The Assault on Universal Human Rights from Intercultural Education: Myths, Facts and a Defence

Abstract

This paper explores the controversial issue of the extent to which human rights values are universal and applicable within all cultural contexts across the contemporary world. It evaluates three claims that are commonly made by those working in the field of intercultural education: (i) because human rights are a product of Western ways of thinking, they are incompatible with the values and norms of non-Western cultures; (ii) applying human rights to non-Western cultures is culturally insensitive and a form of cultural imperialism; and (iii) human rights are based on an individualistic conception of the human being and are therefore inappropriate for collectivistic cultures. This paper provides a critical review of all three claims, with the aim of evaluating each of them in turn. The review reveals that the claim that human rights are incompatible with the values and norms of non-Western cultures is both factually incorrect and analytically problematic; that historically, the contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were shaped and endorsed by both Western and non-Western actors; and that human rights are based on a collectivistic and communitarian—not an individualistic—conception of the human being. It is argued that the approach to human rights that is compatible with these conclusions is relative universalism, according to which the implementation of human rights principles should always display flexibility so that cultural specificities can be appropriately balanced against the general principles of universal human rights. Two further issues that are also discussed are the organised hypocrisy in the policies of many Western governments in relationship to human rights and the need for greater material equality to ensure the effective implementation of human rights. The conclusion that is drawn from the review is that there is no ethical dilemma for those working in the field of intercultural education in embracing and endorsing universal human rights, that a culturally sensitive approach can, and indeed should, be adopted in applying universal human rights principles in all cultural contexts, and that the assault on universal human rights from intercultural education is based on widely repeated misunderstandings and myths about human rights.

1. Introduction

At meetings and conferences on intercultural education, including intercultural citizenship education, it has become commonplace to hear people express negative views about universal human rights. These views typically rest on assumptions about the historical origins of human rights, especially the assumption that universal human rights are a product of Western ways of thinking and that, because of these origins, human rights are incompatible with the values and norms of non-Western cultures. On this basis, it is often concluded that applying human rights to non-Western cultures is culturally insensitive and inappropriate. Advocates of this point of view frequently state that this is particularly true in the case of applying human rights standards to collectivistic cultures, because human rights are grounded in an individualistic rather than a collectivistic conception of the human being.

Sometimes the argument goes further, claiming that, when Western powers and institutions try to impose human rights standards onto non-Western cultures, they are engaging in cultural imperialism, imposing their own cultural values onto cultures for which they are inappropriate. This cultural imperialism then perpetuates historical power imbalances and relationships and also undermines the autonomy of non-Western cultures and fails to respect the values that are held by people within those cultures. In short, the argument is made that Western powers and institutions are ethnocentric and assume that Western values are superior and should therefore be adopted universally, ignoring the diversity of cultural perspectives and values that exist elsewhere in the world.

These commonplace views about universal human rights also appear in the academic literature within the field of intercultural education, acquiring traction and a more authoritative status as a consequence. For example, Dervin (2016) devotes an entire chapter of his book on interculturality in education to the topic of ‘Interculturality and the ‘fragilities’ of human rights’. Endorsing the approach to universal human rights adopted by Santos (2009, 2015), Dervin notes that Santos is “worried about” (p. 60) the fact that human rights are treated as being universally valid irrespective of the specific social, political and cultural context in which they operate, that human rights are often based on an individualistic conception of human nature, and that what counts as human rights is defined by universal declarations, multilateral institutions and North-based/Western non-governmental organisations. Dervin goes on to endorse the view of Santos (2009) that human rights discourses reproduce asymmetries of power deriving from the neo-imperial and neo-colonial world order, and that “‘Western’ notions of human rights can facilitate imperialism and the proliferation of misery” (p. 60). However, it is striking that all of these propositions are baldly asserted without any argument, evidence, justification or explanation. Indeed, it is noteworthy that these propositions all appear in just a single paragraph consisting of only 19 lines of text containing four sentences in total. Given the magnitude and practical significance of the claims that are being made about universal human rights, this is minimalistic treatment in the extreme (the remainder of Dervin’s chapter is instead devoted to a discussion of discourses of human rights among politicians and supranational organisations and in education, without addressing or commenting further on any of the propositions stated in this paragraph on page 60).

Because Dervin draws so heavily on Santos (2009, 2015), one might assume that all of these claims are instead substantiated with relevant evidence and reasoned arguments in Santos’ original texts (which propose a counterhegemonic intercultural approach to human rights, in contradistinction to an approach based on universal human rights). However, if one turns to these publications, one searches in vain for evidence or arguments to support the claims that are repeated by Dervin in his book. Instead, all that one finds are statements such as these, which are similarly baldly asserted without any evidence, arguments, justifications, references or footnotes to other scholarly work to back up the claims that they make: human rights “are premised upon a conception of human nature as individual” (Santos 2009, p. 3); “Human rights are individualistic, secular, culturally Western-centric” (Santos 2015, p. xiv); and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “had very little to do with the realities of the ‘non-Western world’” (Santos 2015, p. 88). All of these assertions are presented as self-evident truths without any further discussion.

2. Aims and Methodological Approach

This paper provides a critical review and analysis of three specific claims that are commonly repeated and perpetuated within the world of intercultural scholarship, as exemplified by the writings of Dervin (2016) and Santos (2009, 2015):

(i)

The claim that because human rights are a product of Western ways of thinking, they are incompatible with the values and norms of non-Western cultures.

(ii)

The claim that applying human rights to non-Western cultures is culturally insensitive and a form of cultural imperialism.

(iii)

The claim that human rights are based on an individualistic conception of the human being and are therefore inappropriate for collectivistic cultures.

Examining these three claims is important because of the established hegemony of human rights discourse, especially within international law where human rights currently provide a dominant legal and normative framework that influences the operation of many global institutions (Evans 2005; Buckel and Fischer-Lescano 2009). If these three claims are true, this outcome would significantly undermine the legitimacy of this hegemony. Hence the importance of the present analysis, which seeks to establish whether or not these three claims are true.

The present analysis takes the form of a critical review. The purpose of a critical review is to critically evaluate theoretical claims and/or empirical research on a particular topic. Methodologically, a critical review goes beyond mere description and instead focuses on analysis and evaluation, with the aim of developing a clearer conceptual understanding of the topic under investigation (Grant and Booth 2009). Unlike a systematic review, a scoping review or a meta-analysis, a critical review does not involve exhaustive comprehensive searching. Instead, the search strategy is selective and purposive, drawing on the most significant publications in the field that are relevant to the topic under consideration. It involves presenting, analysing and synthesising material from diverse sources and extracting their insights for the purpose of evaluating the theoretical claims or empirical research under scrutiny.

The overarching research question that was addressed in the current critical review therefore was: to what extent are the three claims listed above true? The review begins by examining, analysing and evaluating the first claim.

3. The Claim That Because Human Rights Are a Product of Western Ways of Thinking, They Are Incompatible with the Values and Norms of Non-Western Cultures

As Donnelly (2013) observes, human rights, as a matter of historical fact, did first develop in the West. This is because the conceptualisation of human rights that appears in international declarations and conventions on human rights draws directly on concepts that were first developed by Western philosophers.

