Less is More or More is More? Revisiting Universality of Human Rights

Abstract

Human rights are much talked about and much written about, in academic legal literature as well as in political and other social sciences and the general political debate. Indeed, they are so oft en referred to and used as a basis for claims of various kinds that there may be a risk of certain “inflation” in that so much is said to be a human right that the notion loses its essential meaning. Th is article argues that the universality of basic human rights is one of the values of the concept of rights. Th e rights and the understanding and interpretation of rights may have to be purist. Th is may be the way universal human rights as a concept can survive at all. In the modern world there are different trends that to some extent conflict, like the trend of globalisation but also the re- emphasising in different parts of the world of traditional values, whether from a religious background or something else. It appears that the basic dogma of human rights - which has also been called the first universal ideology - that it is the individual and her rights and freedoms that should always be in the centre of any human rights discourse, is abandoned all the more oft en as the central principle. Instead the banner of human rights is used for various political and economic aims