The Contemporary Challenges to Human Rights Application and Recognition

Abstract

This paper emphasizes how unavoidable human rights are in today's society. They unite church and state, left and right, and the North and the South. While armed forces develop norms of behavior supposedly based on them, street activists look up to them. Now that we have reached "the end of history," they represent the ideology that follows "the end of ideologies" and the last remaining set of values. Of course, intellectual promiscuity is the price of such pervasiveness. This paper highlights how some people use human rights as a symbol or synonym for liberalism, capitalism, or individualism, while others use them to refer to development, social justice, and/or peace. It argues that there are three obstacles facing human rights philosophy and practice in the modern world. The first is the difficulty of universality and the requirement to make sure that it has resonance in every society. This paper focuses on the substantive challenges to human rights, such as those raised by the "Asian values" rhetoric, the claim that universal applicability is hampered by the use of double standards, and the absence of universality concerning women's rights. The second concern has to do with how warfare is evolving and how many of the human rights tenets—which are founded on civil and political rights—are evolving and being questioned. Ultimately, non-state actors are becoming more and more significant in the advancement of politics and society. This paper emphasizes that human rights, with its state focus, may be unable to fully respond tothe types of injustices that people face in their daily lives.