Page 74 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

1
or tradition. As a matter of fact, this is precisely what did actually happen
in the great liberal revolutions over two centuries ago in the course of
modernization in the West, and which in turn inspire the ideal of freedom
and democracy around the world.
Secondly, this simple truth about human rights further means
that, along with universality, there is bound to be proliferation and inter-
relatedness of rights and liberties, as well as obligations, in a great variety
of forms and substances under specific historical, social, and economic
circumstances. This is well reflected in the increasing number of international
human rights instruments created by the democratically-inspired part of the
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UN. It is an ongoing and never-ending process. And lately, the UN General
Assembly comes up with the Millennium Declaration 2000, summing up
various aspects of human predicaments into the global and common
purview, thus broadening the scope and perspective of human rights
promotion and protection even further along with the issues of development,
poverty, and environment.
And finally, there need not be discrepancies and contradictions
between universality or generality and specificity or diversity inherent in
human rights discourse. Indeed, in order for the dialogue to be meaningful,
it must needs be in the spirit of mutual learning based on the shared
principle of human dignity and fundamental freedom. To start with, all the

1
Tony Evans, “Introduction: power, hegemony and universality of human rights”, in Tony
Evans, ed., Human Rights Fifty Years On, Manchester University Press, 1998, p.4
Heiner Bielefeld, “Western Versus Islamic Human Rights Conception”? A Critique of Cultural
Essentialism in the Discussion of Human Rights.” Political Theory, vol. 28, No. 1, February
2000, pp. 96-97.
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As Jacques Maritain observes:
No declaration of human rights will ever be exhaustive and final. It will ever go hand-
in-hand with the state of moral consciousness and civilization at a given moment
in history.
Cited in Joseph A. Camilleri, “Human Rights, Cultural Diversity and Conflict Resolution:
The Asia Pacific Context, Pacific Review, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1994, p. 20.

68 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND