Ethics in International Relations

Ethics in International Relations

Question 1

The issue of implementing universal human rights (specifically Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which articulates the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion) continues to be a sensitive and ongoing issue between various Western and Asian governments. While most of these issues have been concerned with empirical developments regarding human rights abuses, the conceptual underpinnings that inform this debate are less often analysed. In particular, how do cultural relativism and Asian values, as posited against universal values, help legitimise repressive policies and actions through various conceptual manoeuvres. Cultural relativism is the position to which local cultural traditions (religious, political and legal practices included) properly determine the existence and scope of civil and political rights enjoyed by individuals in a given society. It is premised on the idea that all cultures are equally valid and that standards of evaluation are internal to traditions. It sees that values emerge in the context of particular social, cultural, economic and political conditions and therefore vary enormously between different communities. However, the language of cultural relativism is often exploited by various state leaders and high officials to justify and rationalise repressive policies, despite such policies having no philosophical or cultural justification. The paradox of cultural relativism is that participation is necessary to understand what values are legitimate within a society, but that the rhetoric associated with cultural relativism helps effectively hinder any participation or freedom of thought within a given society. This lies at the heart of the problem of effectively implementing universal human right.

It has been noticed through the documentary that India will beat China in terms of number of population size in 2030. It has been noticed that something was disturbing the India's baby boom. There were far more boys than girls. It was found that in New Delhi, last year 22000 girls were born but the same figure simply does not exist. Many girls were missing. But according to one of the Gynecologist that we approached said that the girls were not missing. They were actually not born. The women are forced to abort their feminine babies. Basically, women wants son, they don't care about the morality. Sex selective abortion has become the common concern in India today. Despite a law banning sex selective abortion in force for a decade, as many as half a million female fetuses are aborted each year in India, according to a 2006 study in the British medical journal, The Lancet. Some believe those numbers are high, but it is clear there is an imbalance in the country's population. A 2001 government census revealed that there were 795 women for every 1000 men in Punjab, India's rural heartland. The numbers were no better in the posh neighborhoods of South Delhi. The statistics are even more surprising for new births. In Punjab, we visited small farming villages where there were five girls for every ten boys between the ages of zero and ...