"HUMAN RIGHTS": SO WHY THE ONGOING CONTROVERSY?
An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers
In this thought provoking addition to human rights scholarship, Andrew Fagan offers a minutely analytical approach to this often controversial subject.
If you are supportive of the principles of human rights, however, as are most of us, you may well wonder why human rights should be at all controversial. Surely, one would argue, as the American revolutionaries did in 1776, that such rights are `inalienable.' We are all human; we should all have the right to rights, so where does the controversy lie?
Unfortunately, if we can be forgiven for making a sweeping general statement, such rights are dismissed, ignored or sometimes deliberately violated throughout the world, particularly in areas of the world where the word `democracy' strikes terror in the cynical hearts of dictatorial, repressive and/or incompetent governments.
For this and a number of other reasons, Fagan points out that the foremost myth - that we live in an age of human rights -- stands in need of correction, `This age has yet to arrive,' he says, `as evidenced by the countless millions, if not billions, of human beings whose basic human rights are systematically denied every waking day of their lives.' We can only enter a genuine age of human rights, he adds, `when we have committed ourselves to...securing the conditions required for a world finally free from the effects of systematic misery and avoidable suffering.'
Thus does Fagan rather heroically set out to examine and quite often dispel the myths and misunderstandings which often obscure and distort both the theory and practice of human rights and, in so doing, erect barriers to their successful realisation.
Following a lively examination, for example, of certain `ethnocentric' objections to human rights, Chapter 6 is particularly interesting in the context of certain democracies where human rights legislation stands in need of a little fine tuning. Here, the author focuses on the misunderstandings concerning the relationship between rights and duties. Duties and -- might we add, responsibilities -- have a necessary role in `the possession and effective exercise of any human right', he says. They are not `a mere afterthought.'
This is a thorough and balanced work which examines the philosophical basis of human rights and tackles head on, the most commonly held suspicions and misconceptions - some of them politically motivated and deliberate - of human rights theory. If you specialize professionally or academically in the area of human rights legislation or even practical application, you'd find it useful to read this book, but you will probably raise your own controversies by doing so!
ISBN: 978-1-84844-161-3
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