TASK ,  Q1,  Is there a way of mediating the extremes of universality and cultural relativism in dialogue about human rights?[1]

 

 

 

Universalism, Cultural Relativism, and Gross Human Rights Abuses: A Solid Basis for Action

 

 

 

The West has used the rational mind as a way of relating to the universe. From Aristotle on through to the present day, Western intellectual traditions seek to use this tool in order to define what is moral for society. This has often been cloaked in terms of objectivity, “normality” or the “natural order of things”. However beginning early on in the 19^th and gaining strength in the 20^th century, there has been a move away from old ways of thinking to more lateral, tolerant and subjective forms of thinking. These new ways gave rise to post-structuralist camps such as Feminism and Cultural Relativism, whose job it was to ask “Who does the structure serve?” and “what assumptions are we using to arrive at our conclusions?”. Predominantly we have begun to think in terms of intersubjectivity and pluralism[2] where sovereign truths are frowned upon, and where texts give rise to multiple meanings which can be criticised or accepted at different levels. In this essay we examine the alleged universality of human rights and how cultural relativism seeks to destroy its normative base. Child Genital Mutilation[3] is used throughout as an extreme example of how the cultural relativist and universalist ideas clash violently. To conclude we will look at ways that the international community might resolve (or dissolve) the debate into an “acceptable” form of action (or coercion). We argue for an alternative base for action, one that is honest and recognises the inherent right of power to exert its force rather than trying to find justification in globally held morals.

 

Is There Something Wrong with Child Genital Mutilation?

 

“Female Genital Mutilation”, as the graphic term suggests, is something that offends the English-speaking world[4].  Many agree that ‘circumcision’ does not begin to describe adequately such a radical and medically unsafe procedure. FGM can simply be a cutting off part of the clitoris. This would be a similar act to cutting off the tip of the male penis. The clitoris is hugely sensitive and is fed by many nerve ending ands blood vessels. It is a unique means of perceiving, experiencing, sharing and enjoying existence. At worst FGM, can involve the excision of the labia majora, labia minora, and clitoris and sewing together of the vaginal opening. This is called “infibulation”. The child is usually held down by strong adult females throughout the procedure with no kind of anaesthetic. The results are horrific pain and in many cases death through infection because of the lack of medical supervision and the extreme nature of the procedure. Those that survive have a lifelong sexual dysfunction, and an inability to give birth normally.

 

Male Genital Mutilation is also performed without any valid reason, and can have bad consequences for the victim.  Sensitive foreskin flesh in “crushed audibly and the raw flesh is cut with scissors”[5].  There is “ scraping and tearing apart and destroying the normal erogenous tissues of the child’s sex organ”[6]. All children who undergo this process suffer enduring harm. As with the female equivalent it is parts of their lives that have been excised, at a physiological level when they are young, and as they slowly realise when they grow up, at a psychological level also[7].

 

FGM is still practiced almost wholly in Africa, north of the equator[8].  Male circumcision is carried out by some Christians[9] and by all Muslim and Jewish communities[10]. It is predominately a cultural practice in African and Arab states, although the USA has a high circumcision rate. 

 

Which Human Rights are Offended?

 

The UN was a creation of the Western states after the Second World War and its agenda is influenced by the wealthy countries indirectly, if not directly[11]. The International Bill of Rights is thus framed in traditional western forms, with a heavy emphasis on personal autonomy. It is no wonder some communitarian religious cultures that do not value personal autonomy as highly have come to criticise these instruments[12].

 

CGM is a certain infringement of many of the covenants and declarations set up by the UN to prevent abuses to individuals’ bodily integrity without their consent, and their right to health eg. The Charter of the United Nations (UN)[13]; UN Declaration Against Torture[14]; Universal Declaration of Human Rights[15]. In international law a violation of a treaty will depend on whether the country where the abuse occurs in a signatory to a treaty. The large multilateral treaties such as the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)[16], Convention on the Rights of the Child (CROC)[17] and the Convention Against Torture (CAT)[18] all contain articles that are relevant. FGM has been specifically targeted by a general recommendation by the body responsible for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)[19].

 

Universal Human Rights And Their Origin

 

Human rights and their liberating consequences are an essential part of many peoples’ visions of a unified and harmonious planet Earth. It is an aspiration of what we, as human beings, as “peace-loving” men and women, want for our whole species. Because of the power of the ideal, it is tempting to try to derive some justification for it in logic. Like Marx who invented his theory of ‘political evolution’ to convince his audience of the inevitability of communism, we do the same in with ‘human rights’. We would like them to be “self-evident”. Or as Locke beautifully articulated, “The same spark of the divine nature and knowledge in man, which, making him a man, showed him the law he was under, as a man”[20].

