O desafio de uma abordagem intercultural para os Direitos Humanos

Abstract

The history of international law is, to a certain extent, the history of the efforts undertaken to minimize or mitigate the effects of armed conflicts and human suffering. The aim of this paper is to discuss the possibilities of an effective universalization of Human Rights today. It begins by identifying the medieval and humanist antecedents of international law and of what will come to be the modern discourse of Human Rights. The historical data analyzed sheds light on how the emergence of an idea of compassion for the Other, without exceptions, did not find sufficient grounds in the religious argument, and how to overcome it was the required condition for perceiving the Other as a similar being in more absolute terms. At the same time, these historical data make it quite clear how such a trajectory is, essentially, European or Western in nature. Then in the second part of the paper I argue that the adjective 'universal' is still inadequate to describe the current situation of Human Rights, but the possibility of it becoming appropriate is nevertheless not rejected. Such possibility will depend on the effective consolidation of an intercultural approach to Human Rights. Only by this way we will can appropriately talk about the universality of Human Rights, being the political dimension of such a change unquestionable.