Some of the key figures in this historical development were:

• John Locke (1632–1704), who argued that men have natural rights to life, health, liberty, estate (property), equality and self-preservation, which should be limited only by the obligation to respect the natural rights of others (Locke [1689] 2003);
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who argued that everyone has an innate right to freedom by virtue of their humanity, and that this right enables them to choose and pursue their own goals provided they do not infringe the rights of others or violate ethical principles (Kant [1785] 2005, [1797] 2017);
• Thomas Paine (1737–1809), who argued for equal rights among citizens, that there are natural rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom from persecution, that revolution is permitted when governments violate the rights of man and that the rights of man are universal (Paine [1791–1792] 1999);
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), who argued that women are not inferior to men, that they should have the same rights as men and should have the same access to education as men and that men should not decide what is best for women (Wollstonecraft [1792] 2004);
• John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), who argued that rights help to protect pre-eminent goods that are especially important to people, that women have the same rights as men, that rights should be protected by rules, that restrictions on behaviour are only permissible if they help to prevent harm to others and that honouring people’s rights helps to promote the common good (Mill [1859] 2006, [1861] 1998).

This intellectual history was accompanied by numerous political declarations of rights in the West, including the American Declaration of Independence (1776), which stated that “All men … are endowed … with certain inalienable rights; … among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), which stated that “Men … are free and equal in rights” and “the natural and inalienable rights of man … are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.”

In short, there is a long and rich tradition of thinking about human rights in the West. Furthermore, it is clear that this intellectual tradition did indeed feed directly into the formulation of human rights declarations, conventions and covenants in the twentieth century (Cruft et al. 2015).

However, it does not follow from this fact that human rights, thus conceptualised, are incompatible with non-Western cultures. Indeed, because of the very strong claims that have been made about the inappropriateness of applying human rights to non-Western cultures, there is now an enormous research literature on the compatibility of human rights values with Asian, Islamic and Ubuntu cultures. Just a few of the many papers and books addressing this issue are those by Angle (2002, 2012); Ahmad (2006); An-Na’im (1990); Bauer and Bell (1999); Chan (1999, 2002); Inoue (1999); Johnston (2015); Lo (1948); Mawdudi ([1977] 1995); Mayer (2013); Metz (2011); Nicolaides (2022); Nirmal (2003); Onuma (1999); Sen (1996, 1997, 1999); Sim (2004); Singh (2009); Tu (1998); Zakaria (1986).

Interestingly for such a large body of research, a broad common conclusion does emerge from virtually all of these scholars. This conclusion is that human rights are not inherently incompatible with Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Confucian and Ubuntu cultures. Moreover, the claim has been made by some scholars that expressions of the equivalent of human rights can actually be found in some of these cultures more than 2000 years ago. For example, both Nirmal (2003) and Sen (1997) argue that some human rights were already specified in the edicts of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka, who lived in India from 304–232 BCE. Similarly, Lo (1948) states that the idea of human rights developed very early in China, especially the right of the people to revolt against unjust and oppressive rulers, and he points out that the Confucian philosopher Mencius (372–289 BCE) strongly maintained this principle. Lo further argues that early Chinese ethical teaching emphasised the importance of regarding all one’s fellow men as having the same desires and the same rights as one would like to enjoy oneself (see also Chan 1999 and Angle 2002, 2012, who similarly argue for the compatibility of Confucianism and human rights).

In short, the bulk of scholarly opinion is that human rights are not inherently incompatible with Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Confucian and Ubuntu cultures. However, several authors note that an impediment to recognizing the compatibility of human rights with non-Western cultures is the fact that the rights that are affirmed within these cultures have not traditionally been expressed using the terminology of human rights. For example, Lo (1948) notes that early translators of Western political philosophers into Chinese struggled to find a Chinese equivalent for the term ‘rights’ but this “of course does not mean that the Chinese never claimed human rights or enjoyed the basic rights of man” (p. 185). Likewise, Singh (2009) observes that classical Sanskrit does not have an expression corresponding to the term ‘human rights’; however, he notes that moral behaviour, the importance of duty and good conduct, particularly towards those who are suffering and in need, are present throughout Hindu scriptures. Singh argues that the concept of ‘duty’ (‘dharma’) in Hindu thought in fact provides the basis of universal human rights, even though such rights are not explicitly labelled as such in the Indian tradition. Singh’s argument rests on the fact that rights and duties are inherently and reciprocally interlinked. This is an important point to which this paper will return later.

The predominant conclusion that can be drawn from this very large body of research is that the claim that human rights—because of their Western intellectual origins—are incompatible with the values and norms of non-Western cultures, is factually incorrect. In addition, some scholars argue that this claim is also analytically problematic because it is founded on the idea that there are specific values and norms that characterise entire groups of non-Western cultures. For example, it has often been claimed that there are ‘Asian values’, which include valuing family and community, social harmony, duty, loyalty, trust, respect for authority, humility, etc., rather than the rights of the individual (for discussions, see Bauer and Bell 1999; Sen 1997; Talbott 2005). However, there are serious problems with such a contention. As Sen puts it:

“The size of Asia, where about 60% of the total world population lives, is itself a problem. What can we take to be the values of so vast a region, with such diversity? There are no quintessential values that apply to this immensely large and heterogeneous population, that differentiate Asians as a group from people in the rest of the world. The temptation to see Asia as one unit reveals, in fact, a distinctly Eurocentric perspective.” (Sen 1997, pp. 173–4)

Other scholars, such as Inoue (1999), have gone further and argued that to claim that there are ‘Asian values’ is essentialist and Orientalist, ascribing a single cultural essence to the whole of Asia. In other words, it ignores the sheer internal diversity and cultural heterogeneity that exists within Asia. Inoue further argues that this Orientalist perspective is not only both factually and analytically incorrect but also very dangerous, because it tempts political leaders in Asia to discourage, oppose and suppress citizens’ demands for human rights. This conclusion is supported by both Bauer and Bell (1999) and Sen (1997) who argue that, in the ‘Asian values’ debate, culture is often no more than a convenient excuse that is used by authoritarian leaders in Asia to systematically violate the rights of citizens within their countries.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the widespread agreement in the scholarly literature that human rights are compatible with the values and norms of non-Western cultures, this compatibility has been recognized for over 70 years in fields of research other than intercultural education. Explicit affirmation of this compatibility first appeared in 1948, when UNESCO conducted a worldwide survey of prominent intellectuals, political leaders, theologians and social activists to elicit their views on the idea of a universal declaration of human rights. Because the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was underway at the time, UNESCO was specifically interested to find out whether it would be possible to identify rights that could be applicable across all the world’s diverse cultures. The respondents in the survey included, amongst others, Mahatma Gandhi, Humayun Kabir, S.V. Puntambekar, Salvador de Madariaga, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Benedetto Croce, Jacques Maritain and Aldous Huxley, as well as Chung-Shu Lo whose views on the compatibility between Confucianism and human rights were noted above.