 

Human rights are commonly defined as rights with inherently adhere to a person by the very reason that they are human. We now omit the word ‘natural’[21], used by an older generation of activists, and replaced it with the more politically correct word  “inherent”. Gays and lesbians were and are persecuted because they were seen as ‘unnatural’ and until a few hundred years ago war was seen as a ‘natural’ state. When the UN body came to drawing up its human rights documents it found making any justification to ‘God’ or ‘nature’ would incite debate that might undermine the beneficial effect of the documents[22].

 

Thomas Haskell, a historian who is pro-human rights, acknowledges the continued failure to find any proper justification for them,

 

“….beneath the polemical surface of my text the reader will find a darker current of ambivalence and anxiety for the plain truth is that no one at present can offer any entirely satisfactory justification for the idea of a right, or for the larger and even more vital notion on which it depends, the idea of objective moral obligation.”[23]

 

 

The Cultural Relativist Defence 

 

“[n]atural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense,--nonsense upon stilts.” – Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

 

Cultural relativists argue that because all individuals see morality in terms of their own culture, unilateral attempts to impose a viewpoint on people of a different culture is unjust[24].  Cynics of universal human rights thus have a simple and logical argument with which to attack notions of universal human rights. Therefore relativist thinking is not only invoked frequently, but is probably a more highly evolved and creditable theory than the ‘theory-ideal’ of human rights.  Human beings brought up in radically different economic, environmental religious backgrounds, with histories that date back into unrecorded past, cannot be expected to have the same viewpoint as us.

 

Many women in the West accumulate eating disorders, and have unnecessary dangerous plastic surgery in order to achieve an image acceptable to society[25]. Many violent phenomena in our culture occur without any questions being asked[26]. They are often taken for granted as something that happens of its own accord and as such non-examinable. The men and women in Africa who practice CGM have the same outlook. They act towards their children in a benevolent way, that is, they believe that the harm they are inflicting is necessary and beneficial for the children’s status in society[27].

 

As the Ecumenical Migration Centre Director Nicky Marshall said, “Mothers arrange for the circumcision of their daughters as an act of love, care and protection, to avoid their daughters’ being social outcasts and to ensure their marriage. Deeply held spiritual and religious beliefs have been invoked to legitimise female circumcision” [28].

Ms. Marshall went further saying that any attempt to criminalise such acts in Australia would be seen as a “proclamation by the white dominant culture that ‘we’ will ‘civilise’ you because we know and live the truth”.

 

Can we in all conscience impose ourselves on another culture? Nietzsche said that to enforce one version of “right” and “wrong” is to commit a far greater sin than letting human rights go unpunished –

 

 “a legal system thought of as sovereign and universal…. would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of dissolution and destruction of man, and attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness”[29]

 

Part of human rights, as laid out in the UN Charter[30], is the right to live in a tolerant multi-cultural world, not an enforced heterogenous one. Western feminists and lawyers who advocate human rights and are prepared to use coercive force do not differ from the missionaries who came to Africa with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other. African women have urged Western feminists to modify their rhetoric to gain credibility with cultures they seek to change[31]. However, how fast dialogue and grassroots advocacy can effectively change the situation is not clear. A paradox arises, in that to create public outrage and a movement towards ending CGM sensationalism needs to be used - it this very sensationalism is what causes the opposition to dig its heels. The dialog option is one that sounds diplomatic, but in reality it is merely another ideal, because the common ground upon which discussion may be based is missing. That was precisely the problem in the first place.

 

A Neitzschean Justification for Human Rights Action

 

The theory presented in this essay, in order to resolve the potent relativist argument, is one which was inspired by Nietzsche’ observations on power, truth, and morals. Although Nietzsche can be put in the relativist camp, he is hard to pin down, and remains an individual and eccentric figure in philosophy. He was a cognitive relativist who rejected notions of one Truth. Some of his views have been around for so long in intellectual circles, they have become ‘common-sense’. Nietzsche’s philosophy was a ‘hammer’, as he said, to knock current theories back into a more primal, and more realistic, discourse[32]. Post-modernism owes him a great debt.

 

“What is the difference between saying “I have a right to x” and saying simply “I want x”? If Nietzsche is correct, there is no substantial difference”.[33]

 

And is there any difference then between “you ought to do x”, and “I want you to do x?”[34]. If we accept this then,

 

“Honesty would require us to abandon the puffed-up language of rights and confine our conversation to what is really at stake – our conflicting wills”.[35]

 

Force is what rules the world, it just “is”. Principles of justice are only ever truly evident in contact between equals[36]. International strength, held by the West, is capable of ‘justly’ imposing its ideas, simply because it exists. This has always been the case, and will continue to be the case. In a world that is governed by might, there is no higher standard than might with which to judge. If we accept this then human-rights crusaders can overcome cultural minorities, extinguish inhuman practices like CGM, and retire with a clear conscience.

