Universalism v Cultural Relativism

The Vienna Conference 1993
On the 45th anniversary of the UDHR (1948), the UN held a World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna attended by representatives of 171 states as well as many NGOs.
This Conference was a follow-up to the 1968 Proclamation of Teheran.
Although many human rights Conferences have been held, the Vienna Conference is the most clear espousement of the issues we are concerned with.
By the time of the Vienna Conference, those who wanted to drive the human rights ‘globally’ were frustrated by the limitations of the legal mechanisms available to enforce human rights and to promote them internationally.
The whole issue of universal human rights needed to be reargued and refined- even redefined. There were two themes presented; the first theme presented economic, social and cultural rights as downplayed in favour of the ‘luxuries’ of civil and political rights.
Here, the universality of human rights was not contested; rather it was the content and priorities of implementation involved in the project. A key issue at Vienna was that the ‘right to development’ should be recognised as a universal human right. In subsequent years, the arguments about the right to development have mutated in some ways to the debate about eradicating ‘global poverty’.
The second theme at Vienna was that human rights were not universal but rather, historically, socially and politically contextual and contingent.
So called ‘Universal’ human rights were just modern Western values in disguise, and non-Western values, culture and community must be respected. ‘Asian values’ were invoked as one example of alternative cultural and/or social ordering.
‘Western values of freedom and liberty’, often depicted as an ancient Western inheritance, are not particularly ancient. Many have only become dominant over the last few centuries- and they are not exclusively Western in their formation. This stance was labelled ‘cultural relativism’ - but this term is also often used to encompass the first theme as well.
This joint labelling was partly justified in that these dissenting perspectives were supported by the same nations - China, Malaysia, Cuba and the former USSR.
There is also a common scepticism (some would say cynicism) about the universal human rights project as an exercise in international law-making and whether it was merely another exercise of power by the West, always working to its own advantage.
There are four questions that will be repeatedly talked about in this chapter:
In practice, are human rights demanded and enforced universally or does the insistence on applying internal international human rights conventions depend on the strategic interests of Western powers?
Similarly, which human rights are prioritised? Are they the ones that would genuinely be helpful for ‘developing’ centuries? Why is there such reluctance to recognise a ‘right to development’?
Is the whole concept of universal human rights ethnocentric - an abstraction from one specific concrete cultural location (the West) that is inappropriately applied elsewhere? Is the universal human rights project actually functioning to erode key cultural values that hold non-Western communities together?
Alternatively, are non-Western human rights traditions (e.g in Islam or China) completely ignored?
The dissenting point of view mentioned above was largely unsuccessful, although it made an important impact on some of the key formulations, and the volume of the dissent was notable.
Therefore, the Vienna Conference reaffirmed the universality of human rights. They characterised such rights as ‘universal, indivisible and the interdependent and interrelated.’ It also sought to give them a more legal reality.
At the Conclusion of the Conference, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (1993) was adopted on 25th June 1993 and was endorsed by the UN General Assembly on 20th December 1993 in Resolution 48/121.
The Declaration stated that the ‘promotion and protection of all human rights is a legitimate concern for the international community.’
The basic principle is articulated in Article 2(7) of the United Nations Charter- a state’s internal affairs are its sole concern. In Vienna it was stated that the way a state treats its people was the concern of all. To argue, however, that the ‘internal affairs’ argument is now redundant, is simply incorrect.
The Vienna Declaration also states: “The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of the States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”