Law, Social Justice & Global Development
(An Electronic Law Journal) 

Human Rights: Southern Voices
Francis Deng, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Yash Ghai and Upendra Baxi

William Twining,
Quain Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus,
Faculty of Laws, 
University College London

w.twining@ucl.ac.uk 

This is a refereed article published on:  6 December 2007

Citation: Twining, W, ‘Human Rights: Southern Voices; Francis Deng, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Yash Ghai and Upendra Baxi’, 2007 (1) Law, Social Justice & Global Development Journal (LGD). <http://www.go.warwick.ac.uk/elj/lgd/2007_1/twining>

Abstract
In the context of ‘globalisation,’ Western jurisprudence has largely ignored non-Western viewpoints, interests, and traditions. This article takes a modest step towards de-parochialising our juristic canon by introducing writings about human rights of four ‘Southern’ jurists: Francis Deng (Southern Sudan), Abdullahi An-Nai’im (Sudan), Yash Ghai (Kenya), and Upendra Baxi (India). All were trained in the common law and have published extensively in English, so their work is readily accessible, but their perspectives show some striking differences. Deng argues that traditional values of the Dinka of the Southern Sudan are basically compatible with the values underlying the international human rights regime. For An-Na’im, a ‘modernist’ interpretation of Islam is mostly reconcilable with international human rights, but acceptance of such ideas depends far more on conversations within Islam than on cross-cultural dialogue of external efforts. Ghai questions claims to universal human rights; however, from his materialist stance and his experience of postcolonial constitution-making, human rights discourse can provide a framework for negotiating settlements in multi-ethnic societies. Baxi argues that as human rights discourse is professionalised or hijacked by powerful groups, it risks losing touch with the suffering and needs of the poor and the oppressed, who are the main authors of human rights.

Keywords: 
An-Na’im, Baxi, Deng, Ghai, Human Rights, Pluralism, Southern Jurisprudence, Universalism. 

Editors Note:
The substance of this contribution is contained in Twining, W (2006) ' Human Rights: Southern Voices - Francis Deng, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Yash Ghai and Upendra Baxi’ Review of Constitutional Studies 11, pp. 203-279 and is published herein by the kind permission of Review of Constitutional Studies.

Authors Note: 
This is an extended version of the 17th Annual McDonald Lecture, delivered at the Centre for Constitutional Studies, University of Alberta, 31 March 2005. I am grateful to Terry Anderson, Bill Conklin, Marie Dembour, Andrew Halpin, Janna Promislow, Carl Wellman, and participants in seminars at the University of Miami and the University of Sussex for helpful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank the four subjects of this article for answering questions, and pointing out errors and omissions, while leaving me space to make my own interpretations, for which I am solely responsible.

1.	Introduction

In Ahdaf Soueif’s novel, The Map of Love, an Egyptian woman, Amal, is expecting an American visitor: ‘Wary and weary in advance: an American woman – a journalist, she had said on the phone. But she said Amal’s brother had told her to call and so Amal agreed to see her. And braced herself: the fundamentalists, the veil, the cold peace, polygamy, women’s status in Islam, female genital mutilation – which would it be?’

Amal is a cosmopolitan scholar, who moves easily between the worlds of Cairo, New York, and Europe. She is weary of the simplistic repetitious stereotyping of Egypt, Arab culture, and Islam by Westerners. Western normative jurisprudence faces similar charges of a repetitious parochialism about its agenda and about the bearing of other traditions on normative questions.

Western jurispudence has a long tradition of universalism in ethics. Natural law, classical utilitarianism, Kantianism, and modern theories of human rights have all been universalist in tendency. But nearly all such theories have been developed and debated with at most only tangential reference to and in almost complete ignorance of the religious and moral beliefs and traditions of the rest of humankind. When differing cultural values are discussed, even the agenda of issues has a stereotypically Western bias. How can one seriously claim to be a universalist if one is ethnocentrically unaware of the ideas and values of other belief systems and traditions?

As the discipline of law becomes more cosmopolitan, it needs to be backed by a truly cosmopolitan general jurisprudence. My objective here is to make a small contribution to this cause by exploring the work of four non-Western jurists who are from ‘the South’ and who have made substantial contributions to the theory and practice of human rights: Francis Deng (Sudan), Abdullahi An-Na’im (Sudan), Yash Ghai (Kenya), and Upendra Baxi (India). I shall finish with some remarks on why I have selected these four individuals, who else might have been included, the similarities and contrasts in their perspectives, in what sense they can be claimed to be ‘voices’ from or of the South, and their relationship to some familiar strands in Western liberal democratic theory.

Since my immediate objective is to make the views of these four jurists better known, I shall try to provide a clear and fair exposition of their ideas about human rights, based on a finite number of accessible texts. This is part of the larger enterprise of de-parochialising our own traditions of jurisprudence at a time when we need to take seriously the implications of the complex processes of globalisation for our understanding of law.

Let me begin with a brief overview of the four individuals, each of whom emphasises seemingly different aspects of ‘voice.’ Francis Deng, justifiably, claims to speak for the traditions and culture of his own people, the Ngok Dinka of Kordofan in the Sudan. He argues that traditional Dinka values are basically compatible, in most respects, with the values underlying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international conventions and declarations. Abdullahi An-Na’im argues that a ‘modernist’ interpretation of Islam involves ideas that are, for the most part, similarly reconcilable with international human rights ideas, but that acceptance of such ideas (their internalisation within Islamic belief systems) depends far more on conversations and debates within Islam than on cross-cultural dialogue, let alone external attempts at persuasion or imposition. Yash Ghai is skeptical of most claims to universality that are made for human rights; however, adopting a pragmatic materialist stance, he reports that he has found through practical experience of postcolonial constitution making that human rights discourse provides a workable framework for negotiating political and constitutional settlements among politicians and leaders claiming to represent different majority, minority, and ethnic interests in multi-ethnic societies. Such discourse also facilitates popular participation in constitutive processes. Upendra Baxi argues that as human rights discourse becomes commodified, professionalised by technocrats, and sometimes hijacked by powerful groups, it is in grave danger of losing touch with the experience of suffering and the needs of those who should be the main beneficiaries – the poor and the oppressed. They are the main authors of human rights. To take human rights seriously is to take suffering seriously.

All four have been activists as well as theorists, but in different ways. Francis Deng has had a very distinguished career in international diplomacy. Abdullahi An-Na’im has been a human rights activist within the Sudan and several other countries, and a publicist for human rights internationally. Yash Ghai has played a major role in post-independence constitution making and reform, especially in the South Pacific and Kenya. Upendra Baxi has been an influential publicist and campaigner in India and on the international stage, as well as serving as vice-chancellor of two Indian universities. For the last twenty years, he has campaigned and litigated on behalf of the victims of the Bhopal disaster.

2.	Francis Madeng Deng

God asked man, “Which one shall I give you, black man; there is the cow and the thing called ‘What,’ which of the two would you like?”
The man said, “I do not want ‘What.’”
God said: “But ‘What’ is better than the cow!”
God said, “If you like the cow, you had better taste its milk before you choose it finally.”
The man squeezed some milk into his hand, tasted it, and said, “Let us have the milk and never see ‘What.’”

What you have said, you Mading, we are very pleased. Things we have told you, you will give them a purpose; you will write them down and that is a big 
thing . . . . 

If this machine of yours writes and records what a man really says, and really records well, then if what we have said is bad, it will search for our necks; if it is good, then we will say these words have saved our country. Now we have trusted you . . . we trust in you fully. Whatever you think we have missed, whatever you think we should have said that we missed, let it be said that we are the people who said it.

Francis Mading Deng was born in 1938 near Abyei in Kordofan in the west of the Sudan. His father, Deng Majok, was paramount chief of the Ngok Dinka, the only Nilotic inhabitants in the Northern Sudan. It is commonly said that ‘Abyei is to the Sudan as the Sudan is to Africa,’ a bridge between the African and Arab worlds. Deng Majok was an outstanding tribal leader, a national figure, especially prominent for his bridging role between the Arab north and the Nilotic south. He was also known as the creator of a huge family through marrying more wives than any other man in Dinka history. Francis, one of his senior sons, became both the leading interpreter of Dinka tradition and a committed proponent of human rights, maintaining that they are basically compatible. How could this be?

Francis was the eldest son of Deng Majok’s fourth wife. Although he did not groom any of his sons to succeed him, Deng Majok believed in education. The education of Francis Deng is a story of a remarkable journey through different cultures. It began in Deng Majok’s compound in Abyei and continued in a boarding school for sons of chiefs run on similar lines to a British preparatory school. Francis Deng then proceeded to Khor Taaqqat, a secondary boarding school in the North, where the great majority of the boys were Muslims. He read law at the University of Khartoum, where he was taught in English mainly by expatriate teachers, including myself. The course was largely based on English law, but included an introduction to Shari’a law. Some attempt was made to discuss the role of customary law in the national legal system of the Sudan, but there was not sufficient literature to carry this very far. With encouragement, Deng spent some of his vacations studying customary law by sitting in his father’s court, reading the court records, interviewing chiefs and elders, and starting a collection of recordings of several hundred Dinka songs. This was the start of his very extensive explorations of Dinka traditions, culture, and law over many years.

Francis Deng graduated with a good LL.B. in 1962 and obtained a scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies in London, where he stayed for a year, before proceeding to Yale Law School, from which he obtained a doctorate in 1967. Before the age of thirty, he had been exposed to Dinka, Christian, British colonial, Northern Sudanese, Muslim, and both English and American common law ideas. So it is hardly surprising that one of the central concerns of all his writing has been the problem of identity.

On leaving Yale, Francis Deng worked as an officer in the human rights division of the United Nations Secretariat in New York from 1967 to 1972. During this period he met and married Dorothy Ludwig and became part of an American family. They have four sons, who have grown up mainly in Washington, D.C., but who have kept in touch with their Dinka heritage.

In 1972 Deng joined the Sudanese diplomatic service. He served as ambassador to the United States and Scandinavia, becoming Minister of State for Foreign Affairs between 1976 and 1980. From 1980 to 1983, he was Sudan’s ambassador to Canada. Subsequently he has held a number of academic positions, mainly in the United States. He has continued to be involved in public affairs, most notably in efforts to end the civil war in the Sudan and, since 1992, as Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations on Internally Displaced Persons, rising to the status of Undersecretary-General. In this capacity he has had enormous influence in bringing the plight of 25 million people in forty countries to public attention, and in persuading governments that this neglected problem is a matter both of sovereign responsibility and legitimate international humanitarian concern.

Even when holding responsible full-time public positions, Francis Deng has been a prolific writer. His first book, Tradition and Modernization: A Challenge for Law Among the Dinka of the Sudan, was based on his doctoral thesis at Yale. Of it, Harold Lasswell, his main supervisor, wrote: ‘Dr Deng has brought to the task of examining his own culture an impressive objectivity of outlook that testifies to his success in acquiring the essential characteristic of a scientific frame of reference.’ This frame of reference, based on Lasswell and McDougal’s ‘law, science, and policy’ approach, represented a significant departure for Deng:

There was a time when I would have been reticent to speak of values because my earlier legal training made me suspicious of such terms as falling within the realm of metaphysics and therefore irrelevant to hard legal analysis. But then I was fortunate, I would say, to go to Yale Law School, where Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell attached considerable importance to values. In their jurisprudence of law, science and policy, values were defined in concrete terms, embracing deference values such as power, rectitude, affection and respect, and welfare values like wealth, well-being, skills and enlightenment. Another major principle introduced by the Yale School of Jurisprudence was the concept of human dignity as an overriding goal of community and social processes. Again, human dignity was one of those concepts that I had been conditioned by my earlier legal training to dismiss as metaphysical. The Yale school gave it an empirical meaning by defining it in terms of the broadest shaping and sharing of values.

For Francis Deng, these concepts resonated with Dinka values as he perceived them and at the same time provide a direct link with universal principles applicable to all societies.

Tradition and Modernization is unusual in another respect. It is one of the few books about law ever to be based quite substantially on songs. Rarer still, the author was qualified by birth to be a poet. This extraordinary feat arose out of necessity: because of the security situation, Deng was unable to return home to do more fieldwork, so he partly made up for this gap in his data by making an extensive collection of songs from fellow Dinkas in the United States and from his earlier recordings and his memory. In time he produced two volumes of translations of Dinka songs and folk tales. His early writings bring out the special role played by song in Dinka social relations in relation to courtship, bridewealth, cattle, disputes, war, religious ceremonies, and celebrations:

Among the Dinka, songs and dance have a functional role in everyday life. They do not deal with constructed situations; they concern known facts, known people, and defined objectives. But, above all they are skills of splendor in which a Dinka finds total gratification and elevation. The vigor and rhythm with which they stamp the ground, the grace with which they run in war ballets, the height to which they jump, the manner of pride and self-approval with which they bear themselves, and the way in which the high-pitched solo receives the loud unified response of the chorus combine to give the Dinka a euphoria that is hard to describe. As the singing stops, the drums beat even louder, the dance reaches its climax, and every individual, gorged with a feeling of self-fulfillment, begins to chant words of self-exaltation.  

I am a gentleman adorned with beads
I dance to the drums and level my feet
The girls of the tribe gather before me
The wealth of the tribe comes to me.

Francis Deng has produced over twenty books, including two novels. Many of them concern the Dinka or the problems of North–South conflict in the Sudan. Even when writing about broader issues such as human rights, displaced persons, and dispute resolution, he regularly draws on Dinka examples and reaffirms that at the core of his multi-layered identity remains a commitment to central Dinka values. A central concern of his work is to reconcile tensions between tradition and modernity, between Dinka culture and universal standards, and between national unity and diversity in a conflicted Sudan.

2.1.	The Historical Context
Francis Deng’s writings need to be viewed in the context of the history of the Sudan. At Independence in 1956, the Dinka were one of the largest peoples in Africa. In the 1956 census they were estimated to number nearly 2 million, divided into twenty-five independent groups living a semi-nomadic, semi-pastoral life in settlements dispersed over nearly a million square miles within the Sudan. During the Condominium period they were perceived by outsiders to be strongly religious, immensely proud, exclusive, and resistant to change. For many years they fiercely resisted foreign rule, but under the British they also found that the policy of indirect rule was a convenient way of maintaining their heritage and distinct identity. Whether the motives of the British in maintaining the isolation of the Southern Sudan are attributed to a respect for Nilotic culture amounting almost to romance or to a policy of divide and rule, or to a mixture of both, until Independence the Dinka enjoyed the security and exclusiveness resulting from the policy, while resenting being ruled by outsiders, whether British or Northerners.

