Human Rights, Asian Perspectives On

Asian Legal Cultures

Asian cultural traditions contain certain ethical views and philosophies of justice and social organization. Many argue that one can find basic principles of human rights within these traditions. For instance, the idea of limited sovereign power over an individual evolved from natural law elements inherent in cosmic or religious conceptions that originated in Asia. In addition, several Asian cultures have prominent concerns about dignity and respect for human beings.

Many maintain, however, that for the concept of human rights to be useful, it should be assumed legal in a strict sense and should not be identified with human dignity ethics or any traditional Asian philosophies. In this debate, scholars make a schematic distinction between the Western-modern approach based on rights and the Eastern-traditional approach based on duties. Another distinction is the one between individualism and communalism or between egalitarianism and holistic concepts of social harmony.

Cultural Relativism and Asian Human Rights

These broad dualities, which support the Western character of human rights and highlight some distance of Asian-traditional perspectives from human rights theory and practice, are connected to the debate on the universality of values and cultural relativism. Some advocate transcultural values, which one could assume to serve as the ground for universal human rights. From this perspective, the undisputed Western origin of the human rights discourse would not imply that they are inherently or exclusively Western. Therefore, the Western human rights elaboration could be accepted as rational and useful everywhere in the world. Opposite views tend to support cultural specificity and even incommensurability.

From a political perspective, a prominent question is whether an Asian model of human rights exists that is specific and can effectively cooperate with other models, or a competing Asian model that rejects human rights and aims to be acknowledged on a global scale. These questions have been debated mainly with regard to so-called Asian values, which take a philosophical view supporting a political model and practical claims. The Asian values movement adheres to the view that global human rights are specific to Western cultural values, rooted in a peculiar philosophical and political history having at its ground individualistic concepts that are alien to Asian cultures. This view leads to strong criticism of human rights because they are seen as a neocolonial tool by which Western values were imposed on supposedly backward Asian values and by which ideologically political interference was justified.

Asian values support the idea that protection of human rights is an internal matter of states, which should take into account the specificities of cultural and economic factors. Rights may be limited to promote faster economic development, and economic and social rights are considered more important than civil and political rights. Some societies may see authoritarianism as a suitable alternative to democracy.

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