The report on the survey (UNESCO 1948) contains a selection of 31 of the responses that were received. The report reveals that the survey captured a wide spectrum of views about human rights from a variety of different cultural perspectives. Consistent with the research discussed above, many of the respondents from non-Western cultures stated that human rights were present within their cultural traditions but were not expressed using the language of human rights. In addition, the lists of specific human rights provided by the respondents from their own cultural perspectives were very similar, despite the wide diversity of perspectives that were captured.

In commenting on the findings, Maritain (1948) noted that, despite the consensus that appeared across the respondents on specific rights, the rationales that were given in support of those rights varied considerably depending on the cultural background of each respondent. The conclusion which he drew from the survey was that it is possible to obtain agreement across cultures on the specific rights that should be included within a UDHR, but that the underlying philosophical, religious, moral or political justification of those rights varied profoundly across cultures. In other words, there was what has since come to be called an ‘overlapping consensus’ (Rawls 1996) on human rights, in which there is substantial agreement about which rights are universally applicable despite profound variations in the rationales and justifications of those rights within different cultural traditions (for further discussion, see Donnelly 2013; see also the discussion by Frick 2019 on ‘foundational pluralism’).

As a final note on the claim that, because human rights were developed in the West, they are incompatible with non-Western cultures, it is pertinent to note some findings that were obtained in an international study conducted by Open Society Foundations (2023). In this study, 36,344 respondents from 30 countries were surveyed. The sample included countries from the G7, G20, V20 and BRICS, as well as low-income, lower middle-income, upper middle-income and high-income countries. Two of the questions in the survey asked respondents whether, in their view, “Human rights have been a force for good in the world” and whether “Human rights reflect values that I believe in”.

Table 1. The percentage of respondents in each country who believe that human rights have been a force for good in the world and who believe that human rights reflect values that they believe in (figures taken from Open Society Foundations 2023).

Human Rights Have Been a Force for Good in the World		Human Rights Reflect Values That I Believe in
Country	Percentage Agreement	Country	Percentage Agreement
Bangladesh	88	Nigeria	86
Nigeria	86	Kenya	85
Kenya	84	Bangladesh	82
Egypt	82	Colombia	82
Pakistan	81	Ethiopia	82
India	81	India	80
Colombia	81	South Africa	79
Ghana	78	Ghana	78
Ethiopia	77	Pakistan	78
Italy	76	Italy	76
Sri Lanka	74	Mexico	74
South Africa	74	USA	73
Turkey	73	Egypt	72
UAE	72	Argentina	71
Senegal	72	Poland	71
Mexico	71	Turkey	71
Argentina	71	UAE	71
USA	70	Malaysia	70
Poland	69	Sri Lanka	69
China	69	Tunisia	69
Tunisia	68	Brazil	67
Saudi Arabia	67	Senegal	66
Malaysia	67	Ukraine	66
Ukraine	66	France	65
Brazil	66	UK	65
UK	65	Germany	63
France	65	China	62
Russia	63	Russia	62
Germany	51	Saudi Arabia	62
Japan	45	Japan	34

shows the overall levels of agreement with each of these two statements in each country.

It should be noted that virtually all of the countries that appear in the top half of both columns in the table are not Western/Global North countries (Italy being a notable exception). Furthermore, the UK, France and Germany, all of which are Western/Global North countries, appear towards the bottom of both columns. These figures strongly support the contention that human rights values are not incompatible with cultural values in non-Western/Global South countries. In other words, the claim that is so widespread among interculturalists—that human rights are incompatible with non-Western cultures because they originated in the West—is incorrect.

4. The Claim That Applying Human Rights to Non-Western Cultures Is Culturally Insensitive and a Form of Cultural Imperialism

Turning now to the second claim about human rights that is prevalent amongst interculturalists, a completely different approach will be taken by describing how the specific rights that are included in the UDHR were selected for inclusion in the Declaration. The history of the drafting of the UDHR reveals that representatives from non-Western/Global South countries actually played a central if not determining role in the drafting of the Declaration and making decisions about its contents, as well as in the subsequent formal approval and adoption of the UDHR.

The drafting of the UDHR was entrusted to the UN’s Commission on Human Rights, which consisted of representatives from the following member states of the UN: Australia, Belgium, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Chile, China, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Lebanon, Panama, Philippines, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Yugoslavia (United Nations 1947). It is pertinent to the present discussion to note that 9 of the 18 countries that participated in the drafting of the UDHR were non-Western or Global South countries, namely Chile, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Lebanon, Panama, Philippines and Uruguay.

There are several scholarly accounts available of the discussions that took place at the meetings of the Human Rights Commission (see, for example, Glendon 2001; Morsink 1999; Neier 2020). These accounts concur in identifying the key figures in the drafting of the text of the UDHR as being: René Cassin (France), Peng-chun Chang (China), Charles Habib Malik (Lebanon), Carlos Romulo (Philippines) and Hernán Santa Cruz (Chile). It should be noted that Cassin was the only figure out of the five from a Western/Global North country. In addition, at its first meeting, the Commission elected the US representative, Eleanor Roosevelt, as its chair. However, her activity was focused more on international diplomacy and keeping the proceedings of the Commission on course, rather than the specific wording of the Declaration. As Morsink (1999) observes, “she made the unique contribution of serving as a buffer between the two Cold War camps. In the years 1946–1948 there was no other public figure dedicated to the cause of human rights who was respected and trusted by both of the great powers” (p. 31). Glendon (2001) similarly notes that one of Roosevelt’s greatest contributions to the work of the Commission “consisted of fostering and providing a setting for cross-cultural understanding” (p. 114), which proved critical for retaining the cooperation and engagement of the East European Communist representatives in the drafting of the UDHR. In addition, her “boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm kept the proceedings on track … and what she stood for made her as Chair of the Commission a perfect focus for conciliation” (Morsink 1999, p. 32). The final noteworthy figure involved in the work of the Commission was John Humphrey, a Canadian international lawyer, who was the Director of the UN Secretariat’s Division for Human Rights; however, as a member of the UN Secretariat, he did not have any voting rights on the Commission.

Detailed accounts of the drafting process are provided by Glendon (2001) and Morsink (1999), while the official minutes of the meetings that took place are available online.1 The following is a brief summary.

The Commission began its work by asking Humphrey to conduct an audit of all the constitutions and rights instruments that already existed at that point in time across the world. The Secretariat also solicited suggestions and documents on human rights from the members of the Commission, national governments, and external individuals and organisations. The vast amount of material that was received included a draft of a Pan-American declaration that was being developed at the time in Latin America, and a Statement of Essential Human Rights that had been produced by the American Law Institute with input from Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Latin American and Soviet Russian experts as well as North American and European experts. Based on the audit of these materials, Humphrey and his team produced a comprehensive list of 48 rights, which included every right that they could identify in the audited materials. This list provided the starting point for the drafting of the UDHR. Importantly, the list drew upon documents that had been collected from across the entire world, not only from Western cultures.

