Frequently Asked Questions on Human Rights-Based Approach

existence and self-determination, the right to economic,social and cultural development, and the right to a generalsatisfactory environment favourable to their development.However, there may often be obstacles to people claimingcollective rights. The challenges are partly of a legal kind,the problem of identifying who is entitled to claim what,and also of a political kind, with collective rights in manysituations being perceived as a threat to the interests ofthe majority or of individuals within the group. The right toself-determination, for example, can raise difficult questionsabout the control and use of resources, and hence is oftena matter of heated debate. Strategies to claim collectiverights must take account of these kinds of limitations andsensitivities.7 Do human rights depend on culture?International human rights are universally recognized regardlessof cultural differences, but their practical implementationdoes demand sensitivity to culture.International human rights standards enjoy a strong claimto universality, with considerable adaptability to differentcultural contexts. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights states: “All human beings are born free andequal in dignity and rights.” Human rights are inherent andinalienable in human beings, simply by the fact of their beinghuman. The human person in whom they inhere cannotvoluntarily give them up. Nor can others take them away. Allcountries have ratified at least one of the seven core UnitedNations human rights treaties (see annex I) and 80 per centof States have ratified four or more, giving concrete expressionto this universal recognition.The international human rights framework itself acknowledgescultural diversity by limiting the ambit of internationalhuman rights to a range of standards on which internationalconsensus is possible. However, “culture” is neither staticnor sacrosanct, but rather evolves according to external andinternal stimuli. There is much in every culture that societiesquite naturally outgrow and reject. In any case, culture is noexcuse not to ensure the enjoyment of human rights. For instance,harmful traditional practices, such as female genitalmutilation, even if embedded in long-standing cultural customs,need to change if they are in conflict with internationalhuman rights standards. United Nations-supported developmentefforts should assist the full realization of internationalhuman rights standards whatever the country concerned.Reconciling culture and universal humanrights: a practical illustrationA group of women’s human rights activists from various Islamicbackgrounds has developed a manual for women’s human rightseducation in Muslim societies (M. Afkhami and H. Vaziri, Claimingour Rights: A Manual for Women’s Human Rights Educationin Muslim Societies (Bethesda, Sisterhood is Global Institute,1996)). It covers a broad range of “rights situations” such as rightswithin the family, autonomy in family planning decisions, rights toeducation and employment, and rights to political participation.Its interactive and interpretive exercises interweave excerpts frominternational human rights agreements with verses from the Koran,sharia rules, stories, idioms and personal experiences.Source: C. Nyamu-Musembi, “Towards an actor-oriented perspective on humanrights”, IDS working paper 169 (Brighton, Institute of Development Studies,October 2002), p. 9, http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/bookshop/wp/wp169.pdf.5