfere with the internal affairs of other states in the name of the protection of human rights (Riding, 1993). The Singaporean Minister for Foreign Affair, Mr Wong Kan Seng, warned that, “Universal recognition of the ideal of human rights can be harmful if universalism is used to deny or mask the reality of diversity.” He was backed up by the Foreign Minister of the People’s

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