The work of the Commission continued by distilling a more coherent statement of human rights from Humphrey’s initial list of 48 rights. When Humphrey first presented his list to the members of the Commission, it was criticised on numerous grounds, including the fact that it did not have an underlying logic, rationale or structure. It was therefore decided by the Commission to set up a small drafting group, which would turn Humphrey’s list into a more coherent document. Cassin, who was one of the members of the drafting group, was a professor of law and a jurist with extensive experience of drafting legislation, and he therefore took on the principal responsibility for moulding Humphrey’s list into an initial draft of a Declaration.

Cassin provided a rationale for the list of rights by adding an introductory Preamble, which consisted of the general principles underlying the rights. His draft then reorganised the contents of Humphrey’s list, with the rights being arranged in accordance with the logic of the principles in the Preamble. Cassin’s draft drew out the relationships between the different rights, and as a result, he created greater unity between the various subsets of rights. He also achieved greater clarity in the wording of the rights. Importantly, however, Cassin’s draft retained all of the substantive contents of Humphrey’s list of rights that had been derived from the audit of materials collected from across the world.

Cassin’s first draft then went back to the Commission on Human Rights, where it was debated vigorously, in response to which a further draft was then produced, which in turn was again debated, and so on. In total, including Humphrey’s initial list, the UDHR went through seven successive drafts before the work on it was completed. The texts of all seven drafts can be found in the appendices to Glendon’s (2001) book.

In the historical accounts of the debating process on the Commission, two individuals are singled out by commentators for the quality of their contributions to the debates. One was Malik, the Lebanese representative, who was a philosopher—at the first meeting of the Commission, he was elected rapporteur for the meetings, and he was responsible for writing the official reports of the Commission’s work. The other notable individual was Chang, who was head of the Chinese delegation and a prominent Confucian philosopher—he was elected to the role of Vice Chair of the Commission at its first meeting.

Glendon (2001), Morsink (1999) and Roth (2023) all note that Malik and Chang were the two intellectual giants who drove the shaping of the contents of the UDHR through successive drafts and meetings. They directed and controlled the debates, with Chang in particular often helping to break deadlocks and resolve disagreements by citing quotations from Confucius. Indeed, Humphrey (1983) later stated that “Intellectually, Chang and Malik dominated the Commission” (p. 23). Chang and Malik often had deep differences in opinion (Roth 2023 is particularly illuminating here). However, at the same time, the two of them held very fruitful dialogues, and they managed to navigate and direct the debates and bring them to a successful conclusion with considerable erudition and skill. Reading the debates that shaped the development of the UDHR, it is abundantly clear that the final product was not driven solely by Western thinking on human rights—the contents were also driven by non-Western cultural and philosophical perspectives.

In addition, it is revealing to note the voting which took place when the Commission on Human Rights presented the final draft of the UDHR to the General Assembly of the UN. At that time, in 1948, there were 58 countries in the General Assembly. These 58 countries are listed in

Table 2. The 58 countries forming the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.

Western Europe, North America, Oceania	Latin America, the Caribbean, Middle East, Africa and Asia	East European Communist Countries
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States	Afghanistan, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Mexico, Burma, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yemen	Belorussian SSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukrainian SSR, USSR, Yugoslavia

.

This table shows that the single largest grouping consisted of countries from Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. At the meeting of the General Assembly at which the final draft of the UDHR was presented, two member states, Honduras and Yemen, were absent. Voting took place on each of the 30 Articles of the UDHR individually. Twenty-three of the 30 Articles were passed unanimously. There were a few abstentions on some of the other 7 Articles, but the only votes against any of the Articles were Article 7 on non-discrimination (1 vote against), Article 16 on the family (6 votes against) and Article 19 on freedom of opinion and expression (7 votes against). In other words, all 30 Articles were passed for inclusion in the Declaration with relatively little dissension. There was then a vote on the Declaration as a whole. The final vote was 48 countries in support of the UDHR, 8 countries abstained, with no countries opposed. These voting patterns show that the UDHR was not imposed by the West/Global North onto non-Western/Global South countries imperialistically. Instead, the latter freely embraced and voluntarily voted, without coercion, in support of the universal human rights specified by the UDHR.

As far as the 8 abstentions in the vote on the Declaration as a whole were concerned, 6 of these were abstentions by the East European Communist countries. The main reason that was given by these countries for their abstention was that Article 29 of the UDHR did not permit states to limit and restrict people’s rights and freedoms for the purpose of “meeting the requirements of the democratic state” (Morsink 1999, p. 22). The inclusion of such a clause would, of course, have had the effect of allowing states to override all of the human rights specified in the UDHR simply by declaring that they had a requirement to do so in order to meet the contingencies of unspecified situations and events. Another abstention was by South Africa, because many of the rights specified by the UDHR were clearly violated by its apartheid system and it was anticipated that the UN would use the UDHR to condemn this system (Morsink 1999, pp. 26–27). The final abstention was by Saudi Arabia, due to the wordings of Article 16 on equal marriage rights and Article 18 on the right to change one’s religion or beliefs (Morsink 1999, p. 24). However, it is noteworthy that no other Muslim-majority country adopted the same view of these two Articles. So, contrary to the claim that human rights are imposed imperialistically onto non-Western cultures, the non-Western countries overwhelmingly voted in support of the UDHR, and the only abstention which took place based on cultural considerations was the single abstention by Saudi Arabia (the other 7 abstentions being based on political considerations instead). Furthermore, in the context of the present discussion, it is pertinent to note that Saudi Arabia only abstained from voting, rather than voting to reject the UDHR in its entirety.

Many countries that are in the world today were, of course, not present at the original vote at the UN because they did not yet exist. Since then, however, many new countries have emerged and gained independence through decolonisation. In relationship to these new countries, Glendon (2001) reports that “it has been estimated that the Declaration has inspired or served as a model for the rights provisions of some ninety constitutions” (p. 228). These are, of course, the constitutions of non-Western/Global South countries. Similarly, Frick (2019) argues that the first phase of decolonisation in fact contributed a great deal to the universalisation of human rights, “with countries from the Global South leading the way” (p. 22) (see also Burke 2010; Jensen 2016).

In addition, in June 1993, the UN organised a World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. At the end of the conference, a declaration was issued which reaffirmed the UN’s member states’ “commitment to the purposes and principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (United Nations 1993, p. 1). The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action was adopted by consensus by the representatives of all 171 countries present at the conference (which included Saudi Arabia, South Africa and all the post-Communist countries of eastern Europe), and it was subsequently endorsed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993. In short, the universal human rights which are contained in the UDHR were widely, freely and voluntarily endorsed by the governments of both Western/Global North and non-Western/Global South countries through the Vienna Declaration.

In short, the universal human rights specified in the UDHR were not imposed by the West/Global North onto non-Western/Global South cultures imperialistically. Instead, the historical record reveals that representatives from non-Western/Global South cultures actively participated in the drafting of the UDHR and indeed were arguably more influential than representatives from Western/Global North cultures in the drafting of the Declaration. Furthermore, during the process of decolonisation, many non-Western/Global South countries actively used the UDHR for drafting the rights provisions contained in their own constitutions, contributing to the universalisation of human rights. In addition, when given the opportunity to endorse or reject the UDHR in 1993, non-Western/Global South countries freely chose to endorse it unanimously.

