THE UNIVERSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS - DOI: 10.12818/P.0304-2340.2023v83p371

Abstract

Human rights have encountered many
challenges in their several centuries-old
history. Especially since on the political level
they are often instrumentalized by the States.
Uncertainty reigns in philosophy. We do
not know their foundations very well: is it
Nature, God, Reason? Various authors have
pointed out the incompatibility between the
universality of human rights and cultural
differences, from 18th century European
counterrevolutionaries to Nazi jurists. Claude
Lévi-Strauss himself warned Unesco of this
in the aftermath of the Second World War.
However, the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries made it possible to overcome these
uncertainties. The case law of the various
international and national courts on crimes
against humanity allows us today to formulate
more precise definitions of the universality of
human rights, even if it is sometimes difficult
to articulate them with the minority rights and
the rights of indigenous peoples.