The Politics of Humanity

On this account, then, human rights perform a similar function to the one so far
described for humanitarianism as a whole in this thesis, negotiating, summarising
and integrating disparate but related concerns. They provide a moral vernacular
with which to negotiate claims.^47 The key potential value-added of human rights
over other brands of humanitarianism is the central position of the rights-holder or
rights-bearer in any human rights discussion.^48 There is of course much
disagreement over the best way to ground and articulate rights at a fundamental
level, as Beitz indicates, but a shared aim is to give the rights-bearer a privileged
position: using the language of human rights, they can legitimately, and loudly,
voice a demand and identify a violation that, when human rights are working,
should entail ethical, political and legal consequences. Now, as Beitz suggests, those
may well be contested, but at least it should ensure a status for the object of the
violation in the discussion beyond simply that of passive victim. If only at a
discursive level, it should provide a modicum of empowerment in advance with
regard to the content of the universal human right at stake. There is much debate
over whether it is appropriate to conceptualise human rights as entitlements, but at
the very least they should be recognised as entitlements to articulate and decry a
violation or a right, and a failure of human rights responsibility should remedy prove
elusive. The key point is that a right is precisely non-contingent, at least in theory. It
creates a voice that should not be silenced.
This potential is now backed up by a substantial international human rights
regime. The idea of universal human rights emerged and developed in international
political life as a succession of humanitarian projects, as particular crystallisations of
humanitarian concern, and as political responses to expanding notions of who
counts as human. But perhaps the key moment in the emergence of human rights
as a linchpin concept that should sustain an international political regime came in
the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.^49 Revelations about the full
horrific extent of Nazi atrocities led to a typically humanitarian negative articulation
in response to suffering: “never again”. The UN Charter contained some very
47
48 Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution (Toronto: Anansi, 2000).
49 This is true whether human rights are seen as foundational or derivative of duties.
Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice , 119.