The case against human rights | Eric Posner
Posner's argument is that the western attempt to enforce and create a coherent human rights regime has basically been a complete and utter failure on basically every level, because it's basically been imposing a cookie-cutter idea of what rights are the most important to people on everyone without care or inclination as to how effectively that sort of agenda can be imposed and how much the public cares about it, while also having an overinflated sense of how successful such movements can be.
IMO, his observations-that the coercive regime of human rights enforcement has largely failed, and not only that but they have often failed in ways which have only strengthened illiberal regimes and weakened the moral authority of the west, and that human rights advocates should be considering letting local movements take the lead and providing them with assistance to achieve more modest human rights goals rather than trying to impose moral leadership from the top down and punishing people who don't comply (unless they're allies of the west in which case nothing bad will happen to them ever)-are pretty convincing. I think that this sort of non-coercive system can easily create a less hypocritical sort of human rights enforcement because now the same constraints can be applied to allies as they can be to enemies, which is helpful in and of itself.
Eric Posner said:It is time to start over with an approach to promoting wellbeing in foreign countries that is empirical rather than ideological. Human rights advocates can learn a lot from the experiences of development economists – not only about the flaws of top-down, coercive styles of forcing people living in other countries to be free, but about how one can actually help those people if one really wants to. Wealthy countries can and should provide foreign aid to developing countries, but with the understanding that helping other countries is not the same as forcing them to adopt western institutions, modes of governance, dispute-resolution systems and rights. Helping other countries means giving them cash, technical assistance and credit where there is reason to believe that these forms of aid will raise the living standards of the poorest people. Resources currently used in fruitless efforts to compel foreign countries to comply with the byzantine, amorphous treaty regime would be better used in this way.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the human rights treaties were not so much an act of idealism as an act of hubris, with more than a passing resemblance to the civilising efforts undertaken by western governments and missionary groups in the 19th century, which did little good for native populations while entangling European powers in the affairs of countries they did not understand. A humbler approach is long overdue.
Posner's argument is that the western attempt to enforce and create a coherent human rights regime has basically been a complete and utter failure on basically every level, because it's basically been imposing a cookie-cutter idea of what rights are the most important to people on everyone without care or inclination as to how effectively that sort of agenda can be imposed and how much the public cares about it, while also having an overinflated sense of how successful such movements can be.
IMO, his observations-that the coercive regime of human rights enforcement has largely failed, and not only that but they have often failed in ways which have only strengthened illiberal regimes and weakened the moral authority of the west, and that human rights advocates should be considering letting local movements take the lead and providing them with assistance to achieve more modest human rights goals rather than trying to impose moral leadership from the top down and punishing people who don't comply (unless they're allies of the west in which case nothing bad will happen to them ever)-are pretty convincing. I think that this sort of non-coercive system can easily create a less hypocritical sort of human rights enforcement because now the same constraints can be applied to allies as they can be to enemies, which is helpful in and of itself.