Looking at the "human" in International Human Rights Law (IHRL)

Professor Costas Douzinas questioned the underpinnings of human rights by exploring origins of the concept of the human from which IHRL is built upon. He returns to the Roman Republic and notes the first recording of the word used to reference the human; ‘Humanitas’.[1] In theory, this word was adopted to distinguish between those in society who were civilised, polite and cultured from those who were not, and who were otherwise classified as ‘barbarians’.[2] Douzinas emphasises that conceptions of the human were used as a means of organising and distinguishing between social groups; reiterating that those within this era did not perceive a person as fully human until they complied with the hegemonic social structure and value system of that community.[3] Any people considered uneducated within the associated institutions or did not follow social norms were therefore “barbarians” and so were thought to lay outside of the scope of what was considered human.

What Douzinas claims to be significant about this idea was that there needed to be an understanding of what a human was not in order to understand what a human was, thus creating a dichotomy of the included verses the excluded with one equally as important as the other.[4] He went on to offer that concepts of the human began to adopt a seemingly universal application with the emergence of Christian theology. Here, no-one was deemed exempt from the saviour of God and everyone possessed an “immortal soul”.[5] This was then projected onto human rights discourse and can be seen in the Declaration of the rights of Man and the Citizen adopted in 1789 where it pronounces “all men are born and remain free in equal rights”.[6] Political scientist, Hannah Arendt stated that this transformed human rights from being guaranteed by the government to being guaranteed by “spiritual and religious forces”.[7] However, it was later argued that these were only accessible to those who followed the faith, so this seemingly universally connecting spiritual concept of the human became divisive as it resulted in the separation of Christians from non-Christians. In this sense, the universality of this conception is being imagined here but still within the context of Christianity which ultimately possesses an inside and an outside. Douzinas also stipulates that these frameworks and narratives were prominent in the colonial era whereby the dominant European culture was being forcibly extended globally.[8] At this time, to become human was to follow European ideology and thus become Christian.[9] This could suggest that the situated, geographical, political and culturally embedded elements to concepts of the human persisted despite humanistic discourse shifting to incorporate a universal theme.

From this, one could assume that it is a Eurocentric ideology that lies beneath human rights discourse. However, Upendra Baxi heavily criticizes this with the argument that conceptions of the human can be found in many other cultures and societies.[10] For example, the first language to ever adopt a word conceptualising the human was Sanskrit with the use of the word “manushyataa”. Whilst this is important to acknowledge when discerning the root of human conceptions, and acknowledging that Douzinas’ historical analysis could have been somewhat Eurocentric, what can be observed is how the dominant narratives surrounding concepts of the human have shaped IHRL and its construction.

[1] Costas Douzinas, Seven Thesis on Human Rights: (1) The Idea of Humanity, (2013): https://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/16/seven-theses-on-human-rights-1-the-idea-of-humanity/, [accessed 17th July). [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] Costas Douzinas, Seven Thesis on Human Rights: (1) The Idea of Humanity, (2013): https://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/16/seven-theses-on-human-rights-1-the-idea-of-humanity/, [accessed 17th July). [5] Ibid. [6] France: Declaration of the Right of Man and the Citizen (adopted 26 August 1789). Article 1. [7] Hannah Arendt, ‘The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man’, Hannah Arendt (ed), The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Schoken Books 1951). p. 291. [8] Costas Douzinas, Seven Thesis on Human Rights: (1) The Idea of Humanity, (2013): https://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/16/seven-theses-on-human-rights-1-the-idea-of-humanity/, [accessed 17th July). [9] Ibid. [10] Upendra Baxi, The future of human rights, (New Dehli: Oxford University Press 2002).