Page 10 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

or dismiss the significance of the constructive steps and process already
taken up. In fact, similar line of thought seems to be implied in Prof. Vitit’s
concept paper. I simply try to draw attention to it and further elaborate the
point for the benefit of making our task concretely meaningful to the people
we always refer to. In short, we need to help instill a keen sense of belonging
into the society at large.
Human rights, after all, are basically concerned with people as
truly stake holders. Not only that, however. They are also closely related to
the problem of social transformation. That is why the whole thing must
needs be seen as a process. The truth is human rights are not something to
come by or bestowed upon as free gifts. Historically, as we learn from the
exemplary West itself, they always started out as moral claims by people
in particular socio-economic contexts. There followed the struggles with of
course either success or failure, depending on the circumstances involved.
The same is true with the celebrated civil and political liberties that were
achieved in the historical West and gained worldwide acclaims. In a most
significant sense, of course, they represent a certain universal value. That is
only part of the whole story, nonetheless. For there are bound to be many
others forthcoming as human societies keep undergoing changes, as we
all are witnessing today. It all means that, as far as human rights are
concerned, what is popularly called universal is unfortunately something
imposed and therefore tends to become static or even prohibitive. 3
Universality of human rights is clearly a dynamic phenomenon and keeps
on proliferating, especially with regard to economic, social, and cultural
matters, according to the dynamics of social change. Indeed, it is the essence

3 th
In the classic statement by Jeremy Bentham, founder of Utilitarianism of 19 century England:
Right … is the child of law; from real laws come real rights;
from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented
by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons,
come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters.
Cited in “The Politics of Human Rights”, The Economist, August 18-24, 2001, p.9.

4 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND