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Human rights as an issue occupies centre stage in contemporary public debate. Part of the debate on human rights is about the origins and significance of the notion itself. This book examines the proposition, often taken for granted, that the concept of human rights is Western. It points out that the wisdom of drafting a statement of rights for the entire world on the basis of values of the societies of Western Europe and America, was questioned even at the time of framing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In the decades since it came into being, the Declaration has come under increased criticism at various times from states in Asia and Africa. The charge has been repeatedly made by policy-makers and scholars that prevailing ideas of human rights are of Western origin and not necessarily of relevance to societies in the rest of the world. The book is divided into nine parts, which examine the arguments from a range of perspectives including the historical, secular, economic, philosophical, and religious. Learned, yet accessible in its approach, it goes on to examine a question of increasing contemporary significance — whether the claim regarding compensation for historical wrongs, inflicted by colonial and other powers, should be allowed to evolve into a human right.
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