The concept of human rights : a qualitative content analysis of the declarations of UN, ASEAN and AU

Sammanfattning: This thesis will examine and evaluate how post-colonial and universal key concepts reflects on The Universal Declaration of Human rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights in order to provide diverse understandings of the concept of rights. The purpose of the study is to examine and evaluate how some of the key concepts of post-colonialism and universalism are reflected in these three declarations. The research questions is “How do post-colonial and universal key concepts reflect on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights?”. Through a qualitative content analysis on these three declaration, the study will employ the ideal type method to outline the ideal types of post-colonialism and universalism and then apply the three declarations on these the ideal and key concepts. According to my findings, some key concepts of post-colonialism and universalism are explicitly and implicitly reflected in the declarations, some more heavily than others. While some of the concepts are shared across all three declarations, they differ in others. The African charter and ASEAN declaration tend to be more post-colonial in its approach while the Universal declaration of human rights takes a more universalistic stance. Human rights play a significant geopolitical role. In its name, it has acted as a uniting force, not least with the Universal declaration of human rights. However, ironically, it has also served as justification for war, invasions and other crimes against humanity. As much as this thesis is about human rights, it is also about colonialism, moral doctrine, cultures and the question about who to define these concepts. I hope that this thesis gives the reader a better understanding of human rights in a more pluralistic sense. I do also hope that this can help us increase our tolerance towards each other as humans and bring us closer to a more consensus in how we understand rights.