Human rights for some: Universal human rights, sexual minorities, and the exclusionary impulse
| Author | Bonny Ibhawoh |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702014544885 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Subject Matter | The Lessons of History |
The Lessons of History
International Journal
2014, Vol. 69(4) 612–622
! The Author(s) 2014
Human rights for some:
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Universal human rights,
DOI: 10.1177/0020702014544885
ijx.sagepub.com
sexual minorities, and
the exclusionary impulse
Bonny Ibhawoh
McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
Abstract
This article explores historical and present-day exclusionary impulses within the human
rights movement. It juxtaposes the widely celebrated expansion of universal human
rights in the second half of the twentieth century with ideological and institutional
counter-movements that have sought to restrict the scope of human rights. Using
the exclusionary experience suffered by LGBT people as sexual minorities, the paper
argues that we must pay attention to the exclusionary impulses that continually threa-
ten to undermine the full realization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’
vision of human rights protection for all, and not just for some.
Keywords
Human rights, universality, exclusionary impulses, LGBT rights
Introduction
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the
United Nations’ General Assembly on 10 December 1948, one of its chief archi-
tects, the US’ First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, hailed it as a ‘‘Magna Carta for all
mankind.’’1 Another architect of the declaration, the French jurist Rene´ Cassin,
described it as a ‘‘milestone in the struggle for human rights . . . a beacon of hope
for humanity.’’2 Indeed, the UDHR marked the culmination of a post-Second
World War rights-centred reformist movement to broaden the scope of individual
1.
Quoted in Randall Williams and Ben Beard, This Day in Civil Rights History (Montgomery, AL:
New South Books, 2009), 309.
2.
Rene´ Cassin, La pense´e et l’action (Paris: F. Lalou, 1972), 118.
Corresponding author:
Bonny Ibhawoh, Department of History/Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street
West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L8, Canada.
Email: ibhawoh@mcmaster.ca
Ibhawoh
613
rights and stimulate international interest in their protection. The Holocaust had
united the world in horror and condemnation of Nazi atrocities, creating a postwar
consensus that the current ordering of world affairs had to be fundamentally
rewritten. The need to protect the basic rights of all peoples of the world by
means of some universally accepted parameters thus influenced the 1945 Charter
of the United Nations. The charter affirmed a ‘‘faith in fundamental human rights,
in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and
women and of nations large or small.’’3 In creating the UDHR three years later,
a global community of nations agreed on a comprehensive and inclusive vision of
fundamental human rights for all of humanity. No longer could ruling regimes use
the excuse of state sovereignty to perpetrate genocide and other gross human rights
violations within or beyond their national borders. The central premise of the
UDHR is that all human beings are entitled to basic inalienable rights, and that
it is the responsibility of states and the international community to protect these
rights.
Sixty-six years after its adoption, the UDHR continues to be celebrated as the
defining document that ushered in the twentieth-century human rights revolution.
It remains the founding document of universal human rights and, although not a
legally binding document, it has provided the basis for subsequent international
human rights law. It has been useful in formally setting standards, establishing
norms, and shaping legally binding conventions covering the protection of the
rights of the world’s most vulnerable populations. The UDHR is now published
in more than 360 languages and is the most translated document in the world.
It has inspired the constitutions of many states, and although its promise of uni-
versal rights protection remains unfulfilled in many parts of the world, it has
become, in the words of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, ‘‘a yardstick by
which we measure respect for what we know, or should know, as right and
wrong.’’4
Even as we celebrate the UDHR and the rights revolution it set in motion, it is
important to remember that there was nothing inevitable about its emergence, even
amidst the ruins of the Second World War. The vision of a rights-based postwar
order may have been widely shared by world leaders, but coming up with a document
that the nations of the world could agree on was a difficult and complicated task. As
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour notes, ‘‘In a
post-war world scarred by the Holocaust, divided by colonialism and wracked by
inequality, a charter setting out the first global and solemn commitment to the
inherent dignity and equality of all human beings, regardless of colour, creed or
origin, was a bold and daring undertaking, one that was not certain to succeed.’’5
3.
Preamble, Charter of the United Nations (1945), https://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/,
(accessed 4 April 2014).
4.
Ban Ki-moon, in Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Dignity and Justice for All of Us
(New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 2007), iv.
5.
Louise Arbour, in Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Dignity and Justice for All of Us
(New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 2007), v.
614
International Journal 69(4)
Apart from the well-documented cultural, philosophical, and ideological disagree-
ments that threatened to scuttle its emergence, the story of the UDHR, as indeed the
entire postwar human rights movement, is one of continuous tension, especially
between the progressive impulse to gradually expand human rights protection to
more people across the world and the counter-impulse to restrict the scope of human
rights and limit its enforcement.
Notwithstanding the promise of universal inclusion and the rhetoric of inalien-
ability that underpins the International Bill of Rights, the story of the human rights
movement has been one of progressive inclusion amidst strong exclusionary
impulses. The universality of human rights continues to be challenged on multiple
fronts by proponents of varying degrees of cultural relativism and by the fact that
the legal universality of human rights hinges more on its moral claims than its
enforcement. Although international human rights laws proclaim the universality
of human rights and affirm the fundamental rights of all persons, the reality is that
these rights are not fully enjoyed by everyone globally or within states. Universal
human rights remain largely rhetorical and aspirational. These limitations are not
simply contemporary challenges. The human rights idea has not been an inclusive
one historically. The history of human rights can be read as a history of tensions
between movements for the...
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