ABSTRACT
Since the beginnings of modern international human rights law, most powerfully and comprehensively embodied by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a number of controversies have emerged regarding what might be termed the ‘Developing World Perspectives on International Human Rights Law’. These debates are various, intense, and ongoing, and include debates on the ‘Western’ character of human rights law, the contribution of the developing countries to human rights law, the emphasis by developing countries on ‘collective’ rather than individually based human rights, and the relationship between human rights and imperialism. This chapter provides an overview of these debates, this in an attempt to sketch the larger patterns that may connect them in various ways, and to see them within a broader framework of the evolution of human rights law. It concludes with some necessarily tentative suggestions about the future of human rights in developing countries.