The Sudan became independent in 1956. During the past half-century, except for a ten-year break, the Dinka have suffered terribly, experiencing repression, massacres, starvation (sometimes deliberately induced), decimation, enslavement, and displacement. The civil war in the Sudan began in 1955. From 1972 to 1983, there was a break following the Addis Ababa Agreement, which gave the Southern Sudan regional autonomy. War resumed in 1983 after the military regime of Gafaar Nimeiry instituted a strategy of Islamicisation. The latest peace agreement, in 2005, still holds precariously at the time of writing. Over the years, Francis Deng has been involved in attempts to broker a peace as a statesman and diplomat, but above all as a writer.

Here I shall concentrate on Deng’s treatment of universalism and relativism with respect to human rights by focusing on a few of his very extensive writings, especially his biography of his father, the volume Human Rights in Africa, edited jointly with Abdullahi An-Na’im, and a series of articles published in The Sudan Democratic Gazette and The Journal of International Affairs that set out his general position in summary form.

Despite this terrible history of death, suffering, and displacement, Francis Deng emphasises the resilience and vitality of Dinka culture which has formed the basis of their identity. He has documented this culture in rich detail through interviews, folk tales, legends, biographies, cases, and historic events. In his early work he had to rely quite heavily on his own experience, a sparse but generally excellent scholarly literature, and his own recordings of Dinka songs. After he returned to the Sudan, he was able to update his knowledge and supplement these sources with extensive recordings of interviews with Dinka chiefs and other informants.

In his scholarly writings about the Dinka, Deng adopted an approach that now might be considered unfashionable in its use of ‘the ethnographic present’ and the rather rigid framework of analysis of Lasswell and McDougal. However, Dinka history and culture are also powerfully evoked through Dinka folk tales, songs, oral history, and novels. He identifies the unity of Dinka culture in a changing and tragic situation through a few core concepts and values that form a distinctive Dinka identity. His interpretation is in a sense ‘idealised’ in that he focuses on core values of a tradition that were never fully lived up to and, as he makes very clear, have been threatened not only by modernity but by nearly half a century of suffering. What follows is a brief outline of his interpretation of these ideas and how they relate to international norms of human rights, democracy, and good governance.

2.2.	Dinka Culture
The Dinka were said to be among the most religious of African peoples. They believe in a single God who has similar characteristics to the God of other monotheistic religions, including Christianity and Islam, but they have no concept of heaven or hell. ‘The overriding goal of Dinka society is koc e nohm, a concept of procreational immortality which aims at perpetuating the identity of every individual male. Respect for the dignity of any person is central to this principle.’ Both men and women are immortalised by procreation. It determines their social status, wealth, and place in history. Immortality maintains the identity of the dead and enables them to continue to participate in social processes in this world and to influence them.

Two central concepts are cieng and dheng (or dheeng). The concept of cieng sets the standard of good social relations. It has no counterpart in English. As a verb it can mean to treat a person well, to live in harmony, to be generous, hospitable, and kind. A person’s character or behaviour can be evaluated in terms of having good or bad cieng: ‘Cieng places emphasis on such human values as dignity, integrity, honor, and respect for self and others, loyalty and piety, compassion and generosity, and unity and harmony…Good cieng is opposed to coercion and violence, for solidarity, harmony, and mutual cooperation are more fittingly achieved voluntarily and by persuasion.’

Cieng sums up central values of human relations. Dinka society provides various avenues for developing individual and collective pride through attaining values that demand respect. A person attains the status of dheng by his or her conduct: ‘Among the many positive meanings of dheng are nobility, beauty, handsomeness, elegance, charm, grace, gentleness, hospitality, generosity, good manners, discretion, and kindness.’ As with virtue, there are many paths to dheng – through ancestry, cattle, sexual prowess, graciousness, generosity, bravery, or wealth in the form of cattle.

Dinka values are believed to be sanctioned by God and the ancestors. Harold Lasswell commented on the powerful processes of early socialization that created an ‘inner policeman’ which can continue to operate after an individual has moved from his original setting and come into contact with other norms, values, and temptations. In traditional society, living up to these values was largely left to individual conscience, social approval and disapproval, and persuasion rather than force. Dinka tradition makes no sharp distinction between law, custom, and morals. All are backed by religious and social pressures and especially by individual conscience:

These moral and spiritual principles are also applied to guide and control the exercise of political and legal authority. Dinka law is not the dictate of the ruler with coercive sanctions. Rather it was an expression of the collective will of the community, inherited from the ancestors, generally respected and observed, sanctioned largely through persuasion, or if need be, spiritual sanctions.

Despite the martial culture of the Dinka as herders and warriors, killing, even in fair fight, is believed to be spiritually contaminating and dangerous according to ritual practices. Killing by stealth or ambush is considered particularly depraved and requires even more elaborate procedures of redress and rites of atonement. Theft was hardly heard of in traditional society and, when it occurred, was met with degrading sanctions that were severely damaging to one’s social standing. Virtually every wrong threatens the wrongdoer with misfortune and death.

Dinka norms on killing, marriage, the family, harms, insult, and defamation (including defamation of the dead), social hierarchy, and economic relations are all directly related to the overriding importance of immortality through procreation and the values embodied in the concepts of cieng and dheng. These values integrate the individual and the community. They are illustrated in concrete form by the role of cattle in Dinka society. ‘It is for cattle that we are liked, we the Dinka. The government likes us because we keep cattle. All over the world people look to us because of cattle. And when they say ‘Sudan,’ it is not just because of our color, it is also because of our wealth; and our wealth is cattle.’

Cattle are wealth, but they signify much more than that. Cattle constitute bridewealth that ensures continuity through procreation; cattle are prepared for special sacrifices to God, the spirits, and ancestors. A great many songs are about oxen or the need for oxen – for marriage, for sacrifice, or just for dheng. Young men exalt themselves and their lineage through identification with their personality ox, a castrated bull of little practical value:

When I rise I sing over my ox,
gossipers disperse
I am like my forefathers
I rise to be seen by my ancient fathers
I rise to be seen walking with pride
As it was in the distant past
When our clan was born.

2.3.	Leadership
The Dinka lacked any centralized institutions for making or enforcing law, and some anthropologists have maintained that they were an example of an ‘acephalous’ or chiefless society and that ‘chiefs’ were a colonial creation. However, this is misleading. The Dinka did have leaders whom anthropologists have variously referred to as ‘master of the fishing spear’ (Lienhardt) or ‘The Leopard Skin Chief’ (Evans-Pritchard and Paul Howell). These titles emphasize the religious nature of traditional leadership which contrasted with British secular conceptions of the role of chiefs. According to Deng, the traditional leader was the embodiment of Dinka values, mediating between God, the ancestors, and the living: ‘Viewed in local terms, these qualities are often associated with ‘the tongue’ and ‘the belly.’ By the tongue is meant the ability to speak soothing and conciliatory words that bring harmony and mutual co-operation to human relations. The belly connotes showing hospitality to visitors, but also generosity to the needy.’

During the condominium period, chieftainship among the Dinka became more secular and political. Persuasion remained a prime requirement of leadership, but over time authority came to rely more on secular punishments than on religious sanctions. Such punishments as prison and flogging offended Dinka conceptions of dignity and were resented, although over time they came to be accepted to some extent. Pressures on traditional chiefs to meet their material obligations sometimes led to accusations of corruption or abuse. The move from religious to secular opened the way to criticism of chiefs and even to political opposition.

Francis Deng’s father, Deng Majok, lived through all of these strains between tradition and modernity and was regarded by many as the embodiment of a great Dinka leader. He was widely admired for many qualities, including wisdom, generosity, strong leadership, and progressiveness, and for building good relations with neighbouring Arabs while safeguarding the security and independence of his own people. However, he was often criticized for ‘excessive marriage.’ At first sight this provides a rather striking example of a conflict between Dinka tradition and modern ‘universal’ values. But the story is more complex than that.

In his biography of his father, Francis Deng deals frankly and in detail with Deng Majok’s prodigious uxoriousness. Chapter Twelve is significantly entitled ‘The Economics of Polygyny.’  By Dinka tradition there is no limit to the number of wives that a man can marry provided that he can afford them. In Deng Majok’s case, estimates of the total number of wives he acquired during his life vary between 200 and 400. This appears to have been a record in Dinka history and it occasioned continuing controversy. On the one hand, he was clearly fulfilling the imperatives of procreation and immortality. According to his son, he generally treated his wives and offspring generously and fairly, but he maintained control and surface order within the family through the strict discipline of an authoritarian patriarch. He ‘granted equal opportunities for procreation,’ but there was often ‘turmoil beneath the calm.’ Within Ngok Dinka society the situation was problematic.

The size of his family was a matter of prestige rather than shame. But marriage was costly and the family was worried about the draining of their wealth; others hinted at corruption, though no formal accusations were ever made. Deng Majok’s defenders maintained that he always acted in accordance with Dinka mores, if not European ones. Nearly all the arguments seem to have centred on issues of power, wealth, and procreation, rather than on sexual morality. His son reports:

In defending his marriages, Deng Majok gave different reasons to different people. To some, especially his family, he might talk of marriage as an investment and a source of economic and social security. To others he might mention the need to broaden the circle of relatives and the relationships by affinity as a strategy of extending political influence. But the reason he stressed most often and which cut across all others was procreation. And, in a curious way, all those who discussed the matter with him now report his arguments with considerable sympathy and nearly always end up agreeing with his point of view, if only in retrospect.

“When his marriages began to be excessive”, said Nyanbol Amor [his second wife], we went and said to him: “Deng, what is this? Cattle should be allowed to remain for some time to increase in number. You now seize a cow a woman uses for making butter and you send it off to marriage; why is that? Aren’t we enough? We do not want you to continue with your marriages!”

He replied: “Are you people fools? Have you no sense of judgment? I am marrying these wives for your own good. These women will have children. And it is these children who will remain with you.”

It was not only his wives who tried to dissuade him. Sons, elders, fellow chiefs, and ordinary people raised the issue with him. The discussions appear to have been quite frank and open, but Deng Majok never relented. In respect of marriage, Deng Majok was treated as a spendthrift investor in wives, but in other respects he was considered to be a great modernizer. He invested in the education of his sons, but was more reluctant to educate his daughters. He built good relations with his Arab neighbours, he emphasized ideas of due process, and he resorted to modern medicine. During the period of the Condominium, Deng Majok also exactly fitted the British policy of indirect rule:

Deng Majok’s leadership represented a peak in the evolution of tribal authority from the role of spiritual and moral functionary to an autocratic government institution backed by the coercive power of the state. The erosion of the egalitarianism and democracy of traditional society has been counterbalanced by the effectiveness of the new institutions in establishing and consolidating broad-based adherence to the rule of law in the broader framework of the nation-state. Deng Majok and other tribal chiefs in both the North and the South were indispensable in the maintaining of order and security among the masses of the rural population and in the context in which the central government machinery was otherwise remote and costly.

When Deng writes about reconciling Dinka values with ‘modernity,’ he is concerned more with the relationship to human rights norms than to values of the colonial (or Condominium) state.

2.4.	Universal Values
In his early writings Francis Deng did not make much reference to human rights, but he has always emphasized human dignity as a basic value. After completing his doctorate at Yale, he worked for five years as a human rights officer in the UN Secretariat and acquired considerable professional expertise in the area, especially in relation to women’s rights. Since then he has been a firm, quite orthodox, upholder of the international human rights regime and of basic principles of democracy, both of which he considers to be universal. On human rights he emphasizes the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially such general phrases as ‘‘the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.’’ On democracy he states:

Among the principles of democracy that have gained universal validity are that governments rule in accordance with the will of the people and adhere to the rule of law, separation of powers, and independence of the judiciary, and respect for fundamental rights and civil liberties. These principles should be safeguarded by transparency, freedom of expression (and of the press), access to information and accountability to the public. Given the tendency of Africans to vote according to their ethnic or tribal identities, democracy will have to mean more than electoral votes. In the context of ethnic diversity, devolution of power through decentralisation down to the local level, combined with some methods of ensuring the representation of those who would otherwise be excluded by the weight of electoral votes, would be necessary. In any case, democracy, however defined or practiced, implies accommodation of differences and a special responsibility for the protection of minorities.

At first sight, these familiar ideas of modern liberal democracy seem a long way from Dinka tradition with its emphasis on immortality – especially through the male line –  polygyny, a non-monetary economy, divine chieftainship, and cattle. Nor does this fit with his father’s autocratic style. How could a UN human rights officer working on international women’s rights continue to respect and honour his father, a patriarch who had over 200 wives? Are Dinka concepts of cieng and dheng quite the same as the meaning of ‘dignity’ in the UN Declaration on Human Rights? How can one reconcile the immortality of ancestors with so earthbound and secular an ideology as modern human rights? Is Dinka tradition really democratic?

Francis Deng adopts an elaborate strategy to confront these issues. The following is just a brief summary.

First, Deng is not a cultural relativist. Following Abdullahi An-Na’im, he emphasizes that for institutions and particular norms to be accepted as legitimate and to be effective they must be debated, interpreted, and applied within the concepts and internal logic of local cultures. However, this does not preclude using universal standards as a basis for judging particular features of a culture or tradition. Relativism that rejects all external standards is unacceptable, but relativism in the sense of taking very seriously the beliefs and values of a given culture complements universalism. In respect of the details of institutional design and specific prescriptions, culture is an essential part of legitimating any social change. In short, a cultural approach to human rights and democracy involves seeing tradition as supplementing abstract values and principles. Cieng and dheng are conceptions that concretize, localize, and enrich abstract notions of human dignity.

Second, human rights and the principles of democracy are universal, but only at a very abstract level. At that level, Dinka ideals that emphasize respect for persons, dignity, and harmony are fundamentally compatible; indeed, Deng goes so far as to say that the Dinka ‘clearly had notions of human rights that formed an integral part of their value system.’ Furthermore, although the principles of democracy are universal, ‘democracy should be home grown to be sustainable.’  Independence constitutions in Africa tended to fail, not because of their ideals, but because they were essentially imposed from above and in a form that was not the result of a genuine local constitutive process. The ideals, he claims, were already part of African tradition: ‘In traditional Africa, rulers governed with the consent of the people who participated broadly in their own self-administration; were free to express their will; and held their leaders to high standards of transparency and accountability. In that sense, indigenous societies were more democratic than most modern-states in Africa.’

