Human rights - CReality

Human rights as guaranteed fundamental rights everywhere and for everyone around the world

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Theses on the current problems
1. The human rights situation has deteriorated or at least not improved in many places in recent years.
2. Especially in autocratically governed countries, the enforcement of human rights has become more difficult or has even been suspended for individual population groups.
3. Autocratic governments reject engagement for human rights as western interference in their internal affairs or even as terrorism and block the activities of human rights organizations in their countries.

Ideas for possible solutions
- Democratization of human rights and their enforcement and guarantee in all countries.
- Universalization of human rights through a "dialogue of cultures", enforcing the inviolability of the mind and body and equality before the law.
- Indivisibility of human rights in the sense of full enforcement of all human rights with equivalence of civil and economic rights.
- Globalization of human rights and guarantee of survival, freedom, well-being and identity of all people through a world government system.
- Strengthening collective human rights in the sense of strengthening group-specific identity aspects at the various levels.
- Strengthening the survival orientation of human rights with possibilities of peaceful or non-violent conflict resolution and reparation e.g. through truth and reconciliation commissions (following Galtung 2000:11f., summarized by Jäggi 2021:176).
- Furthermore: at any time and anywhere on the planet possible actionability of non-compliance with human rights in court - with condemnation of human rights violations by private or state actors. Only in this way can the enforcement of human rights ultimately be enforced and guaranteed in everyday life.

Discussion
St Frederik von Harbou (2014:276) identifies four key human rights protections, namely "1) bodily and psychological integrity, 2) subsistence, 3) freedom, and 4) equality."
According to Sergio Dellavalle (2011:123/124), human rights move between two poles in the history of ideas: According to the first view, human rights were implemented "from above," so to speak (also called "descending" interpretation of human rights, cf. Dellavalle 2011:130), which is why - always according to this view - they do not depend on participatory procedures, but for that they run the risk of being left to third-party instances such as courts. The second view sees human rights as a consequence and expression of social and political processes (also called "ascendant" interpretation, cf. Dellavalle 2011:139), i.e. the democratic participation of people.
From an ethical point of view, the concept of human rights is subject to the following dilemma: If one understands human rights as the inalienable rights of every human being, regardless of cultural or national affiliation, religious conviction or worldview, then the question arises of how to deal with people who reject the universality of human rights out of cultural, religious or worldview conviction. Can, must, should or may human rights be enforced even if they are not shared by all people? If yes: Doesn't the human rights movement thereby violate its own principles, such as freedom of opinion and belief? If no, does not the idea of human rights then lose its very central concern, namely the guarantee and enforcement of fundamental rights for all people, regardless of their specificities?
It seems, from an ethical point of view, there can be only one solution: To try again and again to bring the idea of human rights closer to all people discursively, that is, in conversation and through persuasion, but without violence. Ethical persuasion through discourse, patiently, persistently and without appropriation, but also without being discouraged by failure. Or as Jürgen Habermas (2001:180) once put it: If "human rights are accepted as a transcultural language" (Habermas 2001:180), they will break out of their one-sided domicile in the West and become the property of all cultures on this planet.
Georg Lohmann (2012:214) is undoubtedly to be agreed with when he writes: "In the future ... two opposing efforts seem to arise from the tensions between human rights and the pluralism of cultures. On the one hand, powerful political parties seek to replace or at least limit the universalism of human rights with culture- and religion-specific regional human rights regimes. On the other hand, different intercultural approaches defend the universalism of human rights and try to root it in their own culture in a critical confrontation with the respective culture and via an intraactive revision in this culture. Both endeavors stand in opposition to each other, which would be meaningless, however, if the claim of a complex justification of human rights universalism were abandoned in the improvements of human rights protection, which are, after all, at least rhetorically striven for by all states" (Lohmann 2012:214).

Forum

Cited Literature
- Dellavalle, Sergio
2011:  „Von oben" oder „Von unten"? Der Schutz der Menschenrechte – zwei Interpretationsansätze. In: Haller, Gret / Günther, Klaus / Neumann, Ulfrid (Hrsg.): Menschenrechte und Volkssouveränität in Europa. Geschichte als Vormund der Demokratie? Frankfurt/New York: Campus. 123 – 158.
- Galtung, Johan
2000:   Menschenrechte für das nächste Jahrhundert. In: Galtung, Johan (Hrsg.): Die Zukunft der Menschenrechte. Vision: Verständigung zwischen den Kulturen. Frankfurt/New York: Campus. 7ff.
- Habermas, Jürgen
2001:   Ein Gespräch über Gott und die Welt. In: Habermas, Jürgen: Zeit der Über-gänge. Kleine Politische Schriften IX. Frankfurt/Main: Edition suhrkamp. 173 – 196.
- Jäggi, Christian J.
2021:  Säkulare und religiöse Bausteine einer universellen Friedensordnung. Eine Zusammenschau. Baden-Baden: Tectum.
- Lohmann, Georg
2012:  Interkulturalismus und „cross-culture". In: Pollmann, Arnd / Lohmann, Georg (Hrsg.): Menschenrechte. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J.B. Metzler. 210 – 215.
- Von Harbou, Frederik
2014:  Empathie als Element einer rekonstruktiven Theorie der Menschenrechte. Baden-Baden: Nomos.