5. The Claim That Human Rights Are Based on an Individualistic Conception of the Human Being and Are Therefore Inappropriate for Collectivistic Cultures

The third claim about human rights that is prevalent amongst interculturalists is that human rights are based on an individualistic rather than a collectivistic conception of human beings. An analysis that is directly relevant to evaluating this claim is that provided by Williams (2005).

Williams points out that universal human rights always entail four elements. First, a human right is necessarily something that is possessed by a human being (X). Second, a human right is always a right to something (S). For example, it could be the right to perform an action (such as the right to peaceful assembly and association) or it could be the right to the non-performance of an action by others (such as the right to not be subjected to discrimination). Third, a right is always other-directed. In other words, it is necessarily situated within a context of relationships with other people. This is because to claim a right is to assert that other people have a duty to provide X with S. However, if the right is a universal human right, then all other people also possess exactly the same right to S. Therefore, fourthly, X has a duty to provide all other people with S as well. In other words, the concept of a universal human right is inherently embedded within a system of reciprocal social relationships, with the holding of a universal right always being tied to a corresponding duty to respect that same right in other people. In short, a human right, if it is proclaimed as a universal human right, always involves these four elements:

• A rights-holder (X).
• Something (S) to which X has a right.
• Other people, who have a duty to provide X with S.
• A reciprocal duty on X to provide S to other people.

As such, human rights are inherently collectivistic and communitarian in their nature. To claim that they are individualistic is to conceptualise the human being as an isolated entity who is completely independent from other people, living outside any kind of social setting, a situation which simply does not occur in practice. Virtually no human beings have ever lived in total isolation from all other human beings. The underlying logic of human rights is that they are principles that necessarily apply within social and political communities—they are rooted in a collectivistic conception of human beings who live together with other people in groups in which all group members have not only rights but also duties towards one another.

This point was already expressed by Thomas Paine in ‘Rights of Man’, where he wrote: “A Declaration of Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man, is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee, as well as to possess” (Paine [1791–1792] 1999, p. 69). Jürgen Habermas has made a similar point: “At a conceptual level, rights do not immediately refer to atomistic and estranged individuals who are possessively set against one another. On the contrary, as elements of the legal order they presuppose collaboration among subjects who recognize one another, in their reciprocally related rights and duties, as free and equal citizens” (Habermas 1996, p. 88). This same point is also made by Robert Spano, a former President of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court responsible for legal judgements concerning the application of the European Convention on Human Rights), who writes that a rights-holder has “duties and obligations which the rights-holder must be considered to bear in relation to the wider community … While individuals in society all have rights which have to be respected … they do not live in isolation in their community. A community is made up of other individuals … Some human rights must therefore develop contextually by taking account of our collective responsibilities for the well-being of each other … some rights must be exercised in accordance with some understanding of civic or collective duty … human duties, obligations and responsibilities are built into the fabric of the European Convention on Human Rights” (Spano 2022, pp. 4–6; see also Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 2011). In short, all of these authors argue that universal human rights imply a reciprocal relationship between rights and duties.

The preceding account might be taken to imply that there are only what are sometimes called ‘correlative duties’, that is, duties which correspond directly to and stem directly from a specific human right. For example, the right to freedom of expression carries the correlative duty to respect and protect other people’s right to freedom of expression and to not silence them by shouting them down or censoring what they wish to say. Conversely (i.e., reasoning from a duty to a right, rather than vice versa), the duty to respect elders within a cultural community is reciprocally related to the right of elders within that community to be respected by younger people. Indeed, it is precisely because rights and duties are reciprocally related in this way that, as we saw earlier, Singh (2009) proposes that the concept of ‘duty’ (‘dharma’) in Hindu thought effectively provides the basis of universal human rights, even though such rights are not labelled or expressed using the term ‘rights’ in the Indian tradition.

However, not all duties are correlative in this way. In a human rights regime, there are also non-correlative duties which do not correspond to specific rights that are held by specific individuals and are therefore not reciprocally related to a right held by individual rights-bearers. For example, human rights can only be properly exercised when appropriate institutional and social conditions exist, and so governments have non-correlative duties to create and maintain suitable institutional structures to ensure that human rights are upheld and realised in practice (such as a legal order to protect people’s human rights and a policing system which is respectful of people’s human rights). The UDHR itself also contains specifications of non-correlative duties, for example, Article 29 which states that “Everyone has duties to the community …”. It might be argued that one such duty is to be kind and to have care and concern for the well-being of others. However, such a duty would be non-correlative because there is no corresponding human right to kindness, care or concern (it is arguably a virtue-based duty rather than a rights-based duty—see Kant [1797] 2017; O’Neill 2008). In short, non-correlative duties are those duties that are based on responsibilities or obligations towards other people which are independent of the human rights held by those people.

In conclusion, the claim that human rights are based on an individualistic rather than a collectivistic conception of the human being, and that it is therefore inappropriate to apply them within collectivistic societies, is incorrect. This claim, which is widespread amongst interculturalists, is based on a lack of understanding of the concept of human rights and of the very wide set of duties that are actually entailed by universal human rights. Contrary to the claim that universal human rights are inherently individualistic, such rights can only be meaningfully and effectively practised within collectivistic communitarian societies which emphasise the interdependence of group members, personal relationships and duties.

6. The Concept of the Margin of Appreciation

Up to this point in this paper, it has been argued that three claims that are commonly made by interculturalists about universal human rights are incorrect despite their widespread repetition and endorsement. These are the claims that human rights are incompatible with non-Western cultural values, that human rights are imposed imperialistically by the West/Global North onto non-Western/Global South cultures, and that human rights are grounded in an individualistic rather than a collectivistic conception of human beings. However, if all three claims are incorrect, it then becomes important to consider the following question: does it therefore follow that all cultures across the world, irrespective of their specificities, should implement universal human rights in exactly the same way? In thinking about this question, it is helpful to consider what is called the ‘margin of appreciation’ in the practices of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

The term ‘margin of appreciation’ refers to the space for manoeuvre that the Court grants to the signatory states to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in fulfilling their legal obligations under the convention (Greer 2000). The margin of appreciation allows flexibility in balancing cultural specificities against the general rights specified by the ECHR. In practice, this means that there is considerable variability in the judgements made by the Court when applying the Articles of the ECHR to specific situations, depending on the particular national and cultural context involved.

This variability arises because there is ambiguity in the meanings of many of the terms that are used in the ECHR (and also in the UDHR and in other international human rights declarations, charters and conventions such as the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). For example, in the ECHR, all of the following terms appear without definitions being provided: ‘life or well-being of the community’, ‘normal civic obligations’, ‘reasonable time’, ‘adequate time and facilities’, ‘civilised nations’, ‘protection of health or morals’, ‘effective remedy’ and ‘life of the nation’. Legal judgements by the Court require the interpretation of terms such as these, and these interpretations can and do vary depending on the specific national and cultural context involved in any particular case that is before the Court—this enables the interpretations that make the most sense in that particular context to be applied.

