to some form of political rhetoric that is based neither on legal nor moral grounds?
If human rights equate to certain legal rights enjoyed by individuals through
international law, then disputes about human rights will take place in a legal
framework by reference to legal documents and judgments. If, however, human
rights are moral rights, then disputes are settled by reference to moral concepts and
moral arguments. Put simply, as legal rights human rights are individual entitlements
backed up by the force of law; as moral rights, they are individual entitlements
supported by the force of argument. As tools of international politics, human rights
are intended to secure certain outcomes: a state widely recognised as violating
human rights may find itself shunned by other states and, consequently, its interests
damaged. Many advocates of human rights rely on a mixture of treaty law and
‘shame’ to advance their cause. However, the political uses of human rights can
generate cynicism. One of the justifications given for the bombing of Serbia in 1999
was that it was an ‘exceptional measure to prevent an overwhelming humanitarian
catastrophe’, namely the mass deportation and killing of Kosovars. Yet the same
description could be applied to the situation from 1995 to 2009 in the province of
Chechnya, where Russia attempted to suppress – ultimately successfully – a
breakaway movement, and engaged in a serious violation of human rights. The
reasons for action in Kosovo and inaction in Chechnya is, in small part, logistical,
but mainly the recognition of realpolitik: Russia has nuclear weapons.
The best approach for further study of the morality, legality and politics of human
rights is a consideration of human rights documents, and in the next section we
focus on two: the UDHR, and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
However, before discussing these documents some comments on the pre-twentieth-
century origins of human rights are required. Certainly, the idea that humans have
rights by virtue of their humanity can be traced back to the eighteenth-century ‘rights
of man’ and these rights are grounded in the Enlightenment conception of the human
being as a rational agent. Although many Enlightenment thinkers were reluctant to
extend such rights to non-European peoples, and in some cases to women, it could
be argued that the logic of rational agency implies that prima facieall human beings
have rights. But there are attempts to trace the origins of human rights much further
back in time and, furthermore, demonstrate that they have both Western and non-
Western sources. Religious documents, such as the Vedas, the Bible (Hebrew and
Christian) and the Qur’an, it is argued, either make explicit or at least imply
standards of treatment and duties and obligations that are recognisably universal.
These attempts to show that human rights have plural sources of justification are
really motivated by a contemporary concern to dispel the impression that human
rights are a Western, imperialistic imposition on non-Western cultures. Such a
discourse may, in fact, serve a useful functioning in generating respect for human
rights, but there is also mythology at work here: a proselytising religion, such as
Christianity or Islam, is implicitly universal, but it does not follow that the ‘rights’
it accords are based on ‘humanity’. Rather, a person is equal as a Christian or a
Muslim, and, insofar as Christianity respects non-Christians or Islam non-Muslims,
that respect is grounded in a view of the ‘other’ as a potential convert.
A pluralistic argument for human rights – one that stresses the importance of
‘history’ – may be summed up in a metaphor. Full international respect for human
rights is a historical achievement akin to reaching the top of a mountain. The history
of human rights can then be characterised as the ascent of the mountain: distinct
Chapter 18 Human rights 405