Page 34 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

explore and assess the potential forces of both the pros and cons, so that
ways and means could be found to collectively set our global society on
the path towards real freedom, justice, stability, and peace.

A Certain Progressive and Democratic Global Framework
All the above considerations take the whole subject matter
under discussion into the world of politics of human rights. It is therefore
deemed appropriate to look into how it is worked out in real life. For this
purpose, two preliminary interrelated points are suggested here. The one
is concerned with the nature and reality of human rights itself; the other
with the creation of progressive and democratic international human
rights instruments on the part of the United Nations.
First, human rights are certainly not something to come by as
gifts. They are, from Tony Evans’ historical observation, “concerned with
establishing and maintaining the moral claims that legitimate particular
interests”, or in Neil Stammers’ more precise explanation, “ideas and
practices concerning human rights are created by people (sic) in
3
particular historical, social, and economic circumstances” To put it strictly
on empirical ground, they are the straightforward result of struggles, and
hardly characteristic of any specific culture or tradition. Perhaps, Heiner
Bielefeld’s analysis can very well help clarify the issue here:
… Human rights did not develop as a “natural unfolding” of
humanitarian ideas deeply rooted in the cultural and religious
traditions of Europe. On the contrary, people in the West, too,
had (and still have) to fight to have their rights respected.
…These rights … are achievements brought about in long-lasting
political conflicts during the process of modernization in Europe.

3
Tony Evans, “Introduction: power, hegemony and the universalization of human rights”,
in Tony Evans, ed., Human Rights Fifty Years On, Manchester University Press, 1998, p. 4.
28 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND