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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Human rights and communication are deeply connected: human rights need communication to expose violations and to offer platforms for dialogue, while communication needs human rights to provide standards for free speech and confidentiality. Together, they confront the reality of today's social and international order in which justice and understanding often seem unattainable. In this book, Cees J. Hamelink guides the reader through the historical evolution of communication and human rights. In this original framework, he discusses topics such as the right to communicate and freedom of expression, as well as major challenges posed by the environmental crisis and digital technologies. With authority, he passionately argues that 'communicative justice' is the ultimate goal of applying the international human rights regime to different forms of communication. This goal can only be achieved if we manage to move from the prevailing 'thin' liberal conception of human rights to a 'thick' cosmopolitan conception of them. Written by one of the world's leading scholars in this area, this wide-ranging book will be of interest to students of media and communication, human rights scholars, as well as practitioners, activists and anyone interested in applying the notion of justice to the basis of human existence: communication.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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CONTENTS
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Overview of the chapters
1 Human Rights Before Human Rights
Introduction
Before human rights
The ancient Middle East
Africa
Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
Judaism
Islam
Christianity
European Enlightenment
A short history of normative principles for human communication
The principle of respect for human dignity
Truth as a sign of respect for human dignity
The principle of protection of privacy and confidentiality of communication
The confidentiality of communication
The principle of freedom
Conclusion
Notes
2 Human Rights and Communication
Introduction
The history of a remarkable document
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Preamble of the Universal Declaration
The commitment
The implementation
The nature of the Declaration and future action
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Freedom of information
Freedom of thought
The protection of confidentiality of communicative behaviour
Prohibition of discrimination
The presumption of innocence
The prohibition of war propaganda
The prohibition of incitement to genocide
The public exposure of prisoners of war
Conclusion
Notes
3 Communication Rights
Introduction
On the communication rights of women
On the communication rights of children
On the communication rights of indigenous peoples
Cultural rights
Protection of cultural identity
Knowledge
On the communication rights of migrants
The migrant issue
Identity and language
The right to communicate
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
Final declaration of the WSIS
Conclusion
Notes
4 Challenges and Communication Rights
Introduction
Challenges of technology
Challenges of the Internet
The Internet governance challenge
The surveillance challenge
The digital trace
The Cloud
New rights?
Artificial Intelligence
Thinking machines
Conversations with your robot
Human rights in robotic times
A new set of human rights?
The challenge of declining biodiversity
Conclusion
Notes
5 The Trouble with Human Rights
Introduction
Halfway?
Universality
Non-citizens
Freedom of speech
Empowerment
The state-centric paradigm
Epistemic coloniality
Development as an interventionist project
Limited visions on human rights
The first vision
The second vision
Abstract notions and sociopolitical realities
Religion
Economics: Globalization
Rights versus rights
Rights versus significant interests
Rights versus cultural values
Rights versus human inclinations
Inclusion versus the tribal instinct
Compassion versus hostility
Actively listening versus silencing
Cooperative communication versus competitive communication
Change versus fear
The politicization of humanitarian interventions
Enforcement
Unwilling states
Failure
The United Nations
Bureaucracies and human rights
Conclusion
Notes
6 Communicative Justice
Introduction
The building blocks
The concept of communicative justice
The human right to communication
What kind of right?
Social order
Moral imbalance
Respect for dignity and humiliation
Right to freedom and institutionalized censorship
Right to equality and institutionalized discrimination
Right to security and the institutionalization of fear
Imagining alternatives
A caring social order
A convivial social order
An egalitarian social order
A secure social order
A tall order
Transformation and communication
The caring social order and communication practice
The egalitarian social order and communication practice
The convivial social order and communication practice
The secure social order and communication practice
Imagination
Conclusion
Notes
7 The Practice of Communicative Justice
Introduction
Political ethics
The bioethical imperative
The eccentric positionality
The ethics of liberation
Moral intuitionism
Towards an ethics of ‘liberating togetherness’
Communication
Cooperative spirit
Amor mundi
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Begin Reading
References
Index
End User License Agreement
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Dedication
This book is inspired by Hannah Arendt’s belief that the human faculty of action interrupts the course of daily life towards ruin and destruction. As she argues, this faculty is rooted in the fact of natality and thus I dedicate Communication and Human Rights to all the children on this planet.
