[governance] Rights in IG research

[Avri Doria]

<probably an irrelevant aside>

On 18 Aug 2008, at 13:55, Milton L Mueller wrote:

> Parminder and I had a long debate about
> the "right to development," which I consider a paradigmatic instance  
> of
> the manufacture of an incoherent right. Not possible to recap that
> debate here, and I know I am challenging conventional sentiment  
> among CS
> types, but I'm not backing down because i think rights-inflation and
> sloppy thinking about what constitutes basic human rights is really
> damaging to the realization of real human rights.


ever since that discussion (where i sort of sided with Parminder) i  
have been trying to work my way through the issue, though, i must  
confess,  from a philosophical point of view.

being somewhat slow, i have not gotten very far, but have gotten to a  
point  where i think that we fall into a problem between the notion of  
basic human rights and those that are derivative from other the basic  
human rights.

i am not sure which are which yet, at least not from a strict  
philosophical analysis, but from a pragmatic/political point of view  
anything defined in UDHR can be called basic as it constitutes agreed  
language that the signatories can be held to (of course taking into  
account the get out of rights trump clause - 29).

this does not mean that those that are not in UDHR are not as  
important, more immediately accessible or perhaps the way to achieving  
the basic rights, but they are not basic indisputable rights.


a.


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