Third, the Dinka are changing. They have become more open to learning from the outside world and some are less confident about the superiority of their own culture. There is even talk of giving up the Cow for the pursuit of ‘What.’ After over forty years of conflict and suffering they yearn for peace. How far these terrible years and the dislocation of so many have weakened the grip of Dinka culture and its ‘internal policeman’ is uncertain. But for many the core values embodied in cieng and dheng have sustained their identity. After conducting a series of interviews with chiefs and elders in 1999, Francis Deng concluded that the civil war had been both a destabilizing and a radicalizing factor, ironically increasing motivation for development, but in ways that are compatible with basic elements of their cultural integrity. For example, in an integrated rural development project, the Dinka strongly resisted any suggestion that cattle could be used as draft animals, but they were prepared to sell them for cash, or use them in ways ‘that are compatible with the dignity of the animals as they see it.’

Fourth, Deng acknowledges that, judged by the standards of human rights norms, some aspects of Dinka culture are open to criticism. In 1990 he summarized the main points as follows:

There are, however, severe constraints on the Dinka cultural system of values in terms of objective universal human rights standards. One set of negative effects derives from the inequities inherent in the logic of the lineage system and its stratification on the basis of descent, age, and sex. Another set of negative characteristics lies in the conservative nature of the system and its resistance to change or cross-cultural assimilation. And yet another shortcoming of the system lies in the fact that its human rights values weaken as one goes away from the structural center of Dinka community. 

2.5.	Women in Dinka Society
Perhaps the biggest test of Deng’s argument about the compatibility of Dinka tradition with human rights is the subject of the status and treatment of women, as it is for many of the world’s cultures, traditions, and religions. Deng’s own accounts of Dinka cosmology and of his father’s uxoriousness, although clearly an extreme case, suggest a large gulf between central aspects of Dinka tradition and the norms and standards embodied in such instruments as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Deng acknowledges this. He accepts that polygamy is inconsistent with equal respect and that Dinka women have a subordinate role in Dinka cosmology and tradition. He himself is committed to UN values on the status of women. He is monogamous, and the Dinka heroes in his two novels are monogamous – indeed, one resists pressures to take additional wives. He can point out, in mitigation, that the central concept of thek applies to women, as well as to men and clan divinities. Thek includes, but is broader than, the English concepts of respect and deference. As Lienhardt points out: ‘Thek . . . is a compound of behaviour which shows unagressiveness and deference to its object, and of behaviour which shows esteem for it.’

Francis Deng is quite explicit about the position of women. After acknowledging the inequities of the social structure in the passage quoted above, he continues:

The problem lies not only in the injustices of the system but also in the fact that those who are less favoured by it tend to react to the inequities, thereby creating paradoxes in the social system. For instance, although women are the least favored by the ancestral values, society depends on them not only as sources of income through the custom of marriage with cattle wealth but also as mothers who perform the educational role of inculcating ancestral values in their children at an early age. Yet women have no legitimate voice in the open channels of decisionmaking and can participate only through indirect influence on their sons and husbands. But because of the close association between mothers and children and the considerable influence wives have over their husbands, women are regarded as most influential in the affairs of men. Nevertheless, because of the inequities of polygyny, women are known for jealousies, divisiveness, and even disloyalty to clan ideals. Their influence, especially on the children, must therefore be curtailed.

The Dinka reconcile these conflicting realities by recognizing the love and affection for the mother as functions of the heart, while those feelings for the father are functions of the mind. . . .

As a result of these contradictions, the position of women among the Dinka is a complex one in which deprivations and inequities are compensated by devices that ensure a degree of conformity and stability, despite ambivalences. 

This is to state a problem rather than to resolve it. The status and treatment of women in Dinka tradition are closely bound up with Dinka cosmology, with its emphasis on procreation and veneration of male ancestors, a pastoral economy, its practices and attitudes to cattle, and many other matters. This raises a host of complex questions about how far Dinkas living in rural communities could retain their strong sense of cultural identity over time if they were to adjust to the standards of the outside world in respect of monogamy, the education of women, participation in decision making, non-discrimination, and other requirements of even minimalist versions of feminism. How far can the specifics of traditional Dinka values and beliefs justify a margin of appreciation that modifies abstract principles of women’s equality? And what of the situation of Dinka women who live outside traditional society? Francis Deng does not attempt to address these issues in a sustained way. In the light of the tragic history of the Dinka over the last thirty years, they may not even be the most pressing questions.

2.6.	Conclusion
Francis Deng has been a prolific writer on a wide range of topics, and he has addressed a variety of audiences. For present purposes, his most relevant writings can be treated as falling into three groups: First, there is an extensive collection of books and essays that describe, evoke, and explain Dinka culture, with tradition and modernization as a central theme. Most of these writings are scholarly works addressed to mainly Western audiences and published in the 1970s. A second, more varied, group deals with political and social relations between the North and South Sudan. In some instances, the explicit aim is to encourage a more sympathetic understanding of Southern culture and aspirations by Northern Muslims. In these, identity is a central theme. For over thirty years, Deng has supported a unified but pluralistic Sudan in which a strong national identity is forged through an open recognition of cultural diversity. Third, since about 1990 and partly influenced by Abdullahi An-Na’im, he has addressed issues concerning the compatibility of human rights with African traditions. In this context he has adopted an explicitly cross-cultural perspective. These writings are less extensive than the other groups and are addressed to rather varied audiences.

In the present context, the first group of writings is probably the most significant. Francis Deng’s account of Dinka traditions may now seem somewhat idealized, even outdated, but he has provided a rich body of authentic material that is open to interpretation from other perspectives. Above all, he has given Dinka tradition and values a voice in the outside world. He has also illustrated in a vivid and specific way the more general theme of the complex relationship between long-established traditional values and modern conceptions of human rights.
3.	Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im

I am arguing for secularism, pluralism, constitutionalism and human rights from an Islamic perspective because I believe this approach to these principles and institutions is indispensable for protecting the freedom for each and every person to affirm, challenge or transform his or her cultural or religious identity.

To seek secular answers is simply to abandon the field to fundamentalists, who will succeed in carrying the vast majority of the population with them by citing religious authority for their policies and theories. Intelligent and enlightened Muslims are therefore best advised to remain within the religious framework and endeavour to achieve the reforms that would make Islam a viable modern ideology.

On 18 January 1985, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha was publicly executed in Khartoum on the grounds that he was an apostate and a heretic. Taha was the leader of a small radical modernizing movement in the Sudan, known as the Republican Brothers (or Republicans), founded in the late 1940s during the struggle for independence. For the previous two years the Republicans had been peacefully protesting against human rights violations that resulted from President Ja’far Nimeiry’s programme of Islamicization that had begun in 1983. Their protest had included bringing several unsuccessful suits in the courts alleging that the introduction of a traditionalist version of Islamic law (Shari’a) was unconstitutional because it involved discrimination against women and non-Muslims. Taha and some of his followers had been interned in 1983. They were released about eighteen months later, but Taha and some others were re-arrested in January 1985.

Apostasy was not then an offence under Sudanese law. Taha was originally charged and tried for offences under the Penal Code and the State Security Act. However, the appellate court, without any serious trial of the issue, or even a pretence of due process, convicted Taha of heresy and apostasy and sentenced him to death. The president swiftly confirmed the sentence, which was immediately carried out. This blatantly political and unlawful killing shocked many ordinary Sudanese, Northerners as well as Southerners, who were opposed to Islamicization. It was without precedent and quite contrary to Sudanese ways of handling political disagreements. Instead of representing a great victory for Islam, as Nimeiry proclaimed, Taha’s execution strengthened the opposition to his regime, which was overthrown in a peaceful revolution in April 1985, only three months after Taha’s death. Human rights activists proclaimed Taha to be a martyr and established Arab Human Rights Day to commemorate the anniversary of his death.

Among Taha’s followers was Dr. Abdullahi An-Na’im, who at the time was an associate professor of law at the University of Khartoum. An-Na’im had joined the Republicans in the late 1960s when he was still a law student. After graduating from Khartoum in 1970, he went to England for postgraduate work, first in Cambridge and then in Edinburgh, where he obtained a doctorate in criminology in 1976. He returned to Sudan to teach and practice law and to resume his association with the Republicans. Mahmud Mohamed Taha had been banned from public activity since the early 1970s. An-Na’im was one of his most loyal followers and soon became a leading spokesman for his ideas. In 1983, with Taha and others, he was interned without charge for about eighteen months. They were released in late 1984, but then Taha was arrested again, tried, and executed. Having unsuccessfully campaigned for Taha’s reprieve. An-Na’im left the Sudan in 1985, resolved to promote and develop the ideas of his master. He has remained in exile ever since (except recently for occasional visits), first holding some short-term appointments, including as executive director of Africa Watch from 1993 to 1995. Since 1995, he has been a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta. An-Na’im is now well known, not only as Taha’s most prominent follower, but also as a prominent Islamic jurist in his own right.

By 2005, An-Na’im had published several books and nearly fifty articles. He has written about public law, family law, international law, and many other particular topics. Here I shall concentrate on his writings about human rights in relation to Islamic law. In order to understand these, it is first necessary to outline Taha’s main ideas, as expounded in his most important book, which was first published in Arabic in 1967 and was translated into English in 1987 by An-Na’im as The Second Message of Islam.

Mahmud Mohamed Taha was considered a revolutionary in many quarters of the Islamic world. He had been declared an apostate by Al-Azhar as early as 1973, and he was regularly attacked by Muslim Brothers and other ‘fundamentalists.’ His main concern was to adapt Islamic law to modern conditions and to interpret it in a way that would be compatible with human rights as expressed in basic international documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Taha’s key idea was methodological – what he called ‘the evolution of Islamic legislation.’ He advanced a method of interpretation that would allow the abrogation of some texts of both the Qu’ran and the Traditions of the Prophet (the Sunna) in favour of other texts in the same sources. The texts should be read in their historical context in order to distinguish between fundamental principles and transitional provisions, which were relative to time and place, and which were never meant to be binding for all time. This method opens the door to the idea of continuous reform of the Shari’a to suit changing conditions, even in respect of doctrines based directly on the holy Qu’ran, which many Muslims consider to be immutable.

The historical argument pointed out that Islamic law was only systematized during the periods of the Medina and Ummayed states some 150–250 years after the death of the Prophet (in the seventh century). In this view, the early generations of Muslims, who are considered to have been among the most holy, were not the subject of the Shari’a in the form that it came to be accepted by most subsequent believers. Moreover, much of the early medieval Shari’a itself was legislation responsive to its immediate social, economic, and political context and could now be discarded as out-dated. Thus Taha (and his followers) treat Shari’a as a medieval construct and advance an Islamic alternative to Shari’a. Only by using this radical method of interpretation would it be possible to bring Islamic law into line with modern needs, conditions, and standards. Furthermore, significant aspects of the received Shari’a could be shown to be incompatible both with human rights and relevant passages in the Qu’ran. By far the most important clashes concern the Shari’a’s differential treatment of ‘the other’ – slaves, women, and non-Muslims. Taha argued for a strong egalitarian principle of equal treatment of all human beings irrespective of race, gender, nationality, or status.

An-Na’im’s intellectual development is marked by several stages, but he has remained faithful to the basic methodology and conclusions of his teacher. He first promulgated Taha’s own ideas in both Arabic and English. His first major book, Toward an Islamic Reformation (1990), built explicitly on Taha’s ideas, but developed them in more detail in respect of political structure, criminal justice, civil liberties, human rights, and international law. Written in a clear and concise style, it provides ‘the intellectual foundations for a total reinterpretation of the nature and meaning of Islamic public law.’ His method is to contrast the Medina version of the Shari’a with international human rights standards and a liberal human rights philosophy.

An-Na’im is a strong supporter of the international regime of human rights. His approach ‘is based on the belief that, despite, their apparent peculiarities and diversity, human beings and societies share certain fundamental interests, concerns, qualities, traits and values that can be identified and articulated as the framework for a common ‘culture’ of universal human rights.’ Human rights are not universal merely because they are posited in international law. ‘Rather, the rights are recognized by the documents because they are universal human rights.’ He sums up his basic theory as follows:

The criteria I would adopt for identifying universal human rights is that they are rights to which human beings are entitled by virtue of being human. In other words, universal standards of human rights are, by definition, appreciated by a wide variety of cultural traditions because they pertain to the inherent dignity and well-being of every human being, regardless of race, gender, language, or religion. It follows that the practical test by which these rights should be identified is whether the right in question is claimed by the particular cultural tradition for its own members. Applying the principle of reciprocity among all human beings rather than just among the members of a particular group, I would argue that universal human rights are those which a cultural tradition would claim for its own members and must therefore concede to members of other traditions if it is to expect reciprocal treatment from those others.

In content and substance, I submit that universal human rights are based on two primary forces that motivate all human behavior, the will to live and the will to be free. Through the will to live, human beings have always striven to secure their food, shelter, health, and all other means for the preservation of life. . . . At one level, the will to be free overlaps with the will to live, in that it is the will to be free from physical constraints and to be secure in food, shelter, health, and other necessities of a good life. At another level, the will to be free exceeds the will to live in that it is the driving force behind the pursuit of spiritual, moral, and artistic well-being and excellence.

An-Na’im’s method is to contrast the Medina version of the Shari’a (and the Mecca texts that were intended to be universal) with ‘enlightened’ international standards and his liberal theory of human rights. He is critical of the tendency for some to play down or be evasive about conflicts between the historical Shari’a and international human rights norms. For example, some governments in Muslim countries sign up to international human rights conventions, but do not abide by them; others enter vague reservations. Islamic declarations of human rights are silent on key issues relating to the position of women and non-Muslims, and religious freedom. An-Na’im criticizes the selective nature of many reforms of family law in Muslim countries. He also criticizes Dr. Hassan el Turabi, the leader of the Islamic National Front in Sudan, in that he was vague and evasive on the status and role of women though claimed that Islam treats all believers equally. Only a few Muslim commentators on human rights are more candid.  For example, Sultanhussein Tabandeh indicates clear inconsistencies between the Shari’a and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in arguing that Muslims are not bound by the latter. Conversely, An-Na’im argues that Shari’a needs to be radically reformed because it is inconsistent with human rights standards, especially in respect of discrimination against women and non-Muslims, freedom of religion, and slavery.