Communication and Human Rights
Towards Communicative Justice
CEES J. HAMELINK
polity
Copyright © Cees J. Hamelink 2023
The right of Cees J. Hamelink to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2023 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5751-6
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022949656
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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Preface
It will be the dominated and excluded themselves who will be in charge of constructing a new symmetry; it will be a new real, historical, critical, consensual community of communication.
Enrique Dussel
The question that inspired me to write this book is, how should we communicate with each other in order to live and flourish together? At the heart of this question I found the permanent challenge presented by the two types of power that are intrinsic to human life: destructive and constructive power. Power can be conceived of not only in the adversarial and competitive sense but can also, in the spirit of mutuality and solidarity, be seen as a reciprocal process of empowerment (Freire, 1970, 69). Hannah Arendt saw power as ‘the human ability not just to act but to act in concert’ (1968, 44). Power can both destroy and build human togetherness. The abuse of power ruins compassion, whereas the other face of power strengthens it. To be effective, both types of power need communication. The international human rights regime that developed after the Second World War focused primarily on the protection of all against the abuse of power by governments, governmental agencies, judiciary institutions, corporate entities and powerful individuals. Such protective provisions encompass recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, the right to life, liberty and security of the person, the right not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Human rights also defend constructive power and self-empowerment through provisions on the freedom of movement, the right to marry and to found a family, the freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to take part in the government of one’s country. In Media and Conflict (Hamelink, 2011) I focused on the destructive power of communication in processes of escalating evil. In Communication and Peace (Hamelink, 2019) I discussed the constructive power of communication to create ‘sheer human togetherness’ (Hannah Arendt) through ‘deep dialogue’. What remained on my agenda was the question of how to develop a mode of communication that would do justice to the human capacity for compassion. Since compassion is central to human rights, I want to explore whether the international human rights regime can guide us to a practice of communicative justice.
The opportunity offered by Polity Press to explore the significance of the relationship between communication and human rights posed a peculiar challenge because I had already written so much on the topic. Drawing on material I had developed over the past years I would have to extend that writing and thinking into a new perspective on the connection between communication and human rights. I wanted to find out why so little of what was on paper – often in abstract moral language – found its way into concrete communicative behaviour. Why could we not manage to translate the guidance inherent to the principles in the international human rights regime into a human rights-based communication practice?
Accordingly, I first set out to examine the values that had guided communication before human rights were encoded in international law after the Second World War. From there I followed developments until the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in the early twenty-first century and dusted off the debates on the controversial issue of a right to communicate. I began to see what had gone wrong. In most work on communication and human rights we had ignored Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that ‘Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.’ Human rights hold the promise of a fairer and more just future. Human communication holds the promise of mutual understanding as the basis of a world in which we can flourish together. These promises confront the reality of today’s social and international order in which justice and understanding often seem part of a distant future. The war that erupted in Eastern Europe in early 2022 is a depressing reminder of how human rights claims clash with destructive power. Human rights are on a collision course with a world of extractive, exploitative and inegalitarian economics and politics, with colonial practices that continue unhindered and with impunity, and with racism that keeps haunting black lives. Human rights provide protection of free speech. But however crucial this may be, in the prevailing social order and its political and economic interests this protection is symbolic only. It barks but it does not bite. Such protection will be discretional and usually to the advantage of the winners. In societies that exclude and degrade people, human rights are the eternal losers.
In 2022, we live in a world in which the human rights claims remain wishful thinking. They can only be realized if we position them in a social and international order that fundamentally differs from the prevailing inegalitarian, abusive and predatory order. The connection between communication and human rights implies that there should be symmetry in the communicative actions between humans. This can only be realized when we liberate ourselves from exploitative, oppressive human relations and transform them into a convivial and caring order. The transformation to a human rights friendly social order demands that we reflect on the question of whether the societal arrangement that prevails in our life measures up to the standards that human rights set out for living together.
Human rights and human communication are mutually interdependent. Human rights need communication in the form of education and consciousness-raising, reporting and exposing violations and violators – particularly the institutional and structural perpetrators – and offering platforms for dialogue about a new social order. Communication needs human rights as standards for free speech, privacy, cultural participation, protection against incitements to violence, and the promotion of non-humiliating communicative behaviour.
