Human rights cannot be both universal and political. Discuss Essay - 1

Human rights cannot be both universal and political. Discuss - Essay Example The fact whether human rights can be both universal and political, or not has engendered lots of heated arguments so far. Most of these arguments spring from the concerns of individuals’ religious, cultural, social perspectives with what they consider to be rights of human beings. But in one age or place what was considered by the people to be a valid right of human beings, appeared to be invalid and oppressive in others; therefore they were amended and also changed. The concept of rights varied from place to place, age to age, culture to culture, by the geo-cultural variables. As a result the universality of human rights is questioned and often tried to be explained from a narrow political and culturally relativistic view (Cohen 1989, pp.1014-1017). But a holistic approach is made to address both the universal and the socio-political view of rights. In the context of human right movement of modern time, the universality of human right has been the most tried matter in order t o enhance its applicability in a global framework. Consequently an endeavor to procure a universalized view of human right is significantly remarkable in the definitions of the scholars at the forth part of modern human right movement. This paper will focus light on the reasonability of arguments and counter arguments on the topic whether human rights cannot be both universal and political and attempt to retrieve a conclusion on the possibility of drawing a mutual line between the two. The idea of universality of human right is prompted first by the prominent European philosophers such as Grotius, Hobbes and Locke (Rayner n.d.). But internationally it was introduced immediately after the Second World War. As Gà ¶rkem Birinci â€Å"Human rights were brought into the focus immediately after the Second World War with the establishment of the United Nations† (n.d., p. 1). This universality is asserted on the foundations