His general conclusion is summarized as follows:

Unless the basis of modern Islamic law is shifted away from those texts of the Qur’an and Sunna of the Medina stage, which constituted the foundation of the construction of Shari’a, there is no way of avoiding drastic and serious violation of universal standards of human rights. There is no way to abolish slavery as a legal institution and no way to eliminate all forms and shades of discrimination against women and non-Muslims as long as we remain bound by the framework of Shari’a. . . . The traditional techniques of reform within the framework of Shari’a are inadequate for achieving the necessary degree of reform. To achieve that degree of reform, we must be able to set aside clear and definite texts of the Qur’an and Sunna of the Medina stage as having served their transitional purpose and implement those texts of the Meccan stage which were previously inappropriate for practical application but are now the only way to proceed. . . . In view of the vital need for peaceful co-existence in today’s global human society, Muslims should emphasize the eternal message of universal solidarity of the Qur’an and of the Mecca period rather than the exclusive Muslim solidarity of the transitional Medina message.

For much of the twentieth century, debates and struggles about interpretation of Islamic theology and jurisprudence have tended to be framed either as debates between schools or as disagreements between fundamentalists and secularists. An-Na’im’s aim is to establish an Islamic foundation for ‘the benefits of secularism,’ among which he includes religious toleration, equality between Muslims and non-Muslims and men and women, constitutional democracy, and equal status for Muslim and non-Muslim states. Some Islamic reformers believe that such ‘benefits’ can only be achieved through a secular democratic system, which takes priority over religious doctrine. An-Na’im, on the contrary, believes that liberal democratic ideas will never be accepted by Muslims unless they are persuaded that they are backed by Islamic premises. He therefore sets out to show that Islam, as interpreted by Mohamed Taha, does support the same values.

For An-Na’im, the different schools of Islam are themselves a product of the Middle Ages (although they are probably here to stay) and few devout Muslims will be persuaded by secular arguments. He writes: ‘To seek secular answers is simply to abandon the field to the fundamentalists, who will succeed in carrying the vast majority of the population with them by citing religious authority for their policies and theories. Intelligent and enlightened Muslims are therefore best advised to remain within the religious framework and endeavour to achieve the reforms that would make Islam a viable modern ideology.’

This passage provides a link to the next stage of An-Na’im’s intellectual development. In considering the debate about universalism and cultural relativism in respect of human rights, he began to focus on the problems of persuasion and effectiveness in the context of cultural diversity and pluralism of beliefs. While maintaining a universalist stance in respect of basic values, he concluded that cultural legitimacy of human rights ideals could only be achieved by internal dialogue within a culture rather than by external pressure. Dialogue between cultures is also important in order to achieve an overlapping consensus on human rights and the necessary conditions for peaceful co-existence, but acceptance of the legitimacy of human rights standards requires internal cultural support.

In the next stage of his work, An-Na’im placed more emphasis on what he called ‘cultural legitimization.’ He argues that the legitimacy of human rights standards will only be plausible to a given constituency if members believe that they are sanctioned by their own cultural traditions. Since people understand things through their own cultural lenses, such legitimacy can mainly be attained by dialogue and struggle internal to that culture. As he put it recently:

While this approach raises the possibility of local culture being invoked as the basis for violating or rejecting the existence of a human right, I am unable to see an alterative to a basic methodology of cultural legitimacy which can be constantly improved through practice and over time. For example, culture may be used to justify discrimination against women or the use of corporal punishment against children as being in their own ‘best interest’. Rejecting the cultural argument presented in support of such views is unlikely to work in practice. Indeed, women themselves are likely to support their own repression if they believe it to be ‘the will of God’ or the immutable tradition of their communities. In contrast, an approach that acknowledges the underlying value of respecting the will of God or local tradition, and then continues to question what that means under present circumstances is more likely to be persuasive.

Outsiders purporting to advance an interpretation of a culture (as happened in the Salman Rushdie affair) will nearly always be viewed with suspicion. An-Na’im is critical both of universalist positions based solely on Western or liberal perspectives and of militant cultural relativist positions. He himself explicitly defends a weak form of cultural relativism partly for tactical reasons, but also because belief in human rights can only be internalized when reconciled with other aspects of one’s system of beliefs. Cross-cultural dialogue has a role not only in identifying shared values but also in a building a richer new consensus, provided that the dialogue is genuinely reciprocal. Both internal and external dialogue can be constructive and dynamic; they do not merely identify existing similarities and differences, but they can also generate new ideas and enriched understandings:

This bonding through similarities does not mean, in my view, that international peace and cooperation are not possible without total cultural unity. It does mean that they are more easily achieved if there is a certain minimum cultural consensus on goals and methods. As applied to cooperation in the protection and promotion of human rights, this view means that developing cross-cultural consensus in support of treaties and compacts is desirable. Cultural diversity, however, is unavoidable as the product of significant past and present economic, social and environmental differences. It is also desirable as the expression of the right to self-determination and as the manifestation of distinctive self-identity.

An-Na’im recognizes that ‘culture’ is neither monolithic nor static and typically provides space for internal dialogue, as is well illustrated by the rich tradition of debate within Islamic jurisprudence. He recognizes that the possibilities of genuine dialogue can be curtailed or suppressed if a powerful group claims to have a monopoly of authoritative or correct interpretation. An-Na’im illustrates his conception of internal dialogue by reference to the controversial topic of Islamic punishments. Many Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, are signatories to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits ‘torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.’ Under Islamic law, serious criminal offences are classified as hudud and carry with them mandatory punishments that include amputation of the right hand for theft and whipping, stoning to death, and exact retribution (eye for an eye) for specific offences. These offences are defined and punished by the express terms of the Qu’ran and/or Sunna. Taking the example of theft, the question arises: can amputation of the right hand be treated as cruel, inhuman, or degrading as a matter of Islamic law? 

An-Na’im gives a qualified answer to this question. First, he distinguishes sharply between the actual practices of particular regimes and the theoretical, or theological, interpretation of the principles governing punishment. Thus he argues that enforcement of hudud in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, by the Taliban in Afghanistan, or recently in Northern Nigeria is all illegitimate from an Islamic point of view. Second, he points to some of the interpretive resources available to a sincere liberal Muslim who privately is repelled or uneasy about these provisions: ‘Islamic law requires the state to fulfil its obligation to secure social and economic justice to ensure decent standards of living for all its citizens before it can enforce these punishments. The law also provides for very narrow definitions of these offenses, makes an extensive range of defences against the charge available to the accused person, and requires strict standards of proof. Moreover, Islamic law demands total fairness and equality in law enforcement.’

An-Na’im personally believes that these prerequisites are extremely difficult to satisfy in practice ‘and are certainly unlikely to materialize in any Muslim country in the foreseeable future.’ Nevertheless, he concludes, ‘[n]either internal Islamic reinterpretation nor cross-cultural dialogue is likely to lead to the total abolition of this punishment as a matter of Islamic law.’ Given the political will, much can be done to restrict the scope of hudud and its implementation. A strong case can be made for not applying religious sanctions to non-Muslims, and in some predominantly Muslim countries Shari’a has been displaced by secular law. But outright abolition of hudud punishments is not likely. The basic idea is embodied in texts that express the will of God, backed by internally coherent theological rationales. In this kind of case, ‘the internal struggle cannot and should not be settled by outsiders’; what counts as cruel, inhuman, or degrading in a given society must be settled by the standards of that society.

In the process, as in his treatment of hudud, An-Na’im appears to concede that there are points at which human rights and Islamic principles may conflict and that here Islamic principle ‘trumps’ secular values. However, he emphasizes that the range and extent of application would be severely constricted. Again, his concern seems to be the practicability of reaching consensus through persuasion: ‘I agree with Ann Mayer that many Muslims today would probably prefer to continue within the Western-style criminal justice systems introduced in these countries during the colonial period. However, as increasingly stronger Islamist movements are demanding the enforcement of hudud, Muslims in general may find it difficult to maintain the status quo without appearing to be anti-Islamic. In this light, I believe that there is a growing need for thinking about Islamic criminal justice.’

This is the considered view of a thoughtful scholar who is regarded as an extreme liberal by many Muslims. It sets out with discomforting clarity his view of the possibilities and limitations of building a worldwide consensus by dialogue. An-Na’im is not a strong cultural relativist. He believes that most of the values embodied in the current human rights regime can be reconciled with interpretations of Islam that would be widely, if not universally acceptable; too much attention, in his view, is paid to headline-catching examples, such as female circumcision, many of which are contested within Islam.

3.1.	A Third Stage
An-Na’im has always been an activist as well as a scholar. He was involved in Taha’s Islamic Reform Movement from the late 1960s and, a quarter-century later, became executive director of Human Rights Watch (Africa) in Washington, D.C.  He has always emphasized the importance of implementation and enforcement of human rights. He has been active in many committees and non-governmental organizations concerned with human rights in Africa and the Middle East. He has been involved in projects to promote human rights values at the grassroots through linking to specific local concerns and promoting cross-cultural dialogue about relevant issues such as problems of women’s access to land or reform of family law. He has been especially interested in ways of lessening ‘human rights dependency,’ professionalizing local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and encouraging their withdrawal from dependence on foreign funding and dissociation from being perceived as agents of some ‘Western agenda.’ All of such ‘advocacy for social change’ is based on his two central ideas: a liberal modernist interpretation of Islam, and the need to strengthen the cultural legitimacy and effectiveness of international human rights standards.

An-Na’im’s current project is “The Future of Shari’a” with particular reference to the relationship among Islam, state, and society. The objective ‘is to ensure the institutional separation of Islam and the state, despite the organic and unavoidable connection between Islam and politics.’ It challenges ‘the dangerous illusion of an Islamic state that can enforce Shari’a principles through the coercive power of the state.’ This work-in-progress develops a number of themes: that human agency has been central to the development of Shari’a and is necessary for its continuing interpretation and for motivation for social and cultural change; that whatever the state or other authority tries to enforce in the name of Shari’a is necessarily secular; and that the separation of Islam and the state does not involve relegation of Islam to the private domain – for it still has a role in the formation of public policy and legislation, but this role needs to be performed through public reason rather than coercion.

A significant development in An-Na’im’s thinking concerns ‘secularism.’ If, as is widely assumed, ‘secularism’ implies hostility to religion or its decline or exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God, this is naturally opposed to an Islamic point of view. But, more narrowly interpreted as a principle for mediating between different religious beliefs through separation of religion and state, it is necessary for ensuring a stable basis for co-existence and co-operation in conditions of pluralism of beliefs (now almost universal) and for facilitating ‘the unity of diverse communities in one political community.’ In this narrow sense ‘secularism’ is an important part of An-Na’im’s political theory.

3.2.	Conclusion
An Na’im’s views are, not surprisingly, controversial in the Muslim world. In internal debates within Islam he is in danger of being dismissed as an extremist – as the disciple of Taha who was condemned as an apostate, and as an open subscriber to ‘Western values.’ Clearly his overt challenges to a number of cherished beliefs may be felt to be shocking. However, his views are not quite as extreme as may appear at first sight. His account of history is close to that of many respected scholars. All Muslim countries have accepted the form of the nation state, most with ‘modern’ constitutions. Most of these states are signatories to the bulk of human rights conventions, with surprisingly few reservations. Many of the reforms that An-Na’im advocates have been adopted in several, sometimes most, Muslim countries, but in a more piecemeal fashion than he suggests. His main contribution is to provide a coherent religious justification for reforms that have been, or might be, made in the name of ‘modernization’ or ‘secularization.’

An-Na’im is controversial, but there is a danger that he should be perceived as the darling of Western liberals, a liberal Muslim who is importing ‘enlightened’ ideas into Islam. But his message to non-Muslims is not so comfortable. First, participants in a debate need to be prepared to learn as well as to teach. There is much in the Islamic tradition from which Westerners can learn – for instance in relation to commercial morality. Secondly, there is the problem of ignorance. Before rushing to judgment, non-Muslims need to try to understand the internal logic of views that may seem strange or abhorrent to them; they need to be aware of the ways in which such views are contested and debated within the culture of Islam; they should not exaggerate the gap between Islamic beliefs and the values embodied in international human rights norms at this stage in their history; and, above all, before labelling some practices as ‘barbaric,’ they need to consider how some of their own practices appear to members of other cultures. They also need to be aware of the extent of the leeway for interpretation within traditions such as Islam, as is vividly illustrated by recent scholarship on law reform in Malaysia and other predominantly Muslim countries.

4.	A Realist and Materialist Interpretation: Yash Ghai

Yash Pal Ghai was born in Kenya in 1938. He is still a Kenyan citizen. He went to school in Nairobi and then studied law at Oxford and Harvard and was called to the English Bar. He started teaching law as a lecturer in Dar-es-Salaam in 1963, eventually becoming professor and dean, before leaving in 1971. Since then he has held academic posts at Yale, Warwick, and Hong Kong. In addition to numerous visiting appointments, he was research director of the International Legal Center in New York in 1972-1973 and a research fellow at Uppsala University from 1973 to 1978. He has written or edited nearly twenty books, mainly about public law and constitutionalism in Commonwealth countries.

Ghai is highly respected as a scholar, but he is even better known as a legal adviser to governments and agencies, especially in the South Pacific and East Africa. He has been highly influential on post-independence constitutional development in the South Pacific, serving as constitutional adviser in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, Western Samoa, and the Solomon Islands, among others. He has also been involved in a variety of peacekeeping and troubleshooting activities in Bougainville, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, East Timor, and Nepal. He has been prominent in debates about public law in Hong Kong and has recently served as a constitutional adviser in Iraq. Over the years he has received numerous honours, including election as a corresponding fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

From November 2000 to July 2004 he was full-time chair of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, on leave from Hong Kong. Despite enormous difficulties, the commission produced a draft constitution in December 2002, almost simultaneously with the ouster of President Moi and the ruling party, KANU (Kenya African National Union), in an election that was accepted by foreign observers as being generally ‘free and fair.’ Unfortunately, once in power the new leaders were less keen on reform than they had been when in opposition. At the time of writing no new constitution has been enacted.

Ghai has unrivalled experience of constitution making in postcolonial states. Besides his unquestioned academic and practical expertise, he has succeeded in winning the trust of many rival political leaders of different persuasions, often in tense situations, not least because of the obvious sincerity of his commitment to opposing all forms of colonialism and racism. He has shown great courage in standing up to domineering heads of government, such as President Moi. His courage and negotiating skills are legendary.