The human rights articulated in the international human rights regime embody a set of moral principles that are seen by people around the globe as protective standards of humaneness and as conditions for living together, but also as political justification for intervention in sovereign countries in attempts to change their current regimes. Their codification in hard or soft law instruments is part of a process of moral evolution in which humans have developed a distinction between acts they consider right and those they label as wrong. Human rights are also the result of a long history of reflection on the question why we should do what is right. Important guidance in this respect was provided by the recognition of the inherent dignity of all people. This principle was recognized in human history as essential to cooperation, which itself is a central feature of human life. Dignity and cooperation are principles that require, for their implementation, institutional support. They need functioning moral institutions. The moral institution that was created in the wake of the Second World War, and that became the guardian of human rights, was the United Nations.
This institutional embedding did not mean that human rights would proceed uncontested however. They are part of a continuing political debate in which adversaries have very different interpretations of what a human rights culture could mean. What one person may see as protection of the dignity of all people, the other may see as undesirable leniency for the evil bastards. Neoliberals will have a perspective on human rights that differs from the human rights expectations that socialists will entertain. Where some will applaud human rights as instruments of self-empowerment, others will reject them as tools of neo-colonialism. Human rights provide currently the only universally available set of standards and institutional practices to protect the dignity of all human beings. It is in the interest of all people that they be respected. The defence of human rights is accepted virtually everywhere. But as Lukes observes, the principle of the defence of human rights ‘is also violated virtually everywhere’ (1993, 20).
The human species does not distinguish itself by a historical record that radiates benignity. For most of its history, the human being occupied himself (and to a more limited extent: herself) with an impressive variety of humiliating acts against fellow human beings. Against this gross indecency of human history more enlightened individuals have committed themselves to the articulation and codification of basic moral standards that are intended to restrain human aggression, arbitrariness and negligence. Most of such moral prescriptions had a limited scope in terms of the agents they addressed and/or the geographies they covered. This changed dramatically in 1945, when in response to the assaults against human dignity during the Second World War, the United Nations began to develop a universal framework of moral standards.
The novelty of this international human rights regime was the articulation of the age-old struggle for the recognition of human dignity into a catalogue of legal rights. Moreover, the political discourse shifted from the ‘rights of man’ to the more comprehensive ‘human rights’. The defence of fundamental rights was no longer the exclusive monopoly of national governments but became an essential part of world politics. More importantly yet, the enjoyment of human rights was no longer restricted to privileged individuals and social elites. The revolutionary core of the process that began in San Francisco in June 1945 was that ‘all people matter’. Basic rights were to apply to everyone and to exclude no one. The new regime that transcended all earlier moral codes, since it incorporated ‘everyone’, claimed universal validity. If at the core of the international human rights system and practice stand the protection and promotion of the dignity of all people, then in connecting human rights with communicative action it needs to be assessed how – and if at all – human communicative behaviour could contribute to this standard.
The human rights–communication axis can best be illustrated by the essence of human communication: its narrative structure. We are ‘storytellers’ and all the flows of ideas, opinions, observations, knowledge, information, data, sounds and images that make up human communication can be brought under the umbrella concept of storytelling. We perceive the world through the stories that we are told. The Greek philosopher Plato held that ‘Those who tell stories rule the world.’ And as Alexa Robertson writes, ‘Through the agency of storytelling, our situation in the political and cultural landscape, and that of everyone else, is set out, maintained, negotiated and adapted to new circumstances’ (Robertson, 2010, 2). Kenneth Boulding helps us to understand this even better by saying, ‘It is what we think the world is like, not what it is really, that determines our behaviour’ (Boulding, 1959, 120). The international political arena is largely dependent upon stories that nations and their representatives tell each other for diplomatic, propagandistic, public relations or war-mongering purposes. Human rights are among those stories. They invite us to imagine a decent, inclusive, convivial and compassionate world. At the same time, around the globe people tell each other stories that fundamentally threaten human dignity. Deceptive, abusive, secretive, ambiguous, hostile and fear-mongering stories abound. The most existential challenge for the ‘speaking animal’ (Plato) may be how to speak in prosocial, cooperative and caring ways. Are the normative standards that promote and protect the freedom and the equality of human communication sufficiently robust to protect the fragility of human dignity against humiliating communicative action and to protect cooperative communicative action against anti-social interventions that are inimical to communicative freedom?