To take the right to education as a concrete example, this right is formulated in the ECHR as follows:

“No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.” (Council of Europe n.d., p. 34)

Arguably the most ambiguous term in the wording of this right is ‘education’ itself. The wording that is used specifies neither the levels of education that are covered by this right, nor the contents of that education. For example, does the right to education cover only primary and secondary education, or does it also cover pre-school education and/or tertiary education? Does it cover only education in basic skills such as literacy and numeracy, or does it also cover, for example, language education, history education, religious studies, civic/citizenship education, science education, etc.? These issues are left entirely open by the wording. The fact that education provided under this right should be of high quality is also not referred to; consequently, the quality of the education provided is another potentially contentious issue. In addition, notice that the second sentence concerning the right of parents to ensure that education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions effectively permits an extremely wide margin of appreciation concerning cultural specificities in relationship to the provision of education.

In short, the margin of appreciation allows a great deal of flexibility for balancing cultural specificities against the general rights specified by the ECHR, with the result that considerable variability can arise in the application of the same right in different cultural contexts. One example, where the margin of appreciation resulted in very different judgements on women’s reproductive rights, is provided by the cases of P. and S. v. Poland (ECtHR 2012) and A, B and C v. Ireland (ECtHR 2010a). In the former case, Poland was found to have violated a 14-year-old girl’s right to abortion (her pregnancy was the result of rape, and hospital staff had refused to perform the procedure). By contrast, in the latter case, the Court found no violation of this right in respect of two applicants who had requested abortions for health and well-being reasons but had been denied the procedure by medical professionals. Instead, the Court granted Ireland a wide margin of appreciation based on the “profound moral and ethical values” in Ireland associated with the right to life of the unborn.

Another example, this time in the sphere of LGBTQ+ rights, is provided by the cases of Oliari and Others v. Italy (ECtHR 2015) and Schalk and Kopf v. Austria (ECtHR 2010b), which both concerned the recognition of same-sex relationships by allowing either same-sex marriage or civil partnerships for same-sex couples. In the former case, the Court ruled that Italy had violated Article 8 (the right to respect for private and family life) by not allowing either same-sex marriage or civil partnerships for same-sex couples, partly because Italian culture was evolving towards the acceptance of the need for a legal framework for such relationships. By contrast, in the latter case, the Court ruled that Austria had not violated this right by not allowing either same-sex marriage or civil partnerships for same-sex couples, partly because “marriage has deep-rooted social and cultural connotations which may differ largely from one society to another”.

These examples illustrate how the margin of appreciation enables the ECtHR to balance the general rights specified by the ECHR against the specific circumstances that apply in the different national, legal and cultural contexts in which those rights are being applied. The consequence is that considerable variability can sometimes arise in the application of exactly the same Convention right in different cultural contexts.

7. The Relativist Challenge to Human Rights, and Relative Universalism

At its heart, the argument advanced by many interculturalists rests on the relativist claim that it is not possible to identify things that are universally good and universally bad for every human being. This is because there is so much cultural variability and diversity in the world that what counts as good, and what counts as bad, depends entirely on and is relative to the particular cultural context in which people live. However, a significant challenge which goes to the heart of this argument is the fact that, across the centuries right through to the present day, the most horrific atrocities have been and are being perpetrated by states against human beings. Consider all of the following atrocities, on which there is incontrovertible evidence that they have been inflicted on people both in the past and in the present, particularly during times of war: murder, torture, mutilation, starvation, enslavement, rape, enforced disappearance and genocide (Robertson 2012; Schabas 2012). As Perry (1997) argues, these kinds of actions are so manifestly horrific that it is clear that they are bad for all human beings, irrespective of their specific cultural affiliations, and no one can meaningfully claim that such actions are or might be good for those on whom they are inflicted.

Indeed, it was precisely knowledge of the perpetration of these kinds of atrocities during World War II that provided the catalyst for drafting the UDHR (Morsink 1999)—hence the contents of many of the Articles in the UDHR. Two questions which therefore need to be answered by any interculturalist who believes that human rights should never be regarded as universal because of the variability which exists between cultural traditions, practices and values, are these:

• Is there really no single action—even murder, torture, mutilation, starvation, enslavement, rape or genocide—which can be classified as morally repugnant, indefensible and unacceptable irrespective of the specific cultural affiliations of the perpetrators and the victims?
• Should people really be free to commit any kind of horrific atrocity whatsoever as long as it is permitted by the particular cultural setting in which they are living?

That said, it is of course clear that cultural diversity is an undeniable fact—there are many cultural traditions across the world that differ significantly and profoundly from each other, and these traditions can vary fundamentally in terms of what they consider to be good and bad ways of living. However, there is no logical contradiction between, on the one hand, the proposition that different cultural traditions have different beliefs about what is good and bad, and, on the other hand, the proposition that behind this variability there are some atrocities that are so unspeakably horrific that they should never be regarded as morally defensible and acceptable. In other words, cultural pluralism and universal human rights are not logically incompatible with each other (for an extended scholarly discussion of this point, see Perry 1997).

This is, in fact, where the concept of the margin of appreciation in the interpretation and implementation of universal human rights is directly relevant. The way in which any given universal human right is interpreted and implemented can never be exactly the same irrespective of the specificities and concrete circumstances of the particular cultural, social and political context in which it is being applied, and the interpretation and implementation of a right should always take the form that makes the most sense within that context when compared with all the other possibilities for implementation that are potentially available. Viewed in this light, the ambiguities that are present within the wordings of human rights declarations and conventions, and the margin of appreciation to which these ambiguities give rise, are actually a strength rather than a weakness for the implementation of those rights in practice. Furthermore, if the interpretation and form of implementation that makes the most sense within one context depends on the specificities and concrete circumstances of that context, then the interpretation and form of implementation that makes the most sense in one cultural context may well not be the interpretation and form that makes the most sense in another cultural context. Hence, there will need to be different interpretations and implementations of universal human rights depending on the particular cultural, social and political context involved. In other words, the fact that human rights are universal does not imply that they have to be interpreted and implemented in exactly the same way irrespective of the specific context involved. As Donnelly puts it, “Internationally recognized human rights provide general direction. They do not provide a plan of implementation that can be applied mechanically, irrespective of political, economic, and cultural diversity” (Donnelly 1994, p. 113).

The theoretical position on universal human rights that has just been outlined is called ‘relative universalism’ (Donnelly 2013; Frick 2019). This is the position that is arguably the most conceptually satisfactory and ethically acceptable, especially for interculturalists who wish to acknowledge both the universality of (at least some) human rights and the extent and depth of cultural diversity and variability.