Almost all of the constitutions that Yash Ghai has helped to design and introduce have included a bill of rights. They have generally fitted broadly liberal ideals of parliamentary democracy, judicial independence, and the rule of law. He has been an outspoken critic of governmental repression, especially detention without trial and torture, but there is a discernible ambivalence in his attitude to human rights. For example, he was editor and principal draftsman of an important report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, entitled Put Our World to Rights: Towards a Commonwealth Human Rights Policy, published in 1991. Yet in 1987 he was co-editor (with Robin Luckham and Francis Snyder) of The Political Economy of Law: A Third World Reader, which presented a distinctly Marxian perspective and which contains no mention in the index of rights, human rights, or constitutional rights, except a few references to habeas corpus.

After the ‘collapse of communism,’ symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, some former Marxist intellectuals adopted the discourse of human rights. However, Ghai’s ambivalence has deeper roots. Perhaps the key is to be found in his own account of his intellectual development. In a refreshingly frank memoir, he tells how he moved from orthodox legal positivism (Oxford and the English Bar), through a phase of liberal reformism (Harvard and the early years in Dar-es-Salaam) to accepting the basics of Marxist critiques of neo-colonialism and of Julius Nyerere’s African Socialism from about 1967. He acknowledges that his acceptance of Marxism was not wholehearted. He recognized the value of Marxian structural analysis of political economy, but this was tempered by three concerns: First, as an East African Asian he was especially sensitive to racist attitudes that he discerned among locals as well as expatriates: ‘What passed in general for radicalism in those days included a large amount of racism and xenophobia.’ Second, he had a ‘predilection for free debate,’ which was beginning to be stifled by a local form of political correctness. And third, while his university colleagues were academically stimulating, most lacked any sense of the importance of legal technicality and practical sense. They taught their students to despise the law, but not how to use it:

My experience seemed to point to the problems when fidelity to the law weakens – the arrogance of power, the corruption of public life, the insecurity of the disadvantaged. I was not unaware, of course, of other purposes of the law which served the interests of the rich and the powerful. But the fact was that it did increasingly less and less so; a whole body of statutory law since TANU [the ruling party] came to power had begun to tip the scales the other way. I retained my ambivalence about the legal system, and was not attracted to the attitudes of many private practitioners I met (or the interests they served). At the same time I knew the evasion of the law or the dilution of its safeguards harmed many of the people the radical lawyers were championing.

Ghai’s experiences in Dar-es-Salaam were formative in important respects. In nearly all of his work since then, three tensions are apparent: a strong commitment to certain basic values, tempered by a pragmatic willingness to settle for what is politically feasible in the circumstances; a genuine interest in theory, especially political economy, and a determination to be effective in the role of a good hard-nosed practical lawyer;  and a materialist, Marxian perspective on political economy sometimes in tension with a sincere belief in liberal values embodied in the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and human rights. For the last thirty years he has also had to balance the demands of teaching, research, and writing with practical involvement in high-level decision making in a continually expanding range of countries. As a consultant he has also had to reconcile his belief in the importance of local context – historical, political, and economic – with a general approach to constitutionalism and constitution making. He is a rare example of a foreign consultant who genuinely rejects the idea that ‘one size fits all.’

In the early years of his career, Ghai wrote about many topics mainly from a public law perspective. He joined in East African debates about the arguments for and against bills of rights and he addressed particular topics, such as habeas corpus, racial discrimination, and the position of ethnic minorities. However, it was not until about 1990 that he focused his attention regularly on human rights as such. This is perhaps due to ‘the increased salience’ that human rights discourse achieved during this period. Even then, he has consistently viewed bills of rights and the international human rights regime as one means among many that may serve to protect the interests of the poor and the vulnerable as well as satisfy majority and minority interests. As we shall see, his approach has generally been more pragmatic than idealistic and it is only quite recently that he has devoted much space to writing about human rights theory. Rather than try to attempt to trace his intellectual development or summarize his general constitutional theory, I shall here focus on three recent papers that illustrate more general aspects of his approach to human rights: the role of human rights discourse in reaching constitutional settlements in multi-ethnic societies, his critique of the ‘Asian values’ debate of the early 1990s, and his exchange with Abdullahi An-Na’im about the justiciability of economic and social rights. In considering these particular pieces, it is important to bear in mind that Yash Ghai is primarily a public lawyer for whom bills of bights are only one aspect of constitutionalism and human rights discourse is but one aspect of constitutional and political theory.

4.1.	Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic Societies 
Yash Ghai, as a Kenyan Asian, comes from an embattled minority. One of his first monographs, written with his brother, D.P. Ghai, a distinguished economist, was entitled ‘Asians in East and Central Africa.’ In nearly all of the countries where he has served as a constitutional adviser, protecting the interests of significant ethnic or religious minorities has presented a major problem. And of course, multiculturalism is a pervasive phenomenon in most societies today. So it is hardly surprising that this theme has been in the foreground of his more general writings on human rights.

In a symposium published in the Cardozo Law Review (February 2000), Ghai drew on his experiences of constitution-making to make what is perhaps his fullest statement of a general position on human rights. His central thesis is that both of these debates often obscure the political realties and the potential practical uses of human rights discourse as a flexible framework for negotiating acceptable compromises between conflicting interests and groups.

Ghai warns against interpreting human rights discourse too literally or solely in ideological terms. Rather, he adopts ‘a more pragmatic and historical, and less ideological, approach.’  In his experience, concerns about ‘culture’ have in practice been less important than the balance of power and competition for resources. Human rights rhetoric may be used – sometimes cynically manipulated – to further particular interests or, as in the Asian values debate, to give legitimacy to repressive regimes by emphasizing the right to self-determination of sovereign states (but not necessarily of peoples or minorities within those states).

Nevertheless, in his view, human rights discourse has provided a useful framework for mediating between competing ethnic and cultural claims, and in combating repressive regimes, just because it is flexible and vague and not rigidly monolithic. In domestic constitutive processes and constitutional law, the international human rights regime has provided a crucial reference point for local debates. In a study of constitution making in four quite different countries – India, Fiji, Canada, and South Africa – he found that the relevance of rights was widely acknowledged, much of the content and orientation of competing viewpoints was drawn from foreign precedents and international discourse, and groups presented their claims in terms of different paradigms of rights, drawn largely from transnational sources. In short, international norms and debates were used as resources for local arguments and negotiations in the process of achieving a constitutional settlement:

For multicultural states, human rights as a negotiated understanding of the acceptable framework for coexistence and the respect for each culture are more important than for monocultural or mono-ethnic societies, where other forms of solidarity and identity can be invoked to minimize or cope with conflicts. In other words, it is precisely where the concept or conceptions of rights are most difficult that they are most needed. The task is difficult, but possible, even if it may not always be completely successful. And most states today in fact are multicultural, whether as a result of immigration or because their peoples are finding new identities.

Ghai uses his four case studies to explode a number of myths:  First, he challenges the assumption that culture is the salient element in determining attitudes to rights, a matter of significance when ‘cultural relativism’ is invoked to undermine the case for human rights. ‘Culture’ is not irrelevant, but it operates in complex ways. Culture is not monolithic, but protean; no community has a static culture; cultures change and intermix; homogeneity of culture within a nation state is nowadays exceptional, and indeed much state effort is devoted to artificially creating a common culture as a prop for national unity. Questions of the relation of rights to culture arise within communities, as when women or minorities have invoked rights to challenge or interrogate ‘tradition.’ As Santos and others have suggested, cross-cultural discourse can generate new forms and enrich the culture of rights. Perhaps, most important, Ghai emphasizes that ‘the material bases of ‘rights’ are stronger than cultural.’

Second, Ghai attacks as a myth the idea that the origins and current support for universal rights are solely Western. Historically, the sources of the international regime are quite diverse, with different ‘generations’ having different supporters. During the colonial period, for example, the British were among the strongest opponents of rights talk, especially in relation to self-determination or local bills of rights. At that time, nationalist leaders were strong supporters of human rights, especially the right to self-determination, but that enthusiasm did not always survive beyond Independence. Bentham, Burke, and Marx were among the critics of rights within the Western tradition. During the Cold War, the Eastern bloc generally championed social and economic rights, the Western powers individual civil and political rights. In South Africa it was the whites who historically opposed universal human rights, and, after the end of apartheid, it was the black majority who were the most committed to them. In modern times, political leaders have invoked ‘the right to self-determination’ as a defence against external criticism of internally repressive regimes and at the same time dismiss ‘rights discourse’ as a form of Western neo-colonialism – as in the Asian values debate.

It is no doubt true that the current international regime of rights derives largely from western intellectual traditions, but Ghai points out that today ‘there is very considerable support for rights in Asia, among parliamentarians, judges, academics, trade unionists, women’s groups, and other non-governmental organizations.’ When Western-dominated organizations, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and state foreign aid agencies promote ‘human rights and good governance and democracy,’ they tend to emphasize a narrow band of individual and property rights rather than the whole spectrum that were included in the original Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such selectivity illustrates the flexibility, and possibly the incoherence, of the general framework of rights discourse. Whatever the origin, the general framework and current support are not specifically Northern or Western.

Third, Ghai strongly challenges the use of sharp dichotomies in this context. For example, he identifies at least five types of relativist positions that need to be distinguished: (i) strong cultural relativism – i.e., that rights depend upon culture rather than upon universal norms; (ii) that cultural differences do indeed exist, but only the Western concept of human rights is acceptable as a basis for universal norms (conversely, some Asian politicians argue that their societies are superior to the West because their cultures emphasize duty and harmony rather than individual rights and conflict); (iii) moderate cultural relativism – i.e., that a common core of human rights can be extracted from overlapping values of different cultures; (iv) that cultural pluralism can be harmonized with international standards by largely internal re-interpretation of cultural tradition – the basic approach of Abdullahi An-Na’im; and (v) that an enriched version of rights can be developed by intercultural discourse, which can lead towards a new form of universalism. Ghai concludes:

On the more general question of universalism and relativism, it is not easy to generalize. It cannot be said that bills of rights have a universalizing or homogenizing tendency, because by recognizing languages and religions, and by affirmative policies a bill of rights may in fact solidify separate identities. Nevertheless, a measure of universalism of rights may be necessary to transcend sectional claims for national cohesion. Simple polarities, universalism/particularism, secular/religious, tradition/modernity do not explain the complexity; a large measure of flexibility is necessary to accommodate competing interests. Consequently most bills of rights are Janus-faced (looking towards both liberalism and collective identities). What is involved in these arrangements is not an outright rejection of either universalism or relativism; but rather an acknowledgement of the importance of each, and a search for a suitable balance, by employing, for the most part, the language and parameters of rights.

On the basis of these four case studies, backed by his wide practical experience, Ghai suggests some further general conclusions: First, rights provide a framework not only for cross-cultural discourse and negotiation, but also ‘to interrogate culture’ within a given community, as when women have used them to challenge traditionalists in Canada, India, and South Africa. Second, ‘in no case are rights seen merely as protections against the state. They are instruments for the distribution of resources, a basis for identity, and a tool of hegemony, and they offer a social vision of society. Rights are not necessarily deeply held values, but rather a mode of discourse for advancing and justifying claims.’ Third, in multicultural societies, balancing of interests requires recognition of collective as well as individual rights, including rights connected with being a member of a group, as with affirmative action in India. Fourth, where rights are used for balancing interests, there is no room for absolutism of rights. They have to be qualified, balanced against each other, or reconceptualized. Fifth, a stable settlement in a multi-ethnic society often involves recognition and appropriate formulation of social, economic, and cultural rights. This in turn requires an activist state. Sixth, ‘since interethnic relations are so crucial to an enduring settlement, and past history may have been marked by discrimination or exploitation, a substantial part of the regime of rights has to be made binding on private parties.’  Finally, the requirements of balancing conflicting interests within a framework of rights give a major role to the judiciary in interpreting, applying, and reinterpreting the constitutional settlement in a reasoned and principled way.

Ghai’s approach is illustrated by his treatment of the so-called ‘Asian values’ debate. This is widely perceived as a concerted attack on human rights by spokesmen for what is wrongly regarded as representing some kind of Asian consensus. Ghai argues that the debate has obscured both the complexity and the richness of debates about rights within Asia.

4.2.	The ‘Asian Values’ Debate

The authoritarian readings of Asian values that are increasingly championed in some quarters do not survive scrutiny. And the grand dichotomy between Asian values and European values adds little to our understanding, and much to the confounding of the normative basis of freedom and democracy. (Amartya Sen)

‘The Asian values debate’ refers to a controversy that flared up in the run-up to the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. After the collapse of communism, increased attention to human rights issues had led to growing criticism of human rights violations in China and also in countries that had been allies in the Cold War. This was also the period of increased conditionalities being imposed by international financial institutions and Western aid agencies in the name of ‘human rights, good governance and democracy.’ In a regional meeting preparatory to the Vienna Conference, many Asian governments signed The Bangkok Declaration,   which was widely interpreted as an attempt to present a united front against growing Western hegemony. Lee Kuan Yew (and the Government of Singapore) and Muhathir Mohamed (and the Government of Malaysia), who could hardly be considered representative of the whole of Asia, framed this North-South confrontation in terms of a fundamental conflict between ‘human rights and Asian values.’

The Asian values debate has rumbled on for over a decade and has surfaced in a number of different contexts, of which one of the most interesting and important is the positions taken by China both internally and externally in response to Western criticism. Yash Ghai was one of a number of ‘Southern’ intellectuals who jumped to the defence of ideas about human rights and democracy as not being peculiarly Western. In a series of papers published between 1993 and 1999, he sharply criticized the arguments and positions adopted by the leaders of Singapore and Malaysia and in the process developed his own general position on human rights.

We need not enter into the details of Ghai’s criticisms of the Singapore and Malaysian versions of the Asian values position, which he treats as both insincere and confused. He suggests that the true motive for their campaign was to justify authoritarian regimes at a time when they were being subjected to criticism both internally and internationally for repression of dissent and civil liberties. However, participating in the debate sharpened Ghai’s focus on the connections between culture, the market, and human rights. Here it is sufficient to quote his own summary of his treatment of one phase of the debate as it surfaced before and during the Bangkok meeting in March and April 1993, preceding the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights:

Asian perceptions of human rights have been much discussed, particularly outside Asia, stimulated by the challenge to the international regime of rights by a few Asian governments in the name of Asian values. Placing the debate in the context of international developments since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 50 years ago, [the author] argues that international discussions on human rights in Asia are sterile and misleading, obsessed as they are with Asian values. On the other hand, the debate within Asia is much richer, reflecting a variety of views, depending to a significant extent on the class, economic or political location of the proponents. Most governments have a statist view of rights, concerned to prevent the use of rights discourse to mobilize disadvantaged or marginal groups, such as workers, peasants, or ethnic groups, or stifle criticisms and interventions from the international community. However, few of them [i.e. governments] subscribe to the crude versions of Asian values, which are often taken abroad as representing some kind of Asian consensus. [The author] contrasts the views of governments with those of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who have provided a more coherent framework for the analysis of rights in the Asian context. They see rights as promoting international solidarity rather than divisions. Domestically, they see rights as means of empowerment and central to the establishment of fair and just political, economic and social orders.

