We Have to Rethink Human Rights, Part 2

 

Beyond One Universal Model

In Part 1 of this two-post series I argued that the current dominant narratives about human rights, and the way human rights assessments are made, have very often not served humanity well - despite the inspiring, much more balanced content of the 'Universal' Declaration of Human Rights.

Yet the current framework also reflects what scholars call universalism: the belief that the same rules apply to everyone regardless of context.

This notion has deep roots in Protestant Calvinism and colonial expansion.

Most of the world operates differently. Chinese culture emphasises particularism: context matters, relationships matter, harmony matters. Rights are not abstract entitlements but arise from proper conduct within social contexts.

Consider Article 8 of the UDHR: "Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by competent national tribunals." Western interpretation emphasises this as the right to sue, to legal recourse against the state — individualistic, adversarial, episodic. China implements this among others through a very different mechanism (see Gordon Dumoulin and Peter Peverelli), for example the 12345 national citizen service hotline established in 1999, where citizens can report non-emergency issues, ask questions or offer proposals directly to government authorities. Strict laws and performance monitoring govern response times and accountability.

According to call logs, a city like Beijing processed in 2021 nearly 70,000 hotline calls every day, and claims over 95% resolution rates. Even if cynics might argue that the rate is likely lower, it will still be pretty impressive, widely supported by anecdote. (You may also be surprised to know that as another outlet for complaints and grievances beyond ongoing criticism on social media, China also experiences thousands of protests annually, predominantly targeting local officials over specific grievances; in the 2010s up to 180,000 reported per year).

This is not about suing the government; it is about the continuous right to be heard, addressed and served, embedded in everyday governance rather than reserved for crises.

Western observers often dismiss this as "not real human rights" because it does not fit their template of individual litigation against the state. Yet it is explicitly grounded in Article 41 of China's Constitution and reflects a diffuse cultural understanding where responsive public service is itself a fundamental right.

If the same UDHR article produces litigation-based rights in one culture and service-based rights in another, we are not talking about universal principles with local implementation.

Instead, we are talking about fundamentally different conceptions of the human-state relationship, with the West claiming only its version counts as ‘real’ rights while delegitimising all others, not because they are inferior but because they challenge Western assumptions about individualism and adversarial governance.

Another example: Article 1 of the UDHR declares: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Yet in Confucian thought, humans are emphatically not born free. They are born into profound obligations — to parents who created and sustained their lives; embedded in relationships and duties from the first moment.

This is not oppression.

It is a different understanding of what it means to be human.

Where Western liberalism sees the free individual as the natural state and social obligations as constraints imposed upon that freedom, Confucianism sees relationality as constitutive of humanity itself: you become fully human through fulfilling your duties to others, not by asserting independence from them.

The West's Article 1 does not describe a universal human condition. It encodes a specific cultural story, post-Enlightenment individualism, as if it were objective truth.

When billions across Asian cultures experience their humanity as fundamentally relational rather than individualistic, telling them they are "born free" is not liberating them. It is erasing their actual lived philosophical reality, and replacing it with Western metaphysics disguised as universal human rights.

You can read more about these distinctions here.

Other Rich Traditions

In African philosophy, Ubuntu teaches that "a person is a person through other persons" — your humanity is inseparable from community.

The Banjul Charter, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, though unfortunately hardly implemented, was adopted by the OAU in 1981 to embody post-colonial Africa's desire to create a human rights framework reflecting African values and experiences rather than solely Western liberal traditions. It uniquely recognises both individual and collective rights, including peoples' rights to development, peace and resources. It also enshrines duties to family and society.

In Islamic traditions, the emphasis falls on balancing rights with responsibilities — duties to family, community, and the divine order.

Indigenous peoples across the Americas have fought not for individual property rights but for collective land ownership, self-determination as peoples, and the right to maintain relationships with ancestral territories.

These are not backwards traditionalism as is often made out, but rather sophisticated frameworks for human dignity that the West and many others too refuse to take seriously — the result of the infusion of Western values across the world during colonisation and after WW2.

When Culture Harms: Who Decides?

But it does get complicated. What about practices that genuinely harm people, often women and girls, justified as ‘cultural tradition’?

Female genital mutilation (FGM).

Child marriage.