Donnelly (2013, pp. 99–103) argues that there are in fact three levels of universality and particularity involved here: (1) concepts of human rights; (2) interpretations of those rights; and (3) the implementation of those rights. As far as the first level of concepts of human rights is concerned, these are abstract general statements of desired goals and values that are judged to be important, and at this level of abstraction, human rights are universal. This is because there is an overlapping consensus on the contents of these human rights, as well as widespread (almost global) endorsement of international declarations and conventions on those rights. However, at the second level of interpretations of rights, Donnelly argues that there can be important cultural divergencies on definitions and interpretations. For example, there can be questions about what counts as torture or about whether particular practices are cruel, inhuman or degrading. However, not all interpretations are equally defensible, and they need to be plausible and make sense in the light of the specific cultural contexts involved. At the third level of implementation of rights, further variability arises, as was shown in the discussion of the margin of appreciation in the previous section. For example, in the case of the right to education, what levels of education should be guaranteed by this right, what should the specific educational content at those levels be in relationship to this right, and how should the quality of the education that is provided be guaranteed in practice?

Thus, while universality applies at the level of concepts and principles of human rights, according to relative universalism, there can—and indeed should—be considerable variability across cultural contexts in terms of how these concepts and principles are interpreted and implemented in practice. In other words, relative universalism provides the optimal means through which both the universality of human rights and the importance of cultural diversity and variability can be embraced. The way in which any given universal human right is interpreted and implemented is highly likely to vary, and indeed should vary, depending on the specificities and concrete circumstances of the particular cultural, social and political context in which it is being applied.

8. The Phenomenon of Organised Hypocrisy in the Global North

So far, this paper has reviewed three claims about universal human rights that are commonly made by interculturalists, and it has been argued that all three claims are incorrect. However, there are two further claims that are sometimes made about universal human rights, albeit less frequently, but in contrast to the previous claims that have been discussed, these two further claims are correct.

The first of these claims is that the discourse and actions of governments in the Global North often exhibit double standards and hypocrisy. It is claimed that these governments may pay lip service to the international declarations and conventions on human rights which their country has endorsed, while at the same time they enact foreign policies, and sometimes domestic policies, that blatantly violate the provisions of these documents. This claim is true, because its core contention about double standards and hypocrisy often being present in the discourse and actions of governments in the Global North is factually correct.

This hypocrisy arises because governments do not always have the political will or interest to act in accordance with the human rights declarations and conventions that have been endorsed by their countries, even though they might openly espouse in their own discourse the human rights norms and values that are specified in these documents. Krasner (1999) has proposed the theory of organised hypocrisy to explain this phenomenon. He postulates that this decoupling of discourse and actions occurs because government actions are usually decided on the basis of the economic and security interests of their own country, with decisions concerning actions being driven by an instrumental logic of consequences rather than by a logic of appropriateness based on adherence to international rules and norms. Krasner argues that this hypocritical discrepancy between rhetoric and action is not accidental but organised, because it has become institutionalised, structurally embedded, and widely understood, and helps to satisfy domestic audiences. A concrete example will help to illustrate Krasner’s theory.

In an empirical study, Perkins and Neumayer (2010) investigated whether the West’s four major arms exporting countries—France, Germany, the UK and the US—discriminate against human rights abusing and autocratic states, either by refusing to export weapons to such states altogether, or by at least restricting the amount of arms exports that such states receive. During the period covered by their analysis (1992–2004), political leaders in these four countries asserted that ethical considerations lay at the heart of their foreign policies, including a commitment to human rights. The question explored in Perkins and Neumayer’s study was whether this discourse amounted to anything more than empty rhetoric. They found very little evidence that these four Western countries systematically discriminated against states with poor levels of human rights. Instead, they found strong evidence that arms were exported to countries which served the supplying states’ domestic economic and security interests. In fact, human rights abusing countries were more likely to receive weapons from the US, while autocratic regimes were the most likely recipients of weaponry from France and the UK. Western arms exports were closely aligned with economic and geopolitical relational ties: countries in the Global South that were more important trading partners of the arms exporting country had a higher likelihood of receiving arms, as did countries that were military allies of the supplying state thereby fulfilling its extraterritorial interests and security. In short, the national governments of these four countries rhetorically embraced human rights principles and norms during the period covered by the analysis, but displayed organised hypocrisy in their export of arms based on their country’s economic and military interests.

This finding is not unique. Other cases can and have been described which also illustrate this kind of organised hypocrisy in the foreign policies of countries in the Global North (see, for example, Blatz 2021; Pacciardi 2025; Regilme 2023). It is not surprising that such hypocrisy generates anger and hostility towards the Global North in the Global South. However, directing such anger against universal human rights, rather than at the hypocritical national leaders and politicians, is misplaced. To use a well-worn cliché, it is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In the world today, universal human rights are arguably the best—indeed might be the only—shared foundation that can be used to promote social and political justice for all, because they alone provide a conceptually coherent moral and legal framework that can guide governments, institutions and organisations in how they should treat all human beings, irrespective of their particular location in the world, with deep consideration of and sensitivity to their specific cultural contexts and circumstances. The hypocrisy of national leaders and politicians, which should not be condoned or excused on instrumental or pragmatic grounds, and indeed should be critiqued and denounced, is not a reason to abandon the extraordinarily valuable shared foundation and framework of universal human rights. Instead, these failures should provide the motivation to demand that leaders and politicians in the Global North govern with greater integrity and moral rectitude in the future than they have in the past.2

Fortunately, however, organised hypocrisy is not always present in the foreign policies of governments in the Global North. There have been some occasions when governments in the Global North have made consistent attempts to persuade the governments of other countries to improve their human rights record. For example, the coordinated economic sanctions that were applied by the international community in an attempt to persuade the South African government to end its apartheid regime did eventually lead to the dismantling of this regime in the early 1990s. Another example is provided by the EU, which adopted a global human rights sanctions regime in 2020 to target actors responsible for or involved in serious human rights violations. This new regime “applies to acts such as genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations or abuses (e.g., torture, slavery, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests or detentions) … which are widespread, systematic or are otherwise of serious concern” (European Council 2020). Thus far, sanctions under this regime have been applied in relationship to human rights violations committed in or by Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, Syria and South Sudan, as well as a number of other states.

Some interculturalists will presumably use examples such as these (that is, examples of foreign policies which do not display organised hypocrisy) as evidence to justify their argument about the imperialistic imposition of universal human rights on other countries. However, it should be noted that the goal of such policies is to enhance other states’ compliance with the provisions of the human rights declarations and conventions which their country has already endorsed. A choice therefore needs to be made by interculturalists concerning the ‘imperial imposition’ argument. They need to decide which of the following two options is more likely to create the greater good:

• Opposing sanctions on other countries because they amount to ‘imperialistic imposition’, and not taking any action in relationship to human rights violations (such as genocide, torture, slavery, mutilation and rape) when they are committed in other cultural contexts.
• Abandoning the ‘imperialistic imposition’ argument, taking a principled stand against human rights violations (such as genocide, torture, slavery, mutilation and rape) irrespective of the specific cultural contexts in which they are committed, and encouraging politicians in their own country to undertake whatever action they can to help bring such atrocities to an end—in other words, acting in support of universal human rights.

