Thinking on the Critiques of Human Rights

Abstract

Even though human rights are declared to be the “most significant achievement of our century, and “a worldwide secular religion”, they face various challenges that pose a threat for their future. These are the critiques directed to both the idea and its practice. Although the concept of human rights is mostly supposed to be very clear, challenges directed to the idea of human rights displays that we have a fairly indeterminate concept of human rights. Conceptual or theoretical objections are mostly directed either to the vagueness and abstractness of concept of human rights, and of human nature on which the idea of human rights supposed to be to rest, or the claim of universality. In addition to these critiques of universality, abstractness and indeterminateness, neglecting solidarity and other social values consists of the other critiques related to human rights . Some other objections have mostly based on the practical failures or the huge gap between theory and practice of human rights, and criticized human rights movement also becoming a tool of governments diverging from its revolutionary core. This article will tackle these conceptual and practical challenges to human rights in the light of contemporary human rights discourse.