[hr-education] Re: Human rights/children's rights values

On Monday, January 22, 2007, at 02:36 PM, Wim Taelman wrote: 

> One of the reactions I received was a warning to take in consideration 
> that values are related to culture, and that from a multicultural 
> perspective it is far from evident to reach a consensus on which 
> should be considered the 'human rights values'. 

I just can't let this one go by. I have been a lifelong advocate of
cultural diversity in public policy and personal lives. I also have come,
finally, to see the glaring holes in this standpoint.

The issue raised about cultural values is whether a culture has rights
that supercedes those of individuals born into it through accident of
birth. To which I reply poppycock. The first glaring hole in this idea is
that cultures do not "exist" in any literal sense of the term.
Cultures are constructs (as are nations, societies, political groups etc.)
Cultures are constantly made, remade, evolving, dying away. >From a
constructivist standpoint, cultures are made up as we go along.

Second, historically cultural diversity evolved as a response to cultural
absolutism. But now it has taken on, in a dialectic process, the patina of
its own absolutism, that every culture has a right to whatever it
determines to do. But who is the culture? Let us also face facts that when
we speak of cultures, we are almost always speaking of a small group of
men who tell everyone else what to do, and typically abuse their women,
whether overtly as, say, in Afghanistan, or subtly, but no less really, as
in the United States.

Advocating absolute cultural diversity, that whatever some culture does is
fine, is to take a good idea and bastardize it into the form it originally
battled against. Those who demanded diversity have now become the enemies
they fought.

What a culture may value one day could be antithetical the next. But, the
rights of individuals are constant and non-relative. The United States has
constantly rejected the Convention on the Rights of the Child for reasons
like people might not be able to spank their children (and showing how
stupid American politicians are, they cannot distinguish between a swat
and true abuse, although I do not advocate physical punishment at all.)

Cultures that reject universal human rights should not be honored with the
label "culture." They are instead tyrannies. It is time to move beyond
diversity to rights. I have been speaking and writing about these things
for some time now and truly see this as a critical issue if we are to be
able to advance the dialogue on human rights and social justice.

Peace 

Dan Jordan 





======== Global Human Rights Education listserv ======= 
Send mail intended for the list to <        >. 
Archives of the list can be found at:
http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-education/ 
**You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or re-post this
item, but please retain the original and listserv source.