 

The cultural relativist urges omission or stay of action by saying “I am from a different culture, therefore I should be free of you changing my behaviour”, stated another way: “because I am in culture x, I can act this way, you should act in this way (ie. do not bring your tanks and your leaflets here)”. That position is as potent as the Western activist saying “because I am in culture x, I can act this way (come in with tanks and leaflets), you should act in this way (stop the CGM)”.

 

Thomas Haskell talks about his outrage on reading the reports of Amnesty International, his anger, and the need for something to be done. Haven’t we all felt this way? What is the use of being in a more powerful position if one cannot use it to influence other people to do the right thing? He writes poignantly of a “human rights” house that has been left to rot by the UN’s institutional apathy:

 

“…and ancient building, visibly weathered, and beginning to tumble down, which squatters inhabit and even use ceremonially, but whose founders have vanished, and whose true function and purpose become hazier in the minds of each succeeding generation.”[37]

 

While looking at the UN Bill of Rights certain rights seem out of date, and some of them vague. Fundamental rights stand beside more trivial rights, and there is a classification of “core” rights and “derogable” rights in the ICCPR. It is arguable that the human rights community is slowly being weighed down by the baggage of a poorly thought-out and aging idealism. If action which was justified by some system of thought like Nietzsche proposed then something could be done effectively in a short time for severe human rights abuses everywhere that offend our Western conscience. In short, we would have a real solution to a real problem, not endless appeals to the UN, by all accounts a “toothless bulldog”[38].

 

Qualms About Enforcement

 

Any qualms about enforcement, Nietzsche might say, are merely a minority communicating a view which has no bearing in an action justified by universal international power. There is no objective truth (as cultural relativists admit) with which to say that the power is unconscionably used.

 

However, many educated men and women do not wish any one system to become universal in the world. They treasure difference and uniqueness and this could be lost if we are concerned merely with power (as Nietzsche was). It is naïve and idealistic to enforce a specific human rights agenda by force, and expect the weaker culture to remain in the same state in other respects. Female Genital Mutilation cannot simple be taken out of Islam by force without changing the way Islam relates to the West. Both internally and trans-globally, Islamic and African countries will be changed forever if blind force were used to stamp out a cultural practice.

 

Also the West must keep in mind that sanctions can adversely affect the weaker citizens of those cultures, the very people the West aims to help. Sanctions, for instance, can create much antagonism:

 

“On the one hand, there is the strong case that a carrot and stick approach serves the best interest of human rights. On the other hand, economic sanctions ultimately exacerbate the predicament that they purport to alleviate. This is because it is women who will bear the brunt of its burden, and it will perpetuate the conditions of (under)development that contribute to the prevalence of the practice in the first place”.[39]

 

Using Planned and Integrated Expressions of Force

 

Not all force needs to be used indiscriminately and non-diplomatically. A less-threatening ‘grass-roots’ form of action that may necessary is funding education campaigns in weaker, offending countries. This is one modus that is a preferred solution for many feminists[40]. It fits into the Nietzschean model, because it is unrequested education, a ‘violent’ insertion of another cultures views in mental airspace. Its effectiveness remains to be seen. Further action which may be taken are sanctions, in order to force the relevant intra-state authorities to punish the people who carry out CGM locally. As noted above, the more force involved, the more antagonism will be created. Encarceration and criminal sanctions also seem like a brutal and unhelpful measure,

 

Law alone seldom changes behavior. Although it is certainly a key determinant of change, it is not a panacea nor is it a brooding omnipresence in the sky. It is instead a mechanism that is integral to, and contingent on, a broader societal scheme.[41]

 

That is one of the drawbacks of using power, and may prevent the use of power by democratic states who value good relations. However it is good to know that Western states can evaluate the use of a clear power-based option without having qualms about cultural relativism. They may want to use coercive force on many levels at different times, to suit a larger plan of action, or not at all. Whatever the decision, a Nietzschean rationale would allow the West to be honest about their strategies and help democratic electors in Western states make clear choices about how Western  governments are performing. The discourse may also shift to what weaker states need (food, shelter etc…) rather fencing around with the “rights game”, something which Third World has often pointed out[42].

 

Conclusion

 

Nietzsche as a philosophical figure is notorious, but his ideas are tools capable of giving us fresh insights into old problems. Furthermore if we do not acknowledge the crisis in our “decaying mansion” of human rights, historians who do not believe in any kind of dialogue may get their views put ahead of those who want action, but considered democratic, sensitive action[43].

 

If we value a world of vibrant human rights, where intellectual honesty is valued, then a discourse that focuses on power is to be preferred. The modern rights discourse is schizophrenic because of the acknowledged normative value of human rights on one hand and the denial objective standards on the other. The Nietzschean view may be a way forward with trumps this paradox. This essay puts it forwards tentatively, because once action is taken on this new basis, certain cultures might be more aggressive and less careful in the way their exercise their force.