To start with, Ghai was quite dismissive of arguments that human rights represent a form of cultural imperialism – the imposition of values that are atomistic, confrontational, and self-seeking on a culture that emphasizes harmony, consensus, hard work, and solidarity. This argument, in his view, exaggerated the homogeneity of ‘Asian’ cultures, distorted the nature of human rights, and overemphasized the place of culture in economic success. However, in a later paper on ‘Rights, Duties and Responsibilities’ he decided to take more seriously the argument that some Asian traditions, notably Hinduism and Confucianism, emphasize duties rather than rights, and that this is a superior way to organize society. ‘Duty’ in this context is more abstract than the Hohfeldian idea of duty: it refers to obligations or responsibilities attached to office or status or class, rather than merely being the correlative of claim rights. Such responsibilities prescribe right and proper conduct in respect of a given role or relationship, like father-son, husband-wife, friend-friend, and, most important, ruler-subjects. In one interpretation of Confucianism, such duties could be said to be less self-regarding than rights, more communitarian, oriented to harmony rather than conflict, and more informal, emphasizing honour, peace, and stability. ‘The key duties are loyalty, obedience, filial piety, respect, and protection.’ Ghai acknowledges that in some societies this version of Confucianism can be attractive:

I do not wish to oppose a broader notion of duty in the sense of responsibilities or civic virtue. There is clearly much that is attractive in persons who are mindful of the concerns of others, who wish to contribute to the welfare of the community, who place society above their own personal interests. No civilized society is possible without such persons. There is also much that is attractive in societies that seek a balance between rights and responsibilities and emphasize harmony. Nor do I wish to underestimate the potential of duty as a safeguard against abuse of power and office. I am much attracted to the notion of the withdrawal of the Mandate of Heaven from rulers who transgress upon duties of rulers (although I am aware that this was largely impotent as a device of responsiveness or accountability or discipline of rulers).

However, these virtues mainly concern social relations of human beings within civil society rather than relations between citizens and the state, which is the primary sphere of human rights. Moreover, as modern Confucian scholarship suggests, there is a downside to such a philosophy: a duty-based society tends to be status oriented and hierarchical, and in some societies, Confucian duties rarely extended beyond family and clan, promoting corruption rather than a genuine civic sense. Confucius himself emphasized the moral responsibilities of the ruler, was contemptuous of merchants and profits, and was against strong laws and tough punishments – for authoritarian, market-oriented, and often corrupt governments to invoke Confucius is hypocritical. By conflating the ideas of state and community, the official protagonists of Asian values obscure the role of the regime of rights to mediate between state and community: ‘That the contemporary celebration of duty has little to do with culture and much to do with politics is evident from the various contradictions of policies and practices of governments heavily engaged in its exhortation.’

In the present context, perhaps the important point is a warning against taking any debates and discourse about human rights too literally. The context is typically political, and the same discourse can be used or abused for a wide range of different political ends. Above all, such discourse is historically contingent:

I believe that rights are historically determined and are generally the result of social struggles. They are significantly influenced by material and economic conditions of human existence. It is for that reason unjustified to talk of uniform attitudes and practices in such a diverse region as Asia. Rights become important, both as political principles and instruments, with the emergence of capitalist markets and the strong states associated with the development of national markets. Markets and states subordinated communities and families under which duties and responsibilities were deemed more important than entitlements. Rights regulate the relationship of individuals and corporations to the state. Despite the lip service paid to the community and the family by certain Asian governments, the reality is that the State has effectively displaced the community, and increasingly the family, as the framework within which an individual or group’s life chances and expectations are decided. The survival of community itself now depends on rights of association and assembly.

4.3.	The Role of Judges in Implementing Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
The UN Declaration covered both civil and political rights (CPR) and economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR). It made no formal distinction between the two classes. However, during the Cold War, the distinction became significant and was sharpened in the ideological battles between the Western powers and the Eastern bloc, the former prioritizing CPR, the latter ESCR. This distinction became further entrenched both in international covenants and through the influence of the colonial powers and the Soviet Union on subordinated countries. Thus the European Convention on Human Rights is restricted to civil and political rights, and this limitation has spread to many Commonwealth countries. The distinction still lives on, for example in the domestic and foreign policies of the United States and of the People’s Republic of China. However, the constitutions of India (1949) and South Africa (1994) are significant exceptions to this privileging of one set of rights to the exclusion of the other.

The validity of the distinction has long been a matter of contention, and the claim that ‘human rights are interdependent and indivisible’ is widely supported by the human rights community. At the start of the Millennium the debate became sharply focused within Interights, an influential London-based NGO, by the responses to a memorandum prepared by Yash Ghai that was intended to focus the program of Interights on ESCR:

It was not my intention to expound a theory of ESCR, but to suggest a focus for work. I acknowledged the importance of ESCR as rights, but cautioned against an over-concentration on litigation strategies and pointed to limitations of the judicial process in view of the nature of ESCR. The memo implied the need to avoid polarities or dichotomies (such as justiciability and nonjusticiability and civil and political/economic and social rights). In this as other instances of enforcement of the law, there was a division of labour between court-oriented strategies and other modes of enforcement. It was important, in discussions of the enforceability of ESCR, to pay attention to the relationship between judicial enforcement and the supporting framework that other institutions could provide, as well as to the effects of litigation on wider participation in the movements, and lobbying, for human rights.

The memorandum provoked mixed reactions. The ensuing debate culminated in a valuable collection of essays edited by Yash Ghai and Jill Cottrell. This volume throws light not only on issues such as justiciability but also on the specific nature of ESCR, different methods of implementation, and the experience of the courts in several countries in dealing with them. The final chapter by the editors represents a significant development of Ghai’s views.

In this volume, the debate was initially framed by contrasting positions asserted by Abdullahi An-Na’im and Lord (Anthony) Lester. An-Na’im objected in principle to the classification of human rights into two broad classes. He argued that this distinction leads to the perception that ESCR are inferior, it denies the claim that human rights are indivisible and interdependent, it is not based on any consistent or coherent criteria of classification, and it undermines ‘the universality and practical implementation of all human rights.’ In particular, An-Na’im attacked the idea that no ESCR should be enforced by the judiciary. All human rights need to be supported by a variety of mechanisms, and the role of each mechanism should be assessed and developed in relation to each right. But it is not appropriate to leave promotion and enforcement to national governments, for the fundamental aim of protecting human rights ‘is to safeguard them from the contingencies of the national political and administrative processes.’ The judiciary has a vital role to play in this. An-Na’im placed great emphasis on the importance of human rights as universal standards incorporated in the international regime and backed by international co-operation in their implementation. The framework of international standards is crucial for the recognition of ESCR as human rights.

Lord Lester and Colm O’Cinneide developed a familiar response: while acknowledging that ESCR are indeed human rights and the poor and the vulnerable need protection from violations of both classes of rights, they argued that ESCR are best protected by non-judicial mechanisms. For reasons of democratic legitimacy and practical expertise, the judiciary should have a very limited role in those aspects of governance that involve allocation of resources, setting priorities, and developing policies.

In the ensuing debate it became clear that the range of disagreement was quite narrow. This is hardly surprising within a group of human rights experts (mainly lawyers) arguing in the context of an NGO that is committed to promoting ESCR. There appears to have been a consensus on a number of points: that ESCR should be treated as rights, that their effective enforcement and development was a matter of concern, that this requires a variety of mechanisms, that the idea of the interdependence of rights is of genuine practical importance, and that the concept of ‘justiciability’ is too abstract and too fluid to provide much help in delineating an appropriate role for the judiciary in respect of ESCR.

Ghai took issue with An-Na’im on two main grounds: An-Na’im placed too much emphasis on the international regime as the foundation for national policies on rights, and he was wrong in suggesting that those who want a restricted role for the judiciary are necessarily opposed to ESCR as rights. Nevertheless, Ghai suggested that the differences between An-Na’im and the proponents of judicial restraint can easily be exaggerated – they are mainly differences of emphasis about a role that is contingent on local historical and material conditions. Several of the commentators made the point that courts have taken ESCR into account when interpreting CPR provisions.

One senses that Ghai may have been somewhat impatient with a debate which seems to have been based largely on mutual misunderstandings of the seemingly conflicting viewpoints. No one denied that courts had some role to play in this area, while An-Na’im was not asking that they should be seen as the only relevant mechanism. However, the debate stimulated Ghai to develop his own ideas about the nature of ESCR and the role of human rights discourse in framing state policies. Without claiming to do justice to a rich and detailed analysis, one can perhaps pinpoint three key ideas underlying his position:

First, he was stimulated to articulate his view of the role of courts in relation to EHCR. This should not be static but generally speaking should be less prominent than their role in relation to CPR. After a survey of the case law developed so far, especially in India and South Africa, including cases in which courts had been felt by critics to have become too involved, Cottrell & Ghai concluded:

Courts can play an important role in ‘mainstreaming’ ESCR by (a) elaborating the contents of rights; (b) indicating the responsibilities of the state; (c) identifying ways in which the rights have been violated by the state; (d) suggesting the frameworks within which policy has to be made, highlighting the priority of human rights (to some extent the South African courts have done this, by pointing to the need to maker policies about the enforcement of rights, and Indian courts by highlighting the failure of government to fulfil [Directive Principles of State Policy] so many years after independence). There is a fine balance here, for there is always a risk that courts may cross the line between indicating failures of policy and priorities and indicating so clearly what these priorities ought to be that they are actually making policy.

‘The primary decision-making framework must be the political process.’ The main contribution of courts in Cotterell and Ghai’s view should be ‘in developing core or minimum entitlements.’ However, once policies have been formulated by government or other agencies, backed by standards and benchmarks, courts may also have a role in implementing such standards.

Second, Cottrell and Ghai point out that issues about justiciability cannot turn on the difference between CPR and ESCR, or on some untenable distinction between negative and positive rights. They distinguish between two aspects of justiciability that are often confused: (i) explicit non-justiciability, when a constitution or law explicitly excludes the jurisdiction of the courts, for example the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Indian Constitution; and (ii) non-justiciability as a matter of appropriateness, a more delicate and complex matter. This may be based on arguments about separation of powers, or legitimacy, or the competence of courts, or some concept of what is a ‘political’ question or a combination of these. These are contested matters in which no clear consensus has emerged in the case law, except a tendency to reject sharp distinctions.

Third, the discussion of the role of the courts throws light on the nature of ESCR. Ghai rejects any sharp distinction between ESCR and CPR, but nevertheless argues that there are certain tendencies that characterize ESCR and suggest a more limited role for the courts in relation to many, but not all of them. For example, in many domestic and international instruments, there is a tendency for ESCR provisions to be drafted in terms that allow considerable discretion in respect of standards, timing, and methods of enforcement. Such notions as ‘progressive realisation,’ ‘margin of appreciation,’ and ‘to the extent of its available resources’ further limit the role of courts. No human rights are costless, but all implementation of all human rights depends on ‘a complex interaction of policies in numerous sectors, institutions, and entitlements.’ However, as the Indian and South African cases have shown, there is scope for courts to define what is the minimum core of any given right (a notoriously difficult and contentious matter), to sanction state violation of established rights, and to point out that ‘progressive realisation’ implies that the state has a constitutional duty to start implementation and a further duty to ensure that there is no deterioration of standards. Ghai’s essentially evolutionary and pragmatic argument is consistent with An-Na’im’s insistence that what are appropriate mechanisms of implementation should be decided on the merits in respect of each right in particular contexts rather than by reference to abstract categories. But in light of the experience of the case law, there may be a considerably more significant role for courts in the long run than An-Na’im suggests.

Fourth, and more important, Ghai’s main concern was to focus attention on other means of implementing and developing ESCR and to make a general case for the idea that human rights discourse can provide a broad overarching framework for constructing state policies and priorities. One trouble with the debates about ‘justiciability’ has been that ‘human rights’ has tended to be treated as doctrine (often legal doctrine) rather than as discourse and that it focuses attention on litigation (usually a last resort) and away from the range of other possible mechanisms and resources that need to be employed in the realisation of all human rights, including ESCR.

4.4.	Conclusion
One senses that Ghai is sometimes impatient with theoretical debates about rights and prefers to work at less general levels. Like many others, he rejects strong versions of both universalism and relativism; he criticizes a tendency to over-emphasize ‘culture’ rather than material interests; he argues that the debate on Asian values greatly exaggerated the uniformities of ‘East Asian culture’ and was used to divert attention away from the failings of repressive regimes and human rights violations – the result being to obfuscate genuine issues about human rights in different contexts in East Asia. Similarly, the debate about the justiciability of ESCR amounted to little more than differences of emphasis among lawyers about the proper role of courts – a role that should depend on timing and context in any given country. Most of the protagonists have been lawyers who have tended to argue on the basis of human rights as legal doctrine rather as a discourse that provides a workable framework for mediating conflicting interests and providing a basis for settlements that are accepted by local people as legitimate.

Many of these themes are illustrated in specific ways in Ghai’s recent writings about Hong Kong, in which the same dichotomies between theory and practice, socialism and liberalism, and idealism and pragmatism are discernible in creative tension. After a generally pessimistic diagnosis of the situation, he ends on a pragmatic note of hope about the future by appealing to enlightened self-interest:

It is easy for the Central Authorities, if they were so minded, to bypass or undermine the Basic Law, and they would presumably always find people who are willing to collaborate with them in this enterprise. However, China stands to gain more from a faithful adherence to the Basic Law, to keep promises of autonomy, to permit people of all persuasions to participate in public affairs, to respect rights and freedoms, and to let an independent judiciary enforce the Basic Laws and other laws. This is a more effective way to win the loyalty of Hong Kong people. An adherence to legal norms and consultative and democratic procedures would ultimately benefit the Central Authorities as they grapple with the difficult task of managing affairs on the mainland as economic reforms and the movement for democracy generate new tensions.

