Human Rights Form the Perspective of Non-Western Thinkers

Human Rights Form the Perspective of Non-Western Thinkers

Human rights are just principles and norms that guide human behavior and activities that are usually protected by the freedom to exercise.  These are guarantees that have to be respected and followed to the latter provided you are human. Over the years, human rights have been a Western Concept, but it is a universal concept that protects every human around the globe. Even with the assurance and the protection of human rights legally, there have been non-western thinkers who have historicized and complicated human rights in various ways. They think that human rights are not just a matter of being human to enjoy these rights, but consider other aspects that they use to tell the history of human rights and how complicated it is in their view. These are some of the ways that non-western thinkers have used to perceive the history of human rights.

Demonstrations and formation of movements. Over-time, in history, people have been treated differently due to the difference in color and ethnicity from people of western origin. Mistreatment at places of work, police brutality, and resource allocation have been significant constraints in equal treatment of people of the black race (Chinwe 5).  Unfair treatment by the police who criminalize people because of their color or ethnicity has been a very issue of the human right violation, especially in western countries. This has led to the formation of movements and increased demonstrations of these marginalized people demanding the respect of their human rights.Movements for black lives have given people of the black race a sense of security since they feel that they have a platform for voicing their frustrations. For the non-western thinkers, human rights history is about how hard you have struggled to make your voice heard..

Civilization approach. Western countries were civilized early enough that they consider all individuals entitled to human rights privileges, equal treatment, and applicable to all groups of people. Non-western thinkers give a history that civilization does not affect the treatment of people by human rights law. They believe in the freedom to exercise your rights under the socioeconomic state or their relationship with the authority. Western thinkers assume that all people are free to enjoy their rights. The non-western thinkers argue that people are relative if they are on a higher bar with their primary duties and their socioeconomic status but not because they are just humans. Western thinkers assume that all people are free to enjoy their rights.

Colonization. Western colonies ruled the non-western countries for an extended period that they felt no objection to human rights. They were ruled and directed by the orders made by the colonial rulers, not allowed to make their own decisions or demands for whatever their needs were. After world war two, the westerners decided to acknowledge human rights as a universal entitlement to every individual. The non-westerners, in their history, perceived human rights as a privilege to only people with power since that was their initial experience. Therefore, it is safe to say that, in their history, human rights were only free to people in power, with power,  knowledge, and the information but not to everybody in society.

Cultural relativism. Non-westerners have diverse cultures that dictate their activities in society. These cultures have been used to define human rights over a long time, unlike the western culture that does not restrict one to exercise their power. Some cultures do not allow people to do certain things, visit certain places, or even eat a particular food because of their gender or social status. For instance, African cultures dictate women not to eat certain foods, visit specific gatherings, and assign certain chores just for women. In these cultures, it is considered a taboo to go against the rules even if denies your right. Age was also culturally used to recognize certain privileges to older people, and the youth had to work for whatever they deserved, even if it was readily available. This way, therefore, the non-western thinkers use culture to tell and complicate the history of human rights, that it privileged just specific gender, age, or class of people in the society.

The silences non-westerners use explicitly in the production of history

We are all amateur historians with various degrees about our production (Trouilloit 25). History itself involves the social process and narratives.by use of the Alamo history in1830s, Trouilloit makes a point that history is made of actors and narrators. The narrators will only tell what they either witnesses or understood from what they read. He states that history can be silenced in ways like telling how they think it occurred instead of how it exactly transpired in the events. In the process of production of their history, non-western gazers make silence explicit at different moments. The moment of creating historical facts. Regardless of the sources used to produce history, these thinkers might use some sources that do not give the exact details of what happened in real time. Some of these sources may also have been written by witnesses who were not directly involved in the real action, thus provide the information they think they saw, how well they can describe the scenario, or guess what they missed while witnessing such an occurrence.

The moment of retrieving facts and narrating it as history is the main silences in historizing. In this context, the non-western gazers use narratives to produce their past and history of others too. Even though some of their stories are from reliable sources, they merely narrate how they understand the occurrences and from experiences of others who may not have hard proof of these incidents. Narratives hardly constitute the object of study in the process of production but regularly displayed as illustrations or translated messages. There are some historical events that, when narrated, fail to bring out the specific details of the occurrence in the exact way it happened. Hence, it ignores critical historical information of the incident, by only putting it as understood or read by the actors or narrators of the said event. For instance, the history of slavery and violation of human rights in the 1800s by the west supremacies, may not be produced to detail since all that is present now are just books and narrators who were told by other people.

Even though the non-western thinkers have produced their history and live with admiration towards the markers of those historical moments, Trouilloit helps in realizing the apparent silencesthat make their tale more interesting. The sources they refer to for the information, and those who narrate the history to them may not give full details of the occurrences of ancient times. These are the silences explicitly used in the production of their past that is useful in the construction of the world.

Works Cited

Chinwe, Ezinna Oriji. From Biafra to police brutality: challenging localized Blackness toward globally racialized ethnicities of Nigerians in the U.S., Ethnic and Racial Studies.2019.DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2019.1649441

Trouillot, Michel-Rolf. “The power in the Story.” Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History.1995.