Overview of the chapters
In the first chapter of this book the precursors of today’s communication rights are introduced. In the second chapter the focus is on the source of most classical communication rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The third chapter looks at specific communication rights. The fourth chapter raises questions about the significance of these rights in the context of challenges from developments in information and communication technology and from ecological degradation. The fifth chapter then looks at the different factors that stand in the way of a full-blown implementation of communication rights. This is followed up in the sixth chapter in which the features of a social and international order in which human rights can be fully realized are explored. The concluding chapter discusses a communication practice that is inspired by communicative justice and is based upon an ethics of human togetherness.
* * *
The composing and writing of most books need a supportive community. I am both honoured and grateful that this book, my twentieth academic monograph, received encouragement and constructive critique, and some gentle reminders, from the wonderful editors at Polity Press, Mary Savigar and Stephanie Homer, from the extraordinarily perceptive anonymous peer reviewers, from the angel who watches over me, Gabriela Barrios, from my comrades-in-intellectual-arms, Bob and Claire van Buren, Wichert Claassen, Loek Dullaart, Maria Hagan, Huib Kraaijeveld, Flavio Pasquino and Glenn Sankatsing, and the numerous students who, without realizing it, were crucial contributors to my proposals and explorations. Thanks are also due to the wonderful copy-editing of Jane Fricker, and special mention should also be made of my academic family, the International Association for Media and Communication Research, whose members never failed to provide the inspiration for yet another book!
Cees J. Hamelink, Amsterdam and Mexico City, 25 June 2022
1Human Rights Before Human Rights
Introduction
In the history of human societies normative principles have evolved to enable human beings to live and flourish together. As then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated in a speech in 1997, these principles ‘are deeply rooted in the history of humankind’ (Annan, 1997). There is a historical continuity in the values that human communities have considered essential for their survival. There is also a historical discontinuity, as the human rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) no longer focus solely on members of communities but on everyone. The humanistic universalism of the UDHR shares some of the sentiments of earlier references to the ‘one family of humankind’, but it is a discontinuity from a politics of ordering relationships at home, within the community, to a politics of solidarity with strangers abroad. Therefore, we may find inspirational thoughts, ideals and experiences with regard to basic human values throughout history, but these are not necessarily precursors of human rights in a continuous historical flow. The novelty of the international human rights regime that emerged in the 1940s was the formulation of these values as universal moral standards that were new for all parties in the international community. The emergence of human rights confronted not only non-Western cultures with a historically new situation: they were a new and difficult challenge for all cultures. No culture, religion or moral system had known a set of rights and duties such as those developed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the Declaration, in contrast to most cultural and religious traditions, the recognition of human dignity is formulated as a claim to be enforced by law. Moreover, this claim recognizes that the individual is entitled to rights not only through membership of a community, but in his or her own individual capacity as a human being.
Before human rights
In order to understand contemporary human rights, we must embark on a brief historical journey from the ancient Middle East, to Hellenist and Roman thinkers, and through native people’s civilizations to African and Asian cultures and the philosophers of the European Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation and Enlightenment. The purpose of this journey is to see that the normative standards that became the constituents of twentieth-century communication rights have evolved over a long history of different schools of religious and philosophical thought.
There were human rights declarations way before 1945, such as the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Bill of Rights of the State of Virginia in 1776, the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) of 1789. Characteristic of all these documents was that they laid out basic rights exclusively for some social actors and excluded others. For example, the American Declaration of Independence stated that individuals have inalienable rights, but slaves and women were excluded from these rights. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was a fundamental document of the French Revolution. It provided that the rights of man are universal: valid at all times and in every place, pertaining to human nature itself. The French Declaration excluded women – although there were strong demands for the equal rights of women at the time. Among those voices protesting was Olympe de Gouge, who issued in 1791 the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.1 The French National Assembly of 1792 rejected this declaration and Olympe de Gouge was executed by guillotine. Vincent Oge pleaded for rights for mulattos and their inclusion in the National Assembly at Paris. He too was executed.
The ancient Middle East
King Urukagina reigned between 2380 and 2360 BC in Mesopotamia. He is best known for his efforts to combat corruption and the abuse of power. Although the actual text of his code has not yet been discovered, much of its content could be constructed from references that have been found. As some historians like Jack Finegan (2019, 46) suggest, Urukagina’s code represents probably the first time in recorded history that the standard of freedom was mentioned. That freedom – most likely – did not extend to women as they were heavily punished in cases of polyandry, and from text fragments it may be concluded that female freedom of expression was strictly discouraged. Marilyn French (2008, 100) refers to it as ‘the first written evidence of the degradation of women’.
