6 - The Fate of Human Rights

Summary

Thee authority of human rights has diminished, even in liberal constitutional systems, international relations, and international human rights law. This enables illiberal democracies to depart from international standards. Majority will as the embodiment of the nation’s existential interest is entitled to overrule the foreign, doctrinal dictates of human rights. In many respects, this ideology corresponds to the antielitist criticism of human rights that is common in anticolonialist literature. However, in illiberal EU member states, the conflict with “international forces” does not extend to denying such rights; rather, it is limited to deceitful reinterpretation, relying on the ambiguities of the current system, pitting rights against rights and inventing new grounds for limitation. Such reinterpretation changes the meaning of existing rights, grants new powers to traditional grounds for limitation, and uses the concept of the state’s positive obligation to promote rights to instead promote the causes of the government, its values, and the interests of organizations allied with it.