Whichever option is chosen by interculturalists, however, it is clear that the governments of countries in the Global North do often use human rights selectively as geopolitical tools (as illustrated by the case of arms exports discussed above). Furthermore, this hypocritical instrumentalization of human rights is often perceived as constituting a form of imperialism by those in the Global South (e.g., Abbas 2026; Ingiyimbere 2017; Santos 2014, 2015). For example, Abbas (2026), writing from a Global South perspective, comments on the recent disintegration of the rules-based international order, which includes the international system of universal human rights. He draws attention to the way in which, for countries in the Global South which have been subjected to Western intervention and exploitation for centuries, the fiction of a rules-based order has been transparently obvious for a very long time. He asks:

“When Iraq was invaded on fabricated evidence, when Libya was destroyed, when Syria collapsed, when Venezuela faced sanctions and coups, where were these rules? The answer is simple: the rules were always working exactly as designed. … Rules to be invoked when convenient for Western interests and ignored when inconvenient. The “international order” established after World War II was never about universal justice—it was about institutionalising Western hegemony in more palatable language.” (Abbas 2026)

Asking what has prompted the recent clarity in the Global North about the disintegration of the international rules-based order, Abbas answers that it is not the war in Iraq, not war and famine in Sudan, and not the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Instead, he argues that it is Trump’s threats against Canada and Greenland that have precipitated this clarity, when American imperial ambitions turned against prosperous, white, Western nations. Abbas argues that these threats cannot be understood without recognizing them as the continuation of a much longer history where the rules-based order has simply been the continuation of colonialism by other means. The language of human rights is employed while continuing to serve the same material interests so that Western nations could continue to benefit from this arrangement by “extracting wealth and resources from the Global South through mechanisms of debt, trade agreements, structural adjustment, and, when necessary, direct military intervention.” Abbas’ conclusion is clearly correct (for a detailed economic analysis supporting his conclusion, see Hickel et al. 2022). However, it is important for the present discussion to draw a conceptual distinction between the cultural imperialism that is so widely discussed by interculturalists on the one hand, and economic imperialism on the other hand. What Abbas is critiquing here is not cultural imperialism—it is economic imperialism and the ongoing rapacious material exploitation of the Global South by the Global North.

Such anger against the double standards and hypocrisy exhibited by countries in the Global North against countries in the Global South is entirely understandable. However, as was argued above, the hypocrisy of governments in the Global North, and the economic exploitation of the Global South by the Global North, should not be viewed as reasons to reject universal human rights. Instead, the argument made by Abbas should act as a clarion call to demand the elimination of all forms of hypocrisy from the foreign policies and practices of countries in the Global North, to demand a far more just level of income from international trade for the Global South, to demand far greater accountability for human rights violations and abuses wherever they occur, and to demand the far more effective implementation of universal human rights, not the dismantling of the international human rights system which would leave populations across the globe even more exposed to the perilous policies of hypocritical governments, elected demagogues and authoritarian dictators.

9. Human Rights Are Not Enough for Social and Political Justice

The second claim about universal human rights which is also true is that while such rights are necessary for social and political justice, they are not sufficient to achieve this goal. As Moyn (2018) has argued, human rights are not enough in an unequal world. Equality is also essential for social and political justice to prevail. The most detailed and penetrating analysis of inequality from a moral perspective is that provided by Scanlon (2018), who argues that economic inequality (especially the extreme material inequality that is present in the world today) is morally objectionable on all of the following grounds: it creates humiliating differences in status; it gives the rich unacceptable forms of power over others; it undermines equality of opportunities; it undermines the fairness of political institutions; it results from governments violating the requirement to show equal concern for the interests of all of their citizens; and it arises from economic institutions that are morally unfair. One may add to this list that gross material inequalities also undermine the human rights of those who are destitute and living in poverty. It is clear from the work of both Moyn and Scanlon that if social and political justice is to be achieved in this world, it is absolutely vital that, in addition to abandoning organised hypocrisy, governments must take systemic action to reduce material economic inequalities.

Indeed, Shue (2020) has argued that the rights to physical security and subsistence should be regarded as basic rights, that is, as rights which are essential as a precondition for enjoying all other rights. Basic rights specify the baseline beneath which no one should be allowed to sink. Thus, according to Shue, all people have a basic right to physical security, that is, a right to “not be subjected to murder, torture, mayhem, rape or assault” (p. 20), and a basic right to subsistence, that is, a right to “unpolluted air, unpolluted water, adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter, and minimal preventive public health care” (p. 23). Shue points out that no one can fully enjoy any right that is supposedly protected by society if someone else can credibly threaten that person with murder, torture or assault, or if deficiencies in the means of subsistence are incapacitating or fatal. Injury, illness, malnutrition and death, all of which can result from a lack of physical security and a lack of subsistence, are among the most serious and widespread hindrances to the enjoyment of all other human rights. It is therefore crucial, under a human rights regime, that the rights to physical security and subsistence are fulfilled as preconditions for the enjoyment of all other rights. Hence, from the perspective of universal human rights, it is crucial to reduce the extensive and iniquitous material inequalities that are present across the world today.

The unambiguous conclusion that emerges from the work of Moyn, Scanlon and Shue is that if social and political justice is to be achieved in this world, it is absolutely vital that, in addition to abandoning organised hypocrisy, governments must take systemic action to reduce material economic inequalities.

10. Conclusions

The Oxford English Dictionary (2025) defines a myth as “a widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief; a widely held misconception … generally referred to with near reverential admiration on the basis of popularly repeated stories”. This paper has argued that three claims that are commonly made about universal human rights by interculturalists are myths. These are the claims that: (i) human rights are incompatible with non-Western cultural values and norms; (ii) applying human rights to non-Western/Global South cultures is culturally insensitive and a form of cultural imperialism; and (iii) human rights are based on an individualistic rather than a collectivistic conception of the human being and are therefore inappropriate for collectivistic cultures. All three claims are myths because they are widespread amongst interculturalists, they are untrue and erroneous beliefs, they are misconceptions which tend to be approved and well-regarded by fellow interculturalists, and they are often repeated by interculturalists without any evidence or argumentation. The present paper has argued that it is time for interculturalists to discard these three myths, to embrace universal human rights and to understand that the implementation of human rights principles should always display flexibility so that the general principles of universal human rights are appropriately balanced against cultural specificities. At the same time, this paper has argued that the full realisation of the very considerable benefits that could be gained by systematically applying and implementing universal human rights cannot be achieved as long as the organised hypocrisy of governments in the Global North and extreme material inequalities persist.

The promise of universal human rights that was originally held out by those who drafted the UDHR was that it would provide the “foundation for freedom, justice and peace in the world”, and it would help to create “a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want” (words taken from the Preamble of the UDHR). These outcomes have not yet been achieved. If they are to be achieved, systemic change is essential. The twin scourges of organised hypocrisy and extreme material inequality have combined to create conditions in which human rights are regularly violated across the world, unimaginable atrocities are allowed to occur, corruption, repression, discrimination and violence are widespread, and vast numbers of human beings do not have access to even the most basic necessities such as water, food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and physical security. The most urgent need in the world today is not the dismantling, or even the critique, of the apparatus of universal human rights. It is the elimination of the organised hypocrisy and the extreme economic inequalities which together prevent the realisation of the hopes and promises offered by universal human rights.