Mullerson, Rein --- "Human rights are not universal and cannot be natural" [2019] ELECD 1812; in La Torre, Massimo; Niglia, Leone; Susi, Mart (eds), "The Quest for Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 144

Book Title: The Quest for Rights

Editor(s): La Torre, Massimo; Niglia, Leone; Susi, Mart

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Human rights are not universal and cannot be natural

Author(s): Müllerson, Rein

Number of pages: 15

Abstract/Description:

Differences between various theories of human rights so far have been mainly differences within the same Western worldview, which has either ignored other worldviews or treated them with condescension. To avoid abstract theorizing on the nature of human rights without studying concrete societies, which had previously existed or exist today, without the analysis of why some of them had become slave-owning societies while others had evolved into liberal democracies, it is necessary to take historical and comparative approaches. Both human rights, expressing the good that exists in humans, and human wrongs, reflecting the evil existing in the world and in us, are both equally human, though not necessarily humane. Human rights are social constructs that are called upon to respond to human needs and remedy human wrongs. Historically the emergence of human rights is related to the advent of centralized states in Medieval Europe where those belonging to the class of nobles needed tools that would have justified their claims against the king becoming all-powerful.