1001GIR Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Individualism, Cultural Relativism, Humanitarian Intervention
4 May 2018
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L8. Human Rights in Global Politics
Human Rights
• Historically, 'universal' human rights are a western creation
o Derived from the 'natural rights' and liberal political theorists of the 18th century
• Origins arguably visible in Christianity
o In Christianity, all humans are equal before God
• Western influence predominates in the development of human rights norms and agenda-
setting
• Since World War II and the Holocaust, an international human rights regime has evolved
through the UN
o Holocaust:
• The catalyst for current human rights regimes
• At least 6 million people died in concentration camps
▪ 3 million of these were Jews
▪ Extreme levels of hunger and dehydration
• Also affected by high levels of disease
▪ Inmates were forced to drag dead bodies into a pit in order to be fed
▪ Guards were unashamed, well-dressed, well-fed and in good spirits
• Women also volunteered to assist in the camps, also being well-fed
and happy
▪ Concentration camps were not far away from country towns, where the
beauty and prosperity of the farms hid the atrocities of the camps
• When captured, the SS were forced to bury the bodies of their prisoners, as they
had previously forced other prisoners to do
• German people believed that the Nazi party would lead their country out of chaos
and into triumph
▪ Promised grandeur and conquest
▪ Promises were fulfilled, validating the German peoples' faith in the party
o After the horrors of WW2 and the Holocaust, there was a need to create a system to
prevent this from happening again
• Human rights became almost a universal language of making a political or moral
claim
Universality
• Human rights are the inalienable rights held by every human being by virtue of being born
human
• Derives from modern ideas of cosmopolitanism
o The individual person is the primary moral being
• Rather than the state or community
o The work of the individual is more important than that of the group
o Every person has the same moral status
• Making the concept universal
• Human rights are universally and automatically applicable to all persons, regardless of time,
place or context
o There are no qualifying criteria of any kind
• This means that human rights apply to people like criminals, immoral people,
people you don't like, etc.
• Human rights set out the requirements, or minimum conditions for a dignified life, or a "life
worthy of a human being"
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