Africa2
It is contestable whether the term ‘rights’ is applicable to pre-colonial Africa. Human rights scholar Jack Donnelly suggests that ‘traditional African societies had concepts and practices of social justice that simply did not involve human rights’ (in Lakatos, 2022, 192). His position has been criticized by African scholars who argued that using the liberal European notion of human rights as the only standard undermined the universality of human rights (ibid., 192). According to these scholars, pre-colonial African societies ‘considered the individual to be a valuable being that possessed certain basic rights, including the rights to choose their rulers’ (ibid., 192). Lakatos concludes that human rights were present in pre-colonial Africa, but ‘they were certainly not codified or formally articulated in a European manner but rather existed at the concept level’ (ibid., 193). Traditional African societies affirmed rights to life, freedom of expression, association and religious liberty. These rights, however, were contested by slave traders and colonial administrators.
African scholar Claude E. Welch Jr concurs that ‘protection of human rights certainly existed in the pre-colonial period’. He identifies six major sets of rights in traditional society: ‘the right to life, the right to education, the right to freedom of movement, the right to receive justice, the right to work, and the rights to participate in the benefits and decision-making of the community’ (in Traer, 1991, 148). These rights were embedded in the lives of communities that had a strong sense of collective interest and in which procedures of conciliation, arbitration and mediation for the implementation and protection of these rights were crucial. As Yougindra Khushalani (formerly with the UN Centre for Human Rights) explains, ‘traditional African society recognized the rights of individuals and groups and through consensual procedures provided an almost sacred protection of fundamental human rights’ (ibid., 148). In Human Rights in African Cultural Traditions (1983) Senegalese historian Iba Der Thiam argued that the pre-colonial Wolof societies recognized ‘the freedoms of assembly, of association, and of expression as well as the rights to own property and to work, to education and to one culture, to privacy, to collective solidarity, and to go to law’ (ibid., 149).
Asia
It can be argued that throughout the traditional societies of Asia, human rights have been present. The forms within which these rights were articulated may have differed between the different cultural contexts of Asia. As the Asian region is enormously diverse, in terms of religions and languages, the Chinese, the Indian and the Filipino may have found different conceptions of human rights more adequate to their respective societies, but across Asian civilizations human rights were seen as inherent to social life as they protected communal responsibility and solidarity. Sanek Chamarik, Professor of Political Science in Bangkok, has argued that in spite of the different forms human rights may take in Asian versus Western political realities, the aspiration to respect human dignity is universal as it is rooted in human nature (Traer, 1991, 158). When Mahatma Gandhi sought justification for human rights, he turned to the sacred texts of the Bhagavad Gita, which express principles that precede their formulation in modern human rights. In the Hindu tradition rights stem from duties. In the Buddhist tradition, the human person is always in relation to others as equals, which affirms the person’s rights while affirming the rights of others. In Japan, the clearest signs of predecessors to current human rights come from the writings of eighteenth-century thinker Ando Shoeki, who taught about the equality of all men as they were all entitled to the same dignity. He defended a position of egalitarianism based upon his philosophy of nature and human cultivation of the Earth against Confucian notions of social distinctions. As long as men practise the way of direct cultivation, ‘there is no room for domination of man over man’ (Inagaki, 1986, 189).
Traer concludes that in Asia human rights reflect old traditions ‘that affirm human dignity’ (1991, 165). It could be argued, as Joseph Chan does, that the Confucian tradition is compatible with human rights because of its central elements: the ideal of community, the respect for seniority, the preference for harmony rather than litigation, and its respect of freedom of expression, although not on grounds of personal autonomy but rather ‘as a means for society to correct wrong ethical beliefs, to ensure rulers would not indulge in wrongdoing, and to promote valuable arts and cultures in the long run’ (Chan, 1999, 237).
Latin America and the Caribbean3
In the colonial period the notion of human rights first appeared in the region in 1512. In the Law of Burgos, it was provided that ‘the Indians should be treated a free people; one clearly entitled to hold property’ (Lakatos, 2022, 143). Other sixteenth-century laws, issued by the King of Spain, confirmed that ‘natives were to be considered free’ and no free labour or services could be demanded from them (ibid., 143). Throughout colonial history, however, the region has been rich in artistic strategies like storytelling (such as Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias) to relate the abuses of power and indigenous rights.
