Mutua...Wow! Blowing the lid of eurocentric views of universal human rights...

I am so engaged in reading Makau Wa Mutua’s article on the ideology of human rights.  Sure, I may be a white, so-called liberal, European democrat, but I am re-thinking my space in the scheme of human rights discourse and democracy.  We’ve been discussing the “fundamental,” “intrinsic,” and “universal” aspects and flaws of human rights discourse, and its associated declarations. Sure we’ve been discussing what is missing from these writings, and foundations of what we arrogantly have considered universal and fundamental human rights. But we’ve only been doing it from a Western framework.  That makes a large part of what we’re reading Eurocentric and one sided. 

            Mutua discusses the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it’s formation in 1948.  While we have agreed that there are many elements missing from this document, it is still considered globally, a precedent and standard of fundamental, basic human rights.  Mutua throws a stick in this wheel of rights on page 605 of his article.  Mutua tells us that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights claims to be the “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.”  But in contrast he tells us that non-western views (those of Africa and Asia) were not represented because those nations were colonies or former colonies of western/european nations, and third-world countries were mostly Latin American, and therefore held European viewpoints as a result of the conquest.  I am caught off guard here by the notion that these quintessential rights documents are not as universal as I once thought.  Sure, I can see their failings in areas of gender, environment and, say water rights. But I never considered them to be failing multiculturally, or to be promoting a liberal democratic agenda.  Mutua claims that the doctrine and theory of human rights as we know it is actually a political ideology that may be considered the offshoot of western, liberal democracy.  Thinking like this would make the doctrine anything but universal, and would certainly, “shear it of the pretence of non-partisanship.” (607) 

            This article is like a wake up call to me.  Where are the rights of various countries to the kind of economic and social rights they deem expressive of who they are? The IMF and the World Bank may claim to be working for the “greater good,” or the financial independence and strength, of various developing countries, but essentially they are pursuing a neo-liberal economic strategy that favors industrial democracies instead of universality. 

            Don’t get me wrong. I think democracy is essential, and that perhaps industrialization has benefitted me.  But at the same time, if I want to say I’m proud to live in Canada because we support human rights, then I’d like to think of those human rights as being more universal, and more inclusive. 

            Mutua makes a valid point in saying, “There are fundamental defects in presenting the state as the reservoir of cultural heritage. Many states have been alien to their populations and it is questionable whether they represent those populations…” (641).  I think about this when I think about nations ratifying various conventions and declarations, but continuing to violate what they just agreed were human rights.  And Mutua has a point when he questions what elements of a nation’s population the government represents.   I’m not as cynical as Mutua to agree that governments may be no more than cartels organized to maintain access to resources and power.  But I do think that he makes a valid point.  How well do our governments, in our liberal, industrialized, democratic societies actually represent us? Do we all, equally have a voice? Should we have that voice?

There is so much more to consider in what he writes, and I feel that this non-european perspective needs to be considered in greater depth, and with more legitimacy.