Yash Ghai advances a pragmatic materialist interpretation that is broadly supportive of the current international human rights regime. He emphasizes the uses and limitations of bills of rights as devices for limiting governmental power and increasing accountability. He focuses on the use and abuse of human rights discourse in real-life political contexts, especially by governments that invoke the right to self-determination against external critics of their treatment of their own citizens. His views are not surprisingly controversial. But he provides a uniquely realistic perspective on the practical operation of human rights discourse, especially in the context of constitutional negotiation and settlement.

5.	Upendra Baxi 

For hundreds of millions of ‘the wretched of the earth,’ human rights enunciations matter, if at all, only if they provide shields against torture and tyranny, deprivation and destitution, pauperization and powerlessness, desexualization and degradation. 

[T]he task of human rights, in terms of making the state ethical, governance just, and power accountable, are tasks that ought to continue to define the agendum of activism.

Human rights languages are perhaps all we have to interrogate the barbarism of power, even when these remain inadequate to humanize fully the barbaric practices of politics.

5.1.	Introduction
Upendra Baxi was born in Rajkot, Gujerat in 1938. His father, Vishnuprasad Baxi, was a senior civil servant and a noted scholar of Sanskrit. Upendra was brought up in a large household, which sometimes numbered as many as seventy people under one roof, excluding servants. He remembers his childhood environment as a mix of perpetual pregnancies, relentless micro-politics, and a complete lack of privacy. His view of the extended communal family has remained decidedly unromantic. In his words, he reacted against this aspect of Hindu culture, and ‘I declared UDI [Unilateral Declaration of Independence] at the first opportunity.’ He went to university, did well, and soon embarked on a career as an academic, public intellectual, and legal activist.

After graduating in law from the University of Bombay (LL.M., 1963), he taught at the University of Sydney (1968-1973). There he worked closely with Julius Stone, the well-known legal theorist and public international lawyer. During this period he spent two years at Berkeley, where he obtained the degrees of LLM (1966) and JSD (1972), having written a thesis on private international law under the supervision of Professor Albert Ehrenzweig. On his return to India he held the post of professor of law at the University of Delhi from 1973 until 1996. During this period he also served as vice-chancellor of South Gujerat (1982-1985), director of research at the Indian Law Institute (1985-1988), and vice-chancellor of the University of Delhi (1990-1994). Since 1996, he has been professor of law and development at the University of Warwick. He has also held visiting appointments at several American law schools.

Baxi has been a prolific writer. In addition to producing over twenty books and many scholarly articles, he has been a frequent broadcaster and contributor to the Indian press. His early work was largely concerned with public law and law and society in India, and he consciously addressed mainly Indian audiences. As an activist he has been very influential both in India and South Asia. He contributed much to legal education. He was a leading commentator and critic of the Indian Supreme Court and a pioneer in the development of social action litigation and ‘the epistolary jurisdiction’ that gave disadvantaged people direct access to appellate courts. He was also extensively involved in legal action and law reform concerning violence against women and opposition to major dam projects. For over twenty years he has campaigned and litigated on behalf of the victims of the Bhopal catastrophe. Over time, Baxi’s interests and audiences expanded geographically, but he has maintained his concern and involvement with Indian affairs. His more recent interests have included comparative constitutional law, the legal implications of science and technology, law and development, and above all the strategic uses of law for ameliorating the situation of the worst off.

Baxi describes his perspective on human rights as that of a comparative sociologist of law. Julius Stone, his main academic mentor, was a student of the sociological jurist, Roscoe Pound. Baxi embraced the sociological perspective, but as a follower of Gandhi and Marx (later Gramsci), and an active participant in protests at Berkeley from 1964 to 1967, he gave the ideas of Pound and Stone a distinctly radical twist. Stone called him a ‘Marxist natural lawyer’; others have pointed to his lengthy engagement with postmodernism. But such labels do not fit him. Marxism proved too rigid and doctrinaire, and postmodernism too irresponsible to be of much use to a practical political agenda. Neither quite fits his not uncritical sympathy for the ideas of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Above all, Baxi’s concern has been for those whom, following Gramsci, he calls ‘subaltern peoples.’ Perhaps more than any other scholarly writer on human rights he consistently adopts the point of view of the poor and the oppressed.

Since the early 1990s most of Baxi’s work has concerned human rights. Much of what he writes is critical of discourses of human rights, the complexities and compromises involved, and the misuses to which the discourses have been put. The tone is passionate, polemical, and radical, but the style is learned, allusive, and quite abstract. Some of the distinctions that he emphasizes have occasioned puzzlement: for example, the distinction between the politics of human rights and politics for human rights, between human rights movements, human rights markets, and market-friendly human rights, between justified and unjustifiable human suffering, and between ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ human rights – all of which will need explication below. While much of his argument is complex, dialectical, and often ironic, one clear message rings out: taking human rights seriously must involve taking human suffering seriously.

At first sight, Baxi seems deeply ambivalent about rights: he is a fervent supporter of universal human rights, yet he is sharply critical of much of the talk and practice associated with it, and he emphasizes many of the obstacles and threats to the realization of their potential. Much of his account relates ‘to the narratives of unrealized and even unattainable human rights.’ Rather than accept this as ambivalence, he recalls Gramsci’s distinction between pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. Although he writes about human rights futures, Baxi is more concerned with struggle than with prediction.

In the writings that we have already considered, Francis Deng, Abdullahi An-Na’im, and Yash Ghai use the international human rights regime as their starting point. As lawyers, they are aware that this regime is changing, dynamic, complex, and open to competing interpretations. However, they treat it and especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as being sufficiently stable and clear to provide standards for appraising and giving direction to other normative orders. Like them, Upendra Baxi opposes all forms of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy. He steers a subtle path between universalism and relativism. He agrees that humankind as a whole should be the subject of our moral concern. He treats the Universal Declaration as one high point of the development of the current human rights regime, but he sees that regime as being inherently fragile and problematic. And his general tone and positions are more radical than the other three.

Like Ghai, Baxi’s initial attitude to human rights is pragmatic: we need to work within human rights discourse not because it clearly embodies universal moral principles, but because in the second half of the twentieth century it became the dominant mode of moral discourse in international relations, edging out other moral tropes such as distributive justice or ‘solidarity.’ Just because they have become so dominant, the discourses of human rights have been used to support a wide variety of often incompatible interests, and this in turn has led to complexity, compromise, contradiction, and obfuscation in both the discourse and the practices of human rights. More than Ghai, Baxi consistently adopts the standpoint of the worst off.

Baxi presents the international human rights scene as fragile, contradictory, and riddled with myths, false histories, and ambiguities. It is marked by frenetic activity, explosive articulation of human rights standards and norms, and varied critiques and scepticisms about this dominant discourse. Global capitalism, new technologies, and both global terrorism and post-9/11 responses to ‘terrorism’ (‘terrorism wars’) further threaten the fragile, contingent advances made by human rights movements. Small wonder then that there is a crisis of confidence even among the most committed and ‘progressive’ activists and NGOs:

The astonishing quantity of human rights production generates various experiences of scepticism and faith. Some complain of exhaustion (what I call “rights-weariness”). Some suspect sinister imperialism in diplomatic maneuvers animating each and every human rights enunciation (what I call “rights-wariness”). Some celebrate human rights as a new global civic religion which, given a community of faith, will address and solve all major human problems (what I call “human rights evangelism”). Their fervor is often matched by those NGOs that tirelessly pursue the removal of brackets in pre-final diplomatic negotiating texts of various United Nations’ summits as triumphs in human solidarity (what I call “human rights romanticism”). Some other activists believe that viable human rights standards can best be produced by exploiting contingencies of international diplomacy (what I call “bureaucratization of human rights”). And still others (like me) insist that the real birthplaces of human rights are far removed from the ornate rooms of diplomatic conferences and are found, rather, in the actual sites (acts and feats) of resistance and struggle (what I call “critical human rights realism”).

5.2.	The future(s) of human rights
The Future of Human Rights contains the most comprehensive statement of Baxi’s views on human rights. Since 1990, Baxi has published at least four books and many articles on the subject. More are in the pipeline. Nevertheless, the core of his thinking is quite stable. Perhaps it can be rendered in four parts: first, the starting point is a concern for and a quite complex idea of human suffering as it is actually experienced anywhere, but especially in the South; second, a comprehensive assessment, often sharply critical, of the past history and current state of human rights discourse, theory, and praxis; third, an aspirational vision of a just world in which all human beings know and genuinely own human rights as resources that can empower vulnerable communities and individuals to interpret their own situations, to resist human rights violations, and to participate in genuine dialogues about alternate and competing visions for a better future in a world that will continue to be pluralistic, ever changing, and possessed of finite resources to meet infinite human wants; and, finally, pragmatic suggestions about possible strategies and tactics in the perpetual struggle to move realistically towards realizing this vision (the politics for human rights).

Baxi’s aim in The Future of Human Rights is ‘to decipher the future of protean forms of social action assembled by convention, under a portal named ‘human rights’. It problematizes the very notion of ‘human rights,’ the standard narratives of their origins, the ensemble of ideologies animating their modes of production, and the wayward circumstances of their enunciation.’

In short, his objective is to mount a sustained and complex critique of much of the discourse and many of the practices that surround human rights at the start of the twentieth century and to present a vision, rooted in experiences of suffering, that can serve as a secular equivalent of liberation theology. For Baxi, such a vision – ‘critical human rights realism’ – should become part of the symbolic capital of the poor and the dispossessed to be used as a resource in their struggles for a decent life.

Baxi claims that The Future of Human Rights advances a distinctive ‘subaltern’ activist perspective on human rights futures. His central theme is that human rights discourse only has value if it fulfils the axiom ‘that the historic mission of contemporary human rights is to give voice to human suffering, to make it visible and to ameliorate it.’

Baxi considers this task to be formidable. The second half of the twentieth century has been called ‘the Age of Rights,’ and discourses of human rights have been said to be ‘the common language of humanity,’ yet what difference in fact have human rights made to human suffering? ‘The number of rightless people grow even as human rights norms and standards proliferate.’ 

The Future of Human Rights is diffuse, polemical, and difficult to summarize. Perhaps the main themes can be succinctly stated largely in Baxi’s own words as follows: 

•	Human rights discourse is fraught with haunting ambiguities, complexity, and contradiction. It is intensely partisan and cannot be reduced to a single coherent set of ideas. A crucial distinction is between the statist discourses of the powerful and educated (illustrado) and the subversive discourses of the violated (indigenous/indio).
•	Taking rights seriously must involve taking human suffering seriously.
•	Suffering is ubiquitous; it can be both creative and destructive of human potential. It is not confined to poor or undemocratic countries.
•	How suffering is justified must be a central concern of human rights discourse. Historically, human rights discourse has been used to legitimate state power, colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy in various forms, and to exclude large sectors of humanity from moral concern. Conversely, successful human rights movements create new forms of justifiable suffering.
•	The true authors of rights are communities in struggle, not Western thinkers or modern states. Linking human rights to experienced human suffering is the best hope of ensuring that human rights discourse (i) is not hijacked by a trade-related, market-friendly paradigm of human rights, (ii) is not obfuscated by the politics of human rights (e.g., competition between NGOs) rather than political struggles for human rights, and (iii) is not dominated by the complacent discourse of the powerful.
•	Modern human rights discourse is secular. It has severed the connection between human rights discourses and religious cosmologies. This involves a radical acceptance of human finitude (no life after life/death); justifications are only of this world; it problematizes custom and tradition; and creates a secular civic religion, a community of faith.
•	The contemporary production of human rights is exuberant (even “carnivalistic”), producing a riot of perceptions. Clearly there are too many ‘soft’ human rights enunciations, but very few ‘hard’ enforceable rights. To some, human rights inflation is a threat; others point to the glacial progress made in the direction of ‘hard,’ enforceable human rights norms; yet others read the uncontrolled production of human rights as, perhaps, the best hope for a participative creation of human futures; attempts by the UN or other agencies to control the rate of production are likely to favour the rights of global capital.
•	Increasingly, human rights movements and NGOs “organize themselves in the image of markets,” competing with each other (in fundraising, advertising, building capital) like entrepreneurs in a spirit of nervous “investor rationality” and being forced into the trap of commodifying human rights.
•	Economic “globalization” threatens to supplant the ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with a trade-related, market-friendly paradigm, which emphasizes the right to property, the rights of investors, and even the rights of corporations (sidelining the poor to feed off the drips from the alleged trickle-down effects of capitalist prosperity).
•	Postmodernism, ethical and cultural relativism, and sceptical critiques of rights discourse draw attention to some genuine difficulties, but they fail to provide constructive strategies for action to alleviate suffering and, however well-intentioned, they make possible toleration of vast stretches of human suffering.
•	The politics of difference and identity views human rights as having not just an emancipative potential but also a repressive one.
•	Globalization and the development of techno-scientific modes of production threaten to make contemporary human rights discourse obsolescent.
•	Rights have several different uses as symbolic resources in politics for human rights: (i) as markers of policies – testing whether policy enunciations recognize, respect, or affirm human rights; (ii) as constraints on policy implementation (self-conscious restraint and positive disincentives); (iii) as resources for policy – processes and structures of policy implementation legitimated by reference to specific human rights regimes; (iv) as providing access to effective legal redress; and (v) as resources for collective action – e.g., to mobilize discontent with policy or its implementation.

Each of these themes is developed in The Future of Human Rights, some of them at greater length and more concretely in other works. Rather than attempt a comprehensive exposition, I shall focus on a topic that is pivotal in Baxi’s argument and among his more original contributions: different conceptions of the history of human rights.

5.3.	Two Paradigms of Human Rights in History: ‘the Modern’ and ‘the Contemporary’
A standard account of the history of human rights is presented in terms of ‘generations’: The first phase in response to the Holocaust and the horrors of the Second World War was marked by a pre-occupation with civil and political rights. The second generation was represented by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [ICESCR]. The third phase marked a move from emphasis on individual rights to recognition of collective rights, including concern for the environment (‘green rights’) in tension with ‘the right to development.’ A fourth phase involved a progressive recognition of the rights of peoples. While talk of ‘generations’ of international human rights has sometimes been a convenient simplifying device, most commentators distance themselves from this taxonomy. At best it can describe one phase of international law. It is generally accepted that such ‘history’ is too crude. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the starting point of modern development, covered economic and social rights as well as civil and political – but these became split in the period of the Cold War. Today, most orthodox commentators at least pay lip service to the claim that human rights are universal, interdependent, and indivisible.

