The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations on 10 December 1948. In 1950, the United Nations further proclaimed 10 December as an international day of commemoration.
In the wake of the crimes of National Socialism, the member states of the UN formulated 30 articles outlining the basic elements for a good, dignified life for all people, regardless of the context in which they live: from the right to education, bodily integrity, and freedom of assembly to the right to cultural participation, paid holidays, and freedom to choose who to marry.
Criticism of international human rights has been formulated from various positions and focussing on different aspects in each case. From the perspective of postcolonial theory and political practice, the origin of the declaration of human rights in the United Nations is seen as closely interwoven with the European history of violence. These lines of critique emphasise that this violence is not only inscribed in the proclamation of human rights, but also furthered by them. In this view, human rights set European/Western ideas as norms for all people: terms such as ‘dignity’ and ‘freedom’, for example, are filled with Western concepts. This is particularly well-illustrated by the argumentative integration of the supposed absoluteness of human rights in Western discourses on gender norms and hierarchies and women’s rights in so-called non-Western countries.
Beyond this critique, there is an even more fundamental question: who is the norm, and who has historically been able to grant rights? Who has and continues to receive rights? This reproduces a North-South hierarchy that manifests itself in concrete policies, e.g., military or political interventions by Western states in countries of the South, but also in the work of international NGOs.
In addition to this criticism from a postcolonial perspective, there have been various attempts to locate the historical origin of the idea of human rights, and of approaches that assume that is not possible, but rather that contingent constellations ultimately led to the specific idea of human rights.
Political theory and philosophy tend to critique two aspects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
First, there is the challenge of determining the relationship between individual, abstract human rights and a democratic order – or with any community and its order. With their absolute, abstract, and de-contextualised claims, human rights undermine national sovereignty on various levels. However, people want and need to know that their subjective rights are guaranteed primarily in their immediate, e.g. nation-state life contexts.
Secondly, they critique the perspectives for political action that result from focussing on individual rights, with a decline in demands for distributive justice identifiable as a result. In discourses on human rights and economic security, an argument for sufficiency, i.e. for a guarantee of basic security (which is also reflected in the work of non-governmental organisations), is increasingly propagated, while the income distribution is left fundamentally unquestioned.
How the actual political, legal, and social impacts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations on 10 December 1948 are assessed varies greatly: sometimes, they are questioned from the ground up, and the reference to human rights, for example in political discourse, is seen as purely rhetorical. At other times, the document’s impact is seen as inestimable, as it is a central argumentative instrument, e.g., for maintaining Western, (post-)colonial dominance over countries of the South.
Ultimately, all the criticisms provided as examples here have important aspects worth considering. At the same time, however, none of them is able to fundamentally question or declare invalid the idea of an abstract and context-independent right to a good, sovereign life with the ability to participate that all people are entitled to by birth – however it might be organised in concrete terms. The promise associated with the idea is too great for that.
What do these critical perspectives on universal human rights mean for future-oriented remembrance? What does it mean with regard to 10 December, International Human Rights Day? It means accepting criticism, engaging with it, and allowing pluralistic perspectives to speak – in order to turn the idea into a forward-looking, pluralistic concern.
