Human rights: Universal or evolutionary?

Human rights: Universal or evolutionary?

Singapore’s Foreign Minister George Yeo has a way with words.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), of which Singapore is a member, will take an evolutionary approach to human rights, he says.

The Asean human rights body to be launched at the next Asean summit in October doesn’t plan to “exhaustively determine every single detail of Asean's approach to human rights in advance,” he said. “'Over time, the body will have to build up its own practices and positions in a way analogous to case law.”

Does he mean Asean will one day have something like the European Court of Human Rights?

He does not say so in the Straits Times report.

There is already a Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted long ago by the United Nations. The UN Declaration says:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion;

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

The UN website presents the full declaration with all its 30 articles. But it has never been fully observed since it was adopted in 1948.

Take Article 18, for example.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

That’s anathema to some.

Soviet bloc states, South Africa and Saudi Arabia abstained from the vote when it was adopted by the UN General Assembly, says Wikipedia.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister George Yeo is not alone in thinking of “an evolutionary approach to human rights”.

Singapore’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani, expresses a similar view in his book, The New Asian Hemisphere. He writes:

When many Western observers look at China, they cannot see beyond the lack of a democratic political system. They miss the massive democratization of the human spirit that is taking place in China. Hundreds of millions of Chinese who thought they were destined for endless poverty now believe that they can improve their lives through their own efforts…

Most Western writers have focused on freedom that individuals need to fight for against an authoritarian or totalitarian state. But it is equally important to secure freedom by preventing chaos and anarchy.

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