Human Rights in a Global World

Human Rights in a Global World

Facilitator: Jimia Boutouba, Modern Languages

The variety of associated courses in this Pathway reflects the importance of theories of universal human rights and their applications to a multitude of issues involving oppressed and disadvantaged human groups around the globe. Most current debates focus on historical or contemporary cases of discrimination based on racial identity, gender, caste, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and age, which have produced deep social and economic inequalities, often given rise to violence, and occasionally led to ethnic cleansing and mass murder. At the same time, critics of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 also debate whether its definition of human rights exceeds what individuals can fairly demand from society and the state. Enforcing laws based on a concept of human rights often produces controversy.

Laws protecting the rights of minorities, immigrants, and/or refugees can infringe on what rival social groups consider to be their human rights. The definition of who is human, and thus deserving of these rights, also raises complex social, ethical and legal issues. If the unborn child, fertilized egg or even unfertilized egg is legally defined as a rights-bearing human being, how might that legal definition impinge on the rights of women and the general public? Can we even take for granted the universal applicability to other cultural traditions of human rights that were invented in the Enlightenment and expanded in Western thought and practice since then? Must we recognize a cultural bias in our own claims for human rights when we encounter cultures with a different social logic in keeping with their own religious and philosophical understandings? These are only some of the probing questions that any student who embarks on a Pathway on human rights in a global world will encounter.

Associated Courses