In the eighteenth century human rights came to be seen as civil and political rights that were ‘equal and individual entitlements’. In the nineteenth century national independence movements emerged that established constitutional regimes that – largely influenced by the US Constitution of 1787 and French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) – aimed at the protection of the rights of citizens. In the same century the Pan-American conferences dealt with issues like slavery, citizenship, extradition and asylum (Lakatos, 2022, 145). In 1938 at the inter-American conference in Lima, Peru, a declaration in defence of human rights was adopted. The conference acclaimed resolutions on the rights of women, on the freedom of association for workers, and in condemnation of racial and religious persecution. At the conference in Mexico City in 1945 the participants proposed the inclusion of a transnational declaration on human rights in the UN Charter.
Judaism
In Jewish teachings human rights are embodied in nature and its laws because of the special place in nature assigned to man (though not women). As Kaplan formulates it, ‘The Jewish teaching is that the rights of man belong to the way of the world as God meant it to be; to deny these rights is to depart from God’s way’ (Kaplan, 1980, 55). Because of the divine image of the human being, ‘Man is to be treated, therefore, with something of the love and respect, not to say awe, which would be evoked by God Himself’ (ibid., 55). The core of Martin Buber’s concept ‘Thou’ (Buber, 1970) is that man should never be treated as a means, ‘I am not to use the other … but to realize him and thereby actualize myself’ (ibid., 56).
The Judaic ideal is of the human being (expressed in the Yiddish tradition as ‘mensch’) ‘having compassion, sympathy, and consideration for the other’ (ibid., 57). In the Old Testament Israel’s prophets stood up against the violation of human dignity by kings such as David and Ahab. In the Jewish tradition, the right to political liberty is celebrated when the exodus from Egypt is memorialized; the Book of Esther confirms the rights of minorities; the Torah demands the protection of the rights of the stranger; Chanukah celebrates the freedom of religion; and Yom Kippur confirms the absolute freedom of conscience (Traer, 1991, 100). The Torah demands that individuals be treated as equals regardless of their position. Here we find support for civil and political rights that limit the interference of government in the lives of equal citizens (ibid., 102). The Talmud recognizes a series of rights, including judicial review, civil disobedience and the right to dissent. Israeli lawyer Haim Cohn wrote in his commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Jewish law addresses individual rights just like the UN Declaration proclaims rights, but does not provide social mechanisms for their enforcement. Jewish law includes the right to life, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to privacy, rights to freedom of thought, speech and conscience and the right to education and participation in cultural life. Cohn also asserts that ‘biblical law stands out among the legal systems of all times as a model of nondiscrimination against strangers’ (ibid., 105).
Islam
In a 1980 seminar of the International Commission of Jurists on Human Rights in Islam, the participants agreed that ‘Islam was the first to recognize human rights and almost fourteen centuries ago set up safeguards for personal rights’ (1982, 9). Crucial in Islamic thought is the belief in human dignity. The value of the human person is recognized in the Quran 5:32, ‘whoso slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, shall be as if he slain mankind altogether’. This means that the value of the human person is absolute because the individual represents humanity as a whole. The Quran places ‘the unconditional duty to save human life above all else; for to save one is to save all’ (Sinaceur, 1986, 215).
In his inaugural address in 1980 the Emir of Kuwait noted ‘the Prophet and his followers took refuge in Medina and set up a community where the exercise of human rights, previously a mere aspiration and hope, became a reality’ (Traer, 1991, 112). The Emir also asserted that ‘to preserve the dignity of man, it is necessary that society guarantees him food, drink, lodging, clothing, education and employment as well as his right to express his opinion, particularly in the political life of his country and to be assured of his own security and that of his kin’ (ibid., 113). The most basic value in Islam is ‘justice in order to preserve human dignity accorded to man by God’ (ibid., 113). Whatever later positions there are in Islamic practice with regard to discrimination on grounds of religious beliefs, the basic statement in the Quran is that there shall be no compulsion in religion. However, as Traer writes, ‘it must also be granted that the practice within Islamic cultures has often denied freedom of religion and conscience’ (ibid., 118).
