Assignment 04 Samuel Moyn The Last Utopia
Initially Moyn gives a brief history of the term “human rights” and explains that human rights are a relatively new concept that was believed to have emerged after WWII in response to the “crimes against humanity” that took place in the German concentration camps. But according to Moyn, human rights did not gain attention or momentum until the 1970’s when NGOs began to use human rights to represent individual protection against the state.
As far as I understand the Declaration of Rights of Man was intended to declare the rights of citizenship within the nation-state mainly in relation to the protection of property, which is different from human rights today. “The rights of man were about a whole people incorporating itself in a state, not a few foreign people criticizing another state for its wrong doings” (Moyn, 2010, p. 26) Moyn also argues that the concept of human rights is an ideology or ideal for the world to aim for. Moyn also argues that human rights is the “the last utopia” for the world to believe in especially due to the crumbling over time of other, as Moyn calls them, alternative ideologies (religion, socialism, etc).
Moyn also discusses how the problems during WWII were not framed as human rights violations , which kept the public from knowing the issues and atrocities that had taken place. As mentioned before, the destruction and devastation caused by WWII had hardly any impact on producing a set of human rights standards for countries to live by. There were many events that took place throughout history that have helped to shape the concept of human rights one of which was that President Carter who began incorporating human rights language into foreign policy as a way to further the countries self interest and not necessarily out of the concern for international human rights.
Human rights can only be recognized and enforced by the state. Human rights imply moral principle and today while such organizations as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are in place to monitor/prevent human rights violations, they are not doing such a good job. Human rights are violated everyday here in the U.S as well as abroad. Human rights today is used as a tool to interfere in other governments such as the War on Terror. If human rights are intended to protect humanity and to lessen the suffering of people then why do countries continue to use human rights rhetoric to justify military interventions in other countries as well as economic sanctions.
I think I learned that human rights today are very broad and interpreted very differently because they seem to promise everything to everyone. Also having protections of rights depends on citizenship, as it always has. Citizenship or the “right to have rights” implies communal inclusion “without communal inclusion the assertion of rights by itself makes no sense” (Moyn, 2010, p. 12). Rights of man addressed citizenship and “belonging to a political community” (Moyn, 2010, p. 12) at home and human rights implies “the politics of suffering abroad” (Moyn, 2010, p. 12).
