Conceiving Human Rights from Local Practices

Abstract

As Rawls’s and Habermas’s accounts of human rights do not offer a satisfying manner to respond to the challenges raised in Chaps. 2 and 3, this chapter is an attempt to constructing an alternative conception of human rights that can address them more satisfactorily than do the other accounts. Following Beitz ’s insight of a practical conception that looks at human rights in their international function, the conception suggested here goes beyond Beitz by drawing the understanding of human rights from local practices which integrate states in a larger web of actors involved in shaping the practice and meaning of human rights. These actors are the beneficiaries of human rights activities; local non-state actors, state and state-sponsored institutions, regional organizations, international non-states actors and the international community. The interaction among these actors produces a multilayer model of human rights in which the local non-states actors and the beneficiaries are key players. They assume the role of protecting their basic interests in their local context, using the international human rights discourse. Once elaborated, I then confront this multilayer conception to both the theoretical and practical challenges to show how better it deals with them than the other accounts.