Universal Human Rights Essay

857 Words4 Pages

Universal Human Rights Are Fundamental To Civilization

Dylan Cicotte

English 12

Zarzycki/Period 6

2/18/18

All humans regardless of where they live and how they live must be guaranteed basic and globally understood human rights. While it is insane to believe all countries and cultures must adhere to a singular and absolute definition of human rights, it is similarly insane to believe that certain rights are not guaranteed to a person due to the culture and/or country they live in.

Human rights as we know it should be a globally protected and understood issue. In some countries, a fair trial is not a fundamental right nor is free speech itself. It is irrational of one to believe that rights such as these should be guaranteed …show more content…

Such examples that come to mind are the right to bear arms, abortion rights, and the death penalty. How the death penalty is executed is a different matter however; but, I digress. One criticism of the current international standard for human rights is “Non-Western concepts of human dignity are excluded from the UN declaration. This is a continuation of the epistemic racism that characterised Western colonial designs from the Rights of People to the Rights of Man and human rights - all defined from within the Western tradition of thought in exclusion, subordination and inferiorization of non-Western epistemologies.” (Farouk, 2017, pg 13) Situations involving the violation of human rights also tends only to intervened in when non-Western or Western-aligned nations are concerned. For example, Western nations turn a blind eye to the treatment of Palestinians within Israel, however political dissonants in Russia being prosecuted has led to heavy criticization by the Western community as well as heavy sanctions, although this was also due in part to other issues as well. Another prime example would be Iraq, which had a brutal military dictatorship which violated many human rights, but had a blind eye turned towards these facts as it was fighting Iran, a Western enemy. After this, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, a Western ally, Kuwait was subsequently fought for, and Iraq had its dictatorship toppled with its abuses now being acknowledged by the international

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