1 - Introduction

Summary

This book is about one of the great civilising achievements of the modern era. It traces the rise of human rights and explains why it is that their protection is now thought to be so important in so many walks of life, and across so many different continents and cultures. The chapters that follow cover the subject from its various angles, the legal, the political, the international, the philosophical and so on: if a concise account of human rights is what is desired, then these pages aim to deliver. But there is something else going on here as well, revealed by my title, ‘Can Human Rights Survive?’ This is not a book that celebrates the past while planning confidently for the future: there is no certainty of a happy ending. The idea of human rights is a fine one, and it has clearly been successful, but that does not mean that it is guaranteed to be so in perpetuity. A perspective on the world that is prospering today does not inevitably thrive tomorrow. The subject faces serious challenges. Unless these are squarely confronted and seen off, there is a risk that the idea will be destroyed for ever, or at best subverted out of all present recognition. In what follows I detail what these challenges to human rights are and I also provide a strategy for how I say we can rise above them.