Christianity
In the history of the Christian churches (Roman Catholic and Protestant) one finds many references to principles that in the twentieth century would become hallmarks of the international human rights regime. An example is the notion of human dignity, which figures prominently in the early collection of prayers in the Christmas Oration that begins, ‘God, who has wondrously created the dignity of human existence …’. The defence of rights as communal values goes back to the apostle Paul, who saw individual rights as subordinate to the welfare of the community. Building blocks for human rights are found in the stories about Jesus and his commitment to the forgotten people in the world, thus reaffirming their worth and dignity. Also the early church fathers used a human rights idiom ‘avant la lettre’ when it was claimed, as did Basil of Caesarea in the fourth century, that the wealth of the rich in fact belonged to the poor. Or when Gregory of Nyssa criticized slavery, stating, ‘Who can buy a man, who can sell him, when he is made in the likeness of God?’
In the Middle Ages voices like those of the theologian Doctor Venerandus Godfrey of Fontaines (1250–1306 or 1309) claimed that if a beggar stole a loaf of bread from his rich neighbour, he couldn’t be charged for theft since he had a natural right to that bread in order to survive. As everyone is bound by the law of nature to sustain their life, ‘therefore also by the law of nature each has dominion and a certain right in the common exterior goods of this world which right cannot be renounced’ (De Wulf, 1904, 18). In the so-called Dark Middle Ages Godfrey also defended the right of the poor to the necessities of life, the right of self-preservation, rights to property, the right to a fair trial and the right of self-defence. In the sixteenth century European Reformation thinkers developed the idea of individual freedom. However, what freedom concretely referred to remains largely unclear and we need to ask what its significance might have been in the historical context of societal environments that were not egalitarian and very hierarchical and in which freedom and dignity were only secured for a privileged few.
European Enlightenment
It is one of the inspirational legacies of the Enlightenment thinkers that the human being has an inherent dignity. This legacy inspired their successors to link this quality of being human to inviolable human rights. The notion of respect for the dignity of persons as the very essence of morality and the foundation of all other moral duties and obligations owes much to the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that respect for persons, including oneself as a person, should be at the very centre of moral theory. He insisted that persons are ends in themselves with an absolute dignity that must always be respected. In his Metaphysics of Morals (1785/1957), Kant developed the implications of his view of persons as ends in themselves. In his doctrine of justice he argued that persons, by virtue of their rational nature, are bearers of fundamental rights, including the innate right to freedom, which must be respected by other persons and by social institutions. This duty of respect owed to others requires that we show no contempt for them, do not treat them arrogantly, do not defame them by publicly exposing their faults, ridicule or mock them.
Central to Kant’s moral philosophy is the respect for human autonomous agency. The capacity of others to act in autonomous ways should not be impaired and people should not be coerced or deceived. In Kant’s thinking we respect the dignity of one another when we hold each other mutually accountable as free and rational agents. Respect for human dignity became a leading normative principle in humanistic liberalism. However, it often applied only to human beings like ‘us’. This philosopher of dignity did not think that black and native people were deserving of dignity. Therefore the Kantian conception of human dignity would have to be re-thought in non-racist terms. Moreover, in recent years it has been stressed in moral philosophy that the respect that was reserved for the human being as superior to other animals should also be awarded to other sentient beings and to nature. Here, however, I would like to be careful about connecting names of particular individuals to debates on important social issues. What they proposed was most likely already being debated in coffee houses, salons and taverns among educated people. We should also be aware of the suggestion that in its civilizational arrogance Europe suggested it had invented the Enlightenment ideals. However, they were more likely borrowed from experiences with indigenous cultures and their ways of arranging societies.
The indigenous societies that the sixteenth-century European invaders encountered ‘were the product of centuries of political conflict and self-conscious debate … societies in which the ability to engage in self-conscious political debate was itself considered one of the biggest human values’ (Graeber and Wengrow, 2021, 452). The European colonizers found social relations that were not defined in terms of equality or inequality. They encountered social, political and scientific ideas that were totally new to them and that ultimately resulted in what we now know as the Enlightenment. Graeber and Wengrow (2021) write that indigenous communities in the Americas had a low opinion of their invaders. The Mi’kmaq in seventeenth-century Nova Scotia considered themselves better than their French colonizers, who were described as quarrelling, greedy, lacking in generosity and in freedom. The seventeenth-century indigenous critique exposed the social pathology of societal arrangements in Europe. ‘Americans were equal insofar as they were equally free to obey or disobey orders as they saw fit’ (ibid., 45). The logical consequence of not allowing compulsion was that social cohesion had to be created ‘through reasoned debate, persuasive arguments and the establishment of social consensus’ (ibid., 45).
