What are the barriers to human rights being recognised as truly universal in application?

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Human rights have been the central ideas of the global political arena, for a long period of time. The aftermath of the Second World War, the genocide of the Jewish had instigated a mass change in human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human rights was embraced by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 (Un.org, 2014). It was created to ensure every human born is protected no matter the age, race, sex, nationality and any other physical or mental traits people possess. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an international document that encourages states to promote social, economic and political rights to the citizens. (Un.org, 2014). Human rights heavily touch on fundamental principles such as dignity, fairness, equality, respect and autonomy. Human rights are both universal and egalitarian. The rights are inalienable rights for equality and each being inherited it via birth. You cannot rid yourself from these rights, nor can you exchange any single right. There has been great debate whether these rights are universal, many academics have argued whether these rights are for everyone. The on going issue with human rights, which seems to be the most controversial, is the application of them. There is strong debate between the forces that promote their universal enforcement and those that would prefer a more contextualised approach. People all around the globe participate in many different traditions and be believe in numerous customs. Caste based discrimination around the world can defy the rights of each person there before contributing to issue of universality. People tend to have this misconception that human rights are a western ideas. Poverty stricken states such a Bangladesh do we really expect an eight-yea...

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...ends to be a triumph of secular rights. So therefore women of theocratic states don’t essentially have a choice. Saudi Arabia has not signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (Price, 1999), due to it having clashes with its views on marriage and equality.
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Human Rights dominated by western values?
Many people have said that idea of human rights is very much a western concept, due to the embracement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a time period where many third world nations were under colonial rule(Forsythe, 2009p.370). Therefore third world nations see human rights are seen as a cover for the west, to try and get their way to intimidate and develop an imperialist relationship. Developing states don’t have the resources so wildly available to them; they can’t afford to sacrifice economic needs in order to confine to human rights.

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