ABSTRACT
Recently there have been extensive debates anddiscussions about human rights anddemocracy. The meaning of these terms, and their applicability to diverse nations and cultural settings, are matters of disagreement within academic circles and in public and international foreign policy debates. On the one hand, the historian Michael Ignatieff has labeled the current widespread interest in human rights as a “Rights Revolution” (Ignatieff, 2000). Evidence of the universal appeal of human rights may be seen in the endorsement of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights across the globe by nations with different political and cultural systems, together with recent efforts at its implementation in international law. On the other hand, others have charged that notions of rights and democracy are mere ideological red herrings, used to promote the hegemonic political interests of powerful Western nations by imposing Western-style political systems on cultures where these ideas are foreign and unwanted.
