Resumen de The Status of Universal Human Rights in the 21st Century: An Appraisal
The emergence of human rights into human ethical consciousness and their development and now worldwide recognition constitutes a moral phenomenon of astonishing scale and unparalleled significance, well meriting the remark of Henkin (1990:
p.xvii) that “Ours is the age of human rights. Human rights is the idea of our time (Mahoney, 2007: viii).
On 10th December, 1948, the famous Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was proclaimed as one of the most widespread and globally binding internationally-recognized human rights document in the horrendous aftermath of the First World War. Its universal importance is seen in the recognition of the day as International Human Rights Day, and celebrated as such throughout the world. One of the principal objectives then was to avert a repetition of the holocaust, and to safeguard the provision of human rights contained in this document. Dinah L. Shelton places significant emphasis on this for good reasons. As she notes, “the concept of human rights involves consideration of what “rights” a person possesses by virtue of being “human”, that is rights that human beings, independent of the infinite variety of individual characteristics and human social circumstances” (Shelton, 2014: 1). The essence of this emphasis, especially her emphasis on “infinite” human characteristic, is perhaps, to safeguard future generations from the challenges of “identity” and the idea of “us” versus “them” often used in cases of “just wars”. It is the development of this aspect which this article seeks to investigate, using circumstances of the Ebola virus threat as a reference point. The article concludes that, there are emerging threats that question the extent of universality.