Upendra Baxi advances a more fundamental critique of such ‘history.’ In his view, it represents a complacent, patronizing, Euro-centric or rather ‘Northern-centric’, top-down view of the sources of human rights, suggesting that rights are ‘the gifts of the West to the Rest.’ It entirely overlooks the contribution of struggles by the poor and the oppressed to the slow recognition of human rights as universal.

To make sense of human rights, Baxi argues, one must see the basic ideas not as emanating from Christian natural law or the liberal Enlightenment or the reactions of Western governments to the horrors of World War II. The main context of the production of human rights has been local communities in struggle against the diverse sources of suffering; the main impetus has been direct experience of suffering; the main authors have been those involved in grass-roots struggles – some having become well-known, while the great majority have been unsung:

After all it was a man called Lokmanya Tilak who in the second decade of this century gave a call to India: swaraj (independence) is my birthright and I shall have it, long before international human rights proclaimed a right to self-determination. It was a man called Gandhi who challenged early this century racial discrimination in South Africa, which laid several decades later the foundation for international treaties and declarations on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and apartheid. Compared to these male figures, generations of legendary women martyred themselves in prolonged struggles against patriarchy and gender inequality. The current campaign based on the motto “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” is inspired by a massive history of local struggles all around.

Even within the Eurocentric perspective, narratives articulated in terms of ‘generations’ of rights radically foreshorten history in ways that hide the fragmented ideas that preceded the Universal Declaration. For example, human rights doctrine preceded abolition and often condoned slavery. The right to property and the right to govern were used to justify various forms of colonialism and imperialism. Only very recently in the long history of rights talk has there been reason to celebrate the maxim that ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights,’ but this does not mark the beginning or the end of women’s struggle for equality.

Instead of a linear history, Baxi substitutes two contrasting ‘paradigms’ (or ideal types) of conceptions of human rights, both of which mask the continuities in the historiography of these two forms: the modern (or modernist) paradigm and the ‘contemporary’ paradigm:

The distinction between “modern” and “contemporary” forms of human rights is focused on taking suffering seriously. In the “modern” human rights paradigm it was thought possible to take human rights seriously without taking human suffering seriously. Outside the domain of the laws of war among and between “civilized” nations, “modern” human rights regarded large-scale imposition of human suffering as just and right in pursuit of a Eurocentric notion of human “progress”. That discourse silenced human suffering. In contrast, the “contemporary” human rights paradigm is animated by a politics of activist desire to render problematic the very notion of politics of cruelty.

This passage needs some unpacking. Baxi presents the two paradigms in terms of four main contrasts:

Modern	Contemporary	
1. logics of exclusion	1. inclusiveness	
2. right to govern	2. radical self-determination	
3. ascetic (a thin conception of rights)	3. exuberant (proliferation of rights)	
4. rhetoric of ‘ progress’	4. voices of suffering	

First, while the ‘contemporary’ paradigm is inclusive, the ‘modern’ paradigm for most of its history interpreted ‘human’ to exclude all those who were not to be regarded as human by virtue of having the capacity to reason and an autonomous moral will:  ‘In its major phases of development, ‘slaves’, ‘heathens’, ‘barbarians’, colonized peoples, indigenous populations, women, children, the impoverished, and the ‘insane’ have been, at various times and in various ways, thought unworthy of being bearers of human rights… These discursive devices of Enlightenment rationality were devices of exclusion. The ‘Rights of Man’ were human rights of all men capable of autonomous reason and will.’

Baxi is cautious about universalism in relation to claims that there are moral principles that are valid for all times and all places, but he emphasizes the enormous normative significance of the inclusive claim that human rights apply to all human beings by virtue of their humanity.

Second, the logic of exclusion led to the justification of colonialism. The language of ‘modern’ human rights was often used to justify colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy through the right of property (especially occupation of ‘terra nullius’ – ignoring the presence of indigenous people) and ‘a natural collective human right of the superior races to rule the inferior ones.’ In contrast, the contemporary human rights paradigm is based on the premise of radical self-determination, insisting that every human person ‘has a right to a voice, a right to bear witness to violation, a right to immunity from disarticulation by concentrations of economic, social, and political formations. Rights languages, no longer so exclusively at the service of the ends of governance, open up sites of resistance.’

Third, ‘modern’ human rights are state-centric and ascetic, treating the state as the only legitimate source of rights and limiting their scope. The sources of ‘contemporary’ human rights are ebullient, leading to ‘a carnival of production,’ though this in turn creates problems. They extend not only to discrete minorities but also to ‘wholly new, hitherto unthought of, justice constituencies’: ‘Contemporary enunciations thus embrace, to mention very different orders of example, the rights of the girl child, migrant labour, indigenous peoples, gays and lesbians (the emerging human right to sexual orientation), prisoners and those in custodial institutional regimes, refugees and asylum seekers, and children.’

Fourth, the ‘modern’ human rights cultures traced their pedigree to ideas of progress, social Darwinism, racism, and patriarchy. They used these ideas to justify ‘global imposition of cruelty as ‘natural’, ‘ethical’, and ‘just’.’ Because of the exclusionary logic, the suffering of large numbers of ‘sub-human’ peoples were rendered invisible. By contrast, especially in the wake of the revulsion occasioned by the Holocaust and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, ‘‘contemporary’ human rights discursivity is rooted in the illegitimacy of all forms of politics of cruelty.’ The ensuing regime of international human rights and humanitarian law outlawed some barbaric practices of state power and ‘this was no small gain’ from the standpoint of those violated.

Baxi presents the ‘modern’ as state-centric, top-down, technocratic, exclusionary, lean and mean, and used by those in power to legitimate their position and their actions; he presents the ‘contemporary’ as bottom-up, rooted in experience of suffering, ebullient, and involving radical self-determination, with human rights serving as weapon of protest and empowerment of the dispossessed. These two paradigms are not meant to represent successive stages in history; rather they are two ideal types of conceptions of human rights that have been used discursively, sometimes concurrently and sometimes sequentially, mainly in connection with state-oriented Western discourses.

Baxi suggests that an adequate account of the future(s) of human rights requires a developed social theory of human rights, as well as a re-imagined history. At present we lack both. Baxi has been a leading pioneer of socio-legal studies in India, although it is fair to say that he has no more than hinted at what such a social theory might be like. But he has sketched a general approach to the kind of history needed to underpin his vision of a healthy future for human rights. Clearly such history would need to be based on the kind of detailed ‘history from below’ exemplified by Edward Thompson, Peter Linebaugh, or George Rudé, as well as the kind of sardonic work on official archives of a Brian Simpson. But it would also need the grand sweep of world history that one associates with Eric Hobsbawm, Immanuel Wallerstein, or Patrick Glenn. Baxi does not claim to have written a history of human rights, but he has made a devastating critique of the predominant mode of complacent, self-congratulatory narratives that dominate much human rights literature.

5.4.	Conclusion
Baxi characterizes human rights discourse as ebullient, even carnivalistic. These adjectives might be applied to his own writings on human rights. Since 1990, he has published at least four books and many articles on the subject. He promises a substantially revised edition of The Future of Human Rights and no doubt more lectures, speeches, and articles. He has written specifically on population control, bio-technology, international business ethics, environmental issues, globalization, terrorism and responses to terrorism, and good governance – all in relation to human rights. He has promised books on the right to food and the right to development. In short, he is a prolific writer who presents a continuously moving target. Some of his most colourful passages are found in quite particular studies. Nevertheless, they are given coherence by a single theme:

‘Human rights futures, dependent as they are upon imparting an authentic voice to human suffering, must engage in a discourse of suffering that moves the world.’

6.	Four Southern Voices 

A just international order and a healthy cosmopolitan discipline of law need to include perspectives that take account of the standpoints, interests, concerns, and beliefs of non-Western people and traditions. The dominant scholarly and activist discourses about human rights have developed largely without reference to these other perspectives. Claims about universality sit uneasily with ignorance of other traditions and parochial or ethnocentric tendencies.

Writings about human rights from non-Western perspectives need to be better known in the West. The four individuals whose more general ideas on human rights are summarized here cannot be considered to be a representative sample of ‘Southern’ viewpoints on human rights; nor can they claim to be spokespersons for any group or people any more than can other public intellectuals. There are many other individuals and groups who deserve such attention. For instance, two Nobel Prize winners, Shirin Ebadi and Aung San Suu Kyi, might right the gender balance. There are other contemporary scholars from outside Europe who have written about human rights. Some, like Amartya Sen, Nelson Mandela, and Mr. Justice Christie Weeramantry, are world famous. Others, such as Issa Shivji of Tanzania, several Latin America jurists, or the late Neelan Tiruchelvan of Sri Lanka, are well known in their own regions and in specialist circles. There is a younger generation of scholars who are coming into prominence. And there is an extensive literature on Islam, human rights, and law reform. But for my own ignorance and linguistic deprivation, these and many others could be added – especially if one goes back in time, to include for instance Mahatma Ghandi or B. R. Ambedkar.

I have selected these four mainly because I believe that their ideas deserve to be better known, many of their writings are accessible, and I am familiar with their work and know them personally. Each has made a distinctive contribution to both the theory and praxis of human rights. The work of these four thinkers are both significantly similar and strikingly different – in short, they are suitable objects for comparison. They belong to a single postcolonial generation (three were born, coincidentally, in 1938; An-Na’im is a decade younger, but started early). All four have been concerned with the problems of racism, colonialism, post-Independence politics, weak and corrupt regimes, poverty, and injustice in the South. They have given expression to ideas that are rooted in these concerns without claiming to represent any particular constituency. All four were trained in the common law, have spent substantial periods in the United States and the United Kingdom, and write in English. They have been all been activists as well as scholars, but in quite varied ways. Each has a distinctive voice and says different things. They make a fascinating study in contrasts. But, although they differ, they do not disagree on most fundamentals; rather they complement each other.

In recent years their ideas seem to have converged in some significant ways. Two aspects of this deserve emphasis. First, all four are acutely aware that we live in a world characterized by a diversity of beliefs, both within and across national boundaries, and that this creates profound problems of co-existence and co-operation. None sees much prospect of papering over such differences. Francis Deng’s writings evoke a cosmology and way of life that is beyond the experience and imagination of most of us. Much of Ghai’s practice has been concerned with reaching constitutional settlements and handling conflicts in multi-ethnic societies in which civil strife and protection of minorities are acute problems. So far as I can tell, each of them would opt for what Patrick Glenn calls ‘sustainable diversity’ rather than some bland homogenization in which one size is made to fit all. All emphasize the significance of local particularities.

Secondly, the fact of pluralism (of beliefs, cultures, traditions) raises issues that are fashionably discussed in terms of universalism versus cultural relativism. My sense is that all four are impatient about such debates. Each steers a path between strong versions of universalism and particularism. In interpreting them, it is important to distinguish between four different meanings of universalism: (i) formal universalizability, as embodied in Kant’s categorical imperative or the Golden Rule; (ii) empirical universalism, the position that human nature and systems of belief grounded in this nature are in their essentials universal or near-universal and that this can form the basis for an over-arching metaphysics of humanism (a view that has gone out of fashion in anthropology and most social sciences, which tend to emphasize the diversity, plasticity, and contingency of social cultures and belief systems, but that still finds some support in genetics, socio-biology, and more ‘hard-wired’ perspectives on the human psyche); (iii) ethical universalism, the position that there are universal moral principles, including principles underpinning human rights, that apply to all persons at all times and in all places; and (iv) procedural universalism, the hope that despite diversity of beliefs and conflicting interests, humankind can through reasonable dialogue and negotiation construct sufficient consensus to ground stable institutions and practices to sustain co-existence and co-operation.

On my interpretation, all four are very close to each other on these points. All appear to accept formal universalism and to reject strong empirical claims to universality of cultures and beliefs; in other words, they accept diversity of beliefs as a psychological and social fact. On ethical universalism, their positions are somewhat different: all four are politically committed to fighting for the basic values embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An-Na’im comes close to espousing a religion-based form of ethical universalism; Deng in all of his writings emphasizes human dignity as a basic value, but seems to use international human rights documents as consensual working premises rather than as embodying a single set of universal moral precepts; Ghai and Baxi pragmatically plugged into human rights discourse quite late in their careers, because it was so dominant in the spheres in which they operated. Ghai sees it as a historically contingent workable framework for negotiating constitutional and political settlements and developing constitutions through genuinely democratic constitutive processes, but he emphasizes material interests rather than cultural differences as the main recurrent basis of conflict. Baxi also treats human rights as a form of discourse and emphasizes its potential for abuse and obfuscation, passionately arguing for it to be allowed to be the medium for expressing ‘voices of suffering,’ especially of the half of the world that is deprived of food, water, health, education, and other necessities for a life worth living.

All four reject strong cultural relativism. They respect cultural diversity and value tolerance, but this does not involve commitment to tolerating the intolerable. Each believes in the value of dialogue, but with different emphases: Deng, the diplomat, has always relied on persuasion and mediation; An-Na’im stresses the importance of internal dialogue; Ghai points to the value of human rights discourse as a framework for political negotiation and compromise between people with different interests, concerns, and ethnicities; Baxi, more pugnacious, sees dialogic human rights as the gentler part of struggle.

What of differences? One can point to differences in ethnicity, mother tongue (English was for each of them a second or third language.), attitudes to religion, professional fields of specialization, the arenas in which they have been activists, and the historical events they have witnessed. By and large they have read different things. In the present context, perhaps the main differences in their treatment of human rights are differences of concerns, emphasis, and style rather than any profound disagreements.

It would be tempting to end by trying to compare and contrast these quite different perspectives on human rights with some familiar strands in Western liberal democratic theory. There are indeed some interesting issues that could be pursued. But in the present context this would undermine my purpose, which is to point to one possible route out of the intellectual isolationism and parochialism of Western legal theory.

To sum up:
•	For a case study of the relationship between an exotic traditional nomadic culture and the international human rights regime, read Francis Deng.
•	If you wish to learn how a devout Muslim scholar has developed a strategy for reconciling Islamic beliefs with Western liberal democratic ideals, read Abdullahi An-Na’im.
•	If you are interested in a pragmatic, materialist argument about the practical value of using human rights discourse to reach political settlements and compromises in multi-ethnic or other conflicted societies, read Yash Ghai.
•	And, if you are interested in an impassioned plea that human rights discourse should first and foremost be interpreted and used to further the interests of the worst-off, read Upendra Baxi.