Honour killings.

Can we critique Western universalism while acknowledging that some practices ascribed to 'culture' are harmful and discriminatory?

Here is what dominant narratives miss: the fiercest opponents of these practices are often women and men from within those cultures. In Africa for example, women activists have been leading such movements for decades, not to impose Western values but to challenge patriarchal power structures often disguised as ‘tradition’.

The difference between cultural imperialism and legitimate critique lies in who is speaking and who has power.

Critically, philosophical concepts like Ren and Ubuntu themselves contain protections against abuse. Remember: Ren requires treating the other as fully human with dignity intact. Ubuntu's "a person is a person through others" means dehumanising treatment violates the very foundation of the philosophy.

We must therefore keep in mind that many, if not most, harmful practices that persist are not based on ancient cultural underpinnings, but on relatively recent impositions or elite manipulations.

This is very important.

The issue is also not about individual versus collective rights. It is about who decides what constitutes harm and based on what power structures. When African activists challenge FGM, they are not betraying their culture. They are reclaiming it from patriarchal distortion.

When Western governments weaponise these same issues to justify sanctions, invasions or cultural superiority while ignoring their own violations, that is imperialism.

The distinction matters immensely.

The Multipolar Reckoning

We are living through a massive transformation of the global order, and it is ugly, "a time of monsters", said Antonio Gramsci in 1932, as the old world dies and a new world struggles to be born.

Watch how the ‘rules-based order’ evaporates when the rules do not serve the interests of those in power.

Gaza is in ruins while Western nations continue to supply weapons and turn a blind eye to ceasefire breakdowns — and will continue to do so even now after the signing of the so-called peace deal, after having lead and supported the imposition of surrender without any guarantees of safety and sovereignty for Palestinian civilians. Israel and the US will dictate and manipulate — something that will go down in history as a massive failure of the international community to uphold any semblance of a positive international order.

Ukraine receives billions while Yemen's and Sudan’s humanitarian catastrophes are ignored.

The hypocrisy has become so transparent that now, at last, many people in both the Global South and Global North see right through it.

This time therefore also brings shining new opportunities.

Take for example China's four global initiatives — Global Development (GDI), Global Security (GSI), Global Civilization (GCI) and Global Governance (GGI). They are gaining traction especially in the Global South while still underplayed by Western media.

They offer an alternative: respect for sovereignty, emphasis on development, comprehensive security and civilisational dialogue without imposed values. The Global Civilisation Initiative explicitly rejects forcing social models on others, allowing each society to chart its own modernisation path.

These frameworks are not perfect, and governments – whether democratic or authoritarian – can abuse any system. But the current human rights discourse has failed on its own terms. It promised universal dignity yet delivered selective enforcement, cultural imperialism, and a willful blindness to exemplary successes in uplifting societies who suffered material deprivation.

Towards the Future

Human rights as rigid, universal rules cannot be carved in stone for all humanity. What is universal, however, is the aspiration to provide dignity and rights for people. … These (aspirations) require not dogma but continuous attention, adaptation, and balance. Cultures are dynamic, as are economies, and so too are conceptions of human rights.

China21 Journal

We do not need to abandon human rights, but we need them to evolve.

A genuinely global framework must recognise development rights as foundational, accommodate different philosophical traditions, balance individual freedoms with collective responsibilities, and grant peoples the right to define dignity on their own terms. And stop weaponising rights as tools for geopolitical power and control.

And yes, this means wrestling with genuinely difficult questions: How do we protect individuals from harm without imposing external values? How do we support internal change movements without colonial paternalism? How do we distinguish between cultural imperialism and legitimate universal concerns?

These questions have no easy answers, but they are infinitely more honest than selective outrage and strategic silence.

The West had its moment to define human rights. That moment is evolving. The question is not whether this change will happen, but whether the transition will be collaborative or confrontational.

Which future, which approach to human rights would you like to work toward?

One that recognises multiple paths to human dignity?

One that prioritises both freedom and flourishing?

One that respects diverse philosophical foundations while protecting people from genuine harm?

The opportunity before us is to create something richer, more inclusive, and ultimately more effective than what we have now.

That work begins with honest dialogue, mutual respect, and the humility to learn from traditions different from our own.