A short history of normative principles for human communication
Since human life is impossible without communication, over the course of the history of moral ideas normative principles for human communicative behaviour were developed also. Before twentieth-century human rights law, essential normative principles for communicative behaviour were: respect for human dignity (which includes respect for the truth and respect for privacy), protection of confidentiality in communication, and freedom (which includes freedom of thought and free speech). In order to probe the relationship between human rights and human communication, I want to look at these three principles in the development of standards for human communicative behaviour.
The principle of respect for human dignity4
Among the first normative rules for communicative behaviour were the instructions that Vizier Ptahhotep in the fifth Egyptian Dynasty (3580–3536 BC) gave to his wise men to convey to their sons. Several of these rules have normative implications for how people should speak to each other. The Vizier proposed that a general norm for human speech was that it should be fair. This means people should refrain from speaking in an unpleasant way, they should not use vile words, should be humble in speaking and listening to one another, and not be angry when a debater does not agree with them. They should beware of creating enmity through their words and perverting the truth. They should not engage in gossip or exaggerated speech, they should realize that silence is more profitable than an abundance of speech and they should speak as true friends.
As early as the Bronze Age (the third millennium BC), the rulers that were intent on civilizations living together and not destroying each other engaged in cultural diplomacy. Their emissaries who conveyed messages and brought learning back were instructed by their kings that their communicative behaviour should be guided by modest and respectful speech. Among the predecessors to respectful speech are also notions found among indigenous communities from the times before the encounter with the Europeans.
The communication ethics of the Shuswap community5 (probably numbering more than 15,000 in eighteenth-century British Columbia, Canada) mandated that one spoke to everyone, especially elders, with great respect (Cooper, 1998, 79). Shuswap communication rules included: do not interrupt other people’s dialogue, be careful and respectful with words, welcome silence, respect other people’s privacy (meaning particularly not interrupting silence with endless chatter or collective babble) and exercise extreme care in communicating with the white man as he may use it against you, censor it, sell it or steal it from you (ibid., 132). The children of the Ubangi of the Congo River basin were taught never to shout without explanation. They were taught ‘a communication ethic of compassion and respect’ (ibid., 80). In native communication, respect for one’s listener or audience, for the speaker or artist, or for one’s partner in dialogue is an essential norm (ibid., 187). In The Sacred Tree Lane et al. (1984/2020) present the teachings that are universal to all native tribes, such as ‘not walking between conversing partners, … not interrupting, speaking softly, genuinely listening … honoring the religions of others, and never speak unkindly of others’ (ibid., 74). As respect would be the first value central to a communication code for the natives, ‘a primary means for such respect to be communicated is through silence, stillness, and inner listening’ (Cooper, 1998, 94). Hesitancy to immediately answer a question was considered a sign of respect (ibid., 94). The communication ethics of the Navajo Indians advised to ‘communicate with respect for the other individual’. Even a five-year-old’s decision is worthy of respectful consideration. One should ‘communicate so as to cooperate with all nature, maintain even-tempered emotions, aim to bring about unanimous decisions, communicate to all as if they were your relatives, be polite and open, when in doubt remain silent’ (ibid., 150).
Truth as a sign of respect for human dignity
Speaking the truth is an ancient form of civilized behaviour. Truth-telling is a universal principle for all native peoples. Among the Shuswap people, the rule was ‘Always tell the truth’. There were evidently double standards: ‘tribe members might elect to speak truthfully to their families and friends but less openly to members of other bands…. Telling the truth to the enemy might lead to the capture or massacre of his family’ (Cooper, 1998, 136). Frequently the following adage was followed: ‘First we learned to lie from the white man. Then we learned to lie to the white man.’ For the Navajo tribe lying was the white man’s form of communication (ibid., 155). Many creation stories of native peoples talk about the times before the first lie. For natives, lying might mean insanity – ‘one who did not speak truth surely must not know what it is and therefore must have lost touch with reality’ (ibid., 104). Also for the ancient Egyptians in the Pharaonic laws truth was essential and lying was forbidden. In the world religions, truth is a basic understanding.
