Are Human Rights Asian

As Kevin Tan, senior professor at the National University of Singapore remarks understatedly, the debate on Asian values and human rights has become something of a cottage industry since its setting up at the UN world Conference on Human Rights in 1994. Both regional papers from the Middle East and Asia challenge the universality of human rights, e Bangkok announcement has since become a manifesto, a kind of declaration of independence from what has been considered the forward moralism of the West.

A brief summary of the positions spoken at the UN conference and afterwards indicate the divide. Asian government represented by statesmen Mahathir and Lee Kwan Yew claim that human rights may have a universal dimension but this is restricted by its Western genesis. The Bangkok declaration itself best speaks here while human rights are common in nature, they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of global norm-setting, bearing in mind the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.