Universality Of Human Rights

3653 Words15 Pages
Are Human Rights Really Universal? Research Paper Outline • Introduction • Criticism on the Declaration o Islamic criticism o African/Asian criticism • Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights just a western idea? o History human rights and of the Declaration • Authors of the Declaration • Why are human rights more often violated in some countries than other countries? o Implementation in national law o Different interpretation? o Other reasons? • Conclusion Introduction Throughout the past centuries we have seen a huge development of human rights. The first documentation of Human Rights that we know of dates back to 539 BC. Many centuries later, on 10 December 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the human rights we are familiar with right now, was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. With the adoption of this declaration, all basic human rights of all persons, such as the right to life, liberty and security of person (Art. 3, UDHR), were written down and thereby made official. However, soon after this adoption questions concerning the universality of this Declaration arose. How could universal human rights possibly exist in a world that has so many different countries with each country having its own history and with each country having an endless amount of different people, religions and cultures? It was said by many people, mainly of non-Western countries, that this Declaration was just a way of imposing the Western culture, ideas and morals upon the non-Western world. The culture of non-Western countries was according to many people not enough taken into account when drafting the UDHR. After all, if only the Western norms, culture and rules have been taken into account, then this could explain why the non-Western world does not as easily abide by the declaration and why the biggest percentage of
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