“We must continue to defend the universality of human rights”

RFI: While the war has continued for almost three years in Ukraine, Gaza continues to be ravaged by bombings and famine, and human rights are trampled underfoot in other lesser conflicts. publicized, as in Sudan; while we see the emergence of what are sometimes called illiberal democracies, which largely ignore fundamental freedoms; while in your country there is talk of a shrinking of civil rights, how do you see the human rights situation in the world and in your region?

Souleymane Bachir Diagne: There is a concomitant decline in human rights and democracy, and this is very clear. Organizations that measure the state of democracy in the world are unanimous in saying that in general, it has declined everywhere, including in formerly and traditionally democratic countries. This is a first observation. Afterwards, wars have always been extreme situations where we have the impression that all consideration of human rights is suspended. This is even why on the international level, human rights insist on the existence of a law of war. The idea being that even in the middle of war, we cannot afford everything. Unfortunately, current conflicts show that we allow ourselves anything.

Now, if I focus on my region, the Sahel, there, we have a return to an Africa which was established, we believed, firmly in democracy after all the transitions that there were in the 90s . And we saw the return of sinister memories of coups d’état. So here is a bit of the whole in which we must place this particular moment that we are living in where we must hold on to human rights more than ever, but realize that everywhere, they are trampled underfoot.

RFI: In these conditions, does it make sense to celebrate human rights?

Souleymane Bachir Diagne: Yes, because what is the alternative? Either we celebrate human rights, that is to say we affirm their universality and their role as a beacon of our humanity, or we abandon them, and with them, any common horizon. We have never been so fragmented, we need more than ever a policy based on our shared humanity. We cannot abandon this common orientation that human rights bring to our world and to our humanity, because paradoxically, it is true, the contrast is great between the fact that we have never been so fragmented perhaps and at the same time, we have never had a greater need to have a policy of humanity, that is to say a policy whose foundation is our shared humanity.

RFI: Most countries officially recognize human rights. But their respect seems to stop where their freedom of political choice begins. Consider China, which prioritizes its economic freedom while rejecting criticism of its abuses of Uyghur rights. Resistance like this paralyzes international mechanisms. How can we prevent this from discrediting this ideal?

Souleymane Bachir Diagne: We must distinguish between their ineffective nature and their useless nature. That it doesn’t work is one thing. Basically, today, what is the space that we share and which today defines this orientation towards this ideal? This is the United Nations space. However, the United Nations has never so revealed its powerlessness to stop these wars and atrocities. But does this mean we must abandon the ideal that the United Nations represents? No, since all these States have signed, it must be remembered, this Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

All these States recognize, even if it is only lip service, the idea that there is something which transcends our different nations and our different egoisms and which for this reason is called “universal”. The very existence of these rights means that they are enforceable. And that’s what we should celebrate. The idea that must be reinforced is that this ideal has never been more necessary than today. What we are celebrating is their universal validity, and this is what we must continue to defend and remind all these nations: that being a signatory to the Declaration should oblige them.

RFI: You talk about universal validity. But this universalism of human rights is often questioned, particularly as being a Western point of view. In your opinion, can human rights really be universal, or is it an illusion?

Souleymane Bachir Diagne: I refuse this idea, because it would imply that only the West recognizes that rights are attached to humans simply because they are human. No human culture has ignored this. What explains this identification of human rights with the West is Europe’s claim to proclaim itself the sole bearer of the universal and to want to impose it on the rest of the world. When we say that human rights are 1789 or 1776, those are national stories. On the other hand, the Universal Declaration of 1948 is the fruit of the United Nations, drawn up together by nations, even those which were not yet independent, in particular African countries. The universality of this Declaration comes from the fact that it was developed collectively, the nations “universalized together”. So if we start from the principle that the Declaration we are talking about and the human rights we are talking about are the 1948 Declaration, there is no reason to consider it a Western invention.

So there is no question of proposing alternative or differentiated rights…

Human rights, since their initial declaration, have evolved to include what are called second generation rights. This highlights both the need for the 1948 Declaration and the importance of continuing to deepen human rights, such as those to education or development. It is a constructive approach which shows that we must always continue what is a process of universalization of human rights and not consider that it is a fixed text. In other words, what I am saying is that universalization is always an ongoing process. We can also see this with the new forms that COP meetings are taking, for the protection of the planet. These negotiations also seek to put an end to a fundamental inequality in the world order today, which means that the countries which have contributed the least to the destruction of our planet are those which suffer the most. And so these negotiations, difficult as we have seen, show that the process continues.

Also listenThe quest for the universal with the philosophers Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Ulrich Metende

It is not a question of looking for alternative rights, other rights, but it is a question of deepening everything that has been said about the fact that rights are attached to humans because this human is human. and that there is only one humanity. The declaration of the hunters of Mandé, in West Africa, begins by affirming: a life is a life. The deepening of this idea that all lives – Ukrainian, Gazan, South African – are equal, implies that the rights to life must be universally respected. This is what it means to draw the consequences of the affirmation of universal rights attached to human beings. And so this has been said by everyone in one way or another, so it’s not a matter of formulating it differently again, but of continuing the process of going deeper and applying it to different situations. that we live.

RFI: You have worked a lot on the dialogue of cultures. Concretely, not everyone agrees on certain notions, such as equality between men and women or the freedoms of LGBT minorities, which clearly go against the very foundation of certain States. So how can we go about universalizing all of this?

At the time of the 1948 Declaration, certain positions seemed irreconcilable. For example, the United States rejected social rights, while the USSR favored them. This means that universalizing means bringing together all these differences and ensuring that we agree on something that would be universal.

Also listen“Universalize”, the new essay by philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne

I’m not sure that certain cultures would reject the principle of equality between men and women. Even religious texts like the Koran affirm the ontological equality of men and women. I don’t know of any culture where inequality between men and women is affirmed. However, I recognize that there are States where this inequality persists in practice. This is the kind of contradiction that we can confront States with, and this is what “universalizing together” and holding firm to the ideal of human rights means. Now that these human rights are denied here and there, in the same way that there are atrocities in the world caused by wars, this must be noted.