Human Rights and Global Diversity

The end of the Cold War represented a seminal moment for the human rights movement. In less than three decades of active campaigning, non-governmental advocates had made human rights a common and powerful language and could claim no small part in the widespread attention to civil liberties and democratic reforms in countries throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. But if the expansion of freedom and democracy represented a victory for human rights, it has also served to underscore the dangers of equating civil and political rights with human dignity. The enduring and pervasive poverty suffered by close to two billion people across the globe stands as an inescapable rebuke to those ready to celebrate the “age of rights”.