East versus West : a study on the 'Asian values' debate in official human rights language in Vietnam

Sammanfattning: Many nation states in Southeast Asia have ratified human rights conventions without abiding by their stipulations. Among factors such as poverty and political disinclination something which has widely been called 'Asian values' is seen by some as a reason for why certain human rights laid out in UN conventions are not adhered to. The crux of the conflict is the claim that particular Asian values run contrary to those embedded in the conventions which can be seen as specifically Western. This involves a challenge to the idea of the universality of human rights. In this essay, I examine this debate by looking at the specific example of Vietnam. With a particularist perspective, I first explore what might be seen to constitute traditional Vietnamese values. I then investigate how the debate on Asian values is expressed in official Vietnamese discussions on human rights. For further depth, I examine a 2002 state report from Vietnam to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. To a certain extent, the official Vietnamese human rights discourse demonstrates adherence to claims that can be attributed to the 'Asian view' in this debate; in particular the claims that social and economic rights take precedence over civil and political rights, and that the collective takes precedence over the individual.