Ideological (Mis)Use of Human Rights - David Chandler

114 D. CHANDLER
Introduction
Many commentators have observed the fact that
human rights frameworks have become an integral
part of a new, more hierarchical, international order,
undermining UN Charter restrictions on the use of
military force and justifying new, more coercive forms
of international regulation and intervention in the
post-colonial world. To view these consequences of
human rights claims and discourses as the ideological
‘misuse’ or ‘abuse’ of human rights would already be to
approach the question of understanding human rights
with a certain set of assumptions. Th ese assumptions
would be based upon an idea that human rights claims
necessarily challenge entrenched power relations and
are an important mechanism of advocacy on behalf of
the victims of abuses or those excluded from traditional
frameworks of representation. Th is chapter will suggest
that these prior assumptions, of the ‘purity’ of human
rights claims and of their ‘abuse’ by powerful actors, are
themselves problematic.
Human rights claims can not in themselves be
accurately seen as either enforcing or challenging the
existing relations of power. Th e one thing that can be
asserted with confi dence is that human rights claims
confl ate an ethical or moral claim with a legal and political
one. Th e discourse of the ‘human’ belongs to the
sphere of abstract universal ethics, while that of ‘rights’
belongs to the framework of a concretely constituted
legal and political sphere. In confl ating the two spheres,
human rights claims pose a challenge to rights as they
are legally constituted. Th e content of this challenge,
whether it has any consequences, and, if it does have
consequences what these consequences are, are matters
for concrete analysis. To suggest that any challenge to
the framework of legally constituted rights is necessarily
an eff ective one, or necessarily a good or progressive
one, would clearly be naive.
In fact, it was the challenge of naivety that was
famously articulated by Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian
philosopher, when he denounced the idea of human
rights as ‘nonsense on stilts’ (see Chapter 1). He had
nothing but contempt for the new-fangled universal
‘rights of man’ proclaimed at the end of the eighteenth
century. For Bentham, rights meant nothing unless they
were enforceable with clear contractual obligations and
backed by law. Declarations of the ‘rights of man’ were
no more than rhetorical fancies and collections of pious
wishes that were not worth the paper they were written
on. Th e idea that we were born with universal equal
rights simply because we were human made no sense
to Bentham. Firstly, we are born into a relationship of
dependency rather than equality, and are not considered
as moral or legal equals until we reach maturity
(children are not born with criminal liability as they
are not responsible for their actions). Secondly, it was
clear that there could be no universal human equality:
the opportunities we have depend fundamentally on
the societies we live in and our position within those
societies.
However, few people would have the confi dence to
argue in Bentham’s dismissive terms today. It would
appear to be undeniable that our understandings of
and respect for human rights are central to the way we
and our governments make policy and act in international
aff airs. Yet, despite today’s consensus on the fact
that ‘human rights are a good thing’, there is still the
nagging sense that Bentham may have a point, that
human rights may sound very nice on paper but be
much more ephemeral when it comes to giving these
aspirations meaning and content, and that, nice as these
claims sound, they may be open to abuse.
Claims to anything can be abused and all claims to
rights can be misused. However, it is vital to appreciate
that it is inherent within human rights claims that
they are more open to abuse or misuse than other
claims, those of democratic and civil rights for example.
Th e reason for this, in the words of Norman Lewis, is
quite simply because human rights are not derived from
‘socially constituted legal subjects’ (Lewis, 1998, p. 85).
Where Bentham saw abstract rights claims as merely
childish or superstitious thinking, much as the ‘belief
in witches or unicorns’; their abstract nature—the fact
that they can refl ect radical and progressive aspirations
rather than merely legally enshrined rights—is held to be
a major factor in their use and support across the globe.
Th is chapter is tasked with focusing on the downside
of human rights claims—what is commonly understood
by advocates of human rights to be the ‘misuse’ or
‘abuse’ of human rights. It will be demonstrated that the
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