Human rights have had serious critics from many directions. Understanding their strongest arguments, and the best replies, is part of understanding human rights themselves.

Cultural relativism

In 1947, while the UDHR was being drafted, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association sent the UN Commission a statement. Drawing on anthropologists' study of many societies, it argued that values and standards grow out of each culture, that there is no neutral way to rank cultures, and that a declaration based on the values of one region (Western Europe and America) could become a tool for imposing them on others, as colonialism had done. This is the position of cultural relativism. Similar concerns were raised in the 1990s by several Asian governments, who argued that rights should be applied with regard to local history and values.

Replies: defenders note that the UDHR was drafted by people from many traditions, and that people in every culture resist torture, arbitrary arrest and hunger. They point out that “culture” is often defined by those in power, and that dissenters within a culture should not be silenced in its name. In 1993, the UN's Vienna World Conference reaffirmed that all human rights are universal and interrelated, while recognizing that national and regional differences must be kept in mind. In 1999 the American Anthropological Association itself adopted a statement supporting human rights.

Bentham: “nonsense upon stilts”

The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, founder of utilitarianism, attacked the French Declaration of 1789. For Bentham, real rights come only from real laws backed by a government. Rights said to exist without any law are imaginary. He wrote: “Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.” He also worried that absolute rights language encourages people to resist any law they dislike.

Reply: defenders answer that moral rights can exist before legal ones, and indeed must, or there would be no basis to criticize unjust laws such as those permitting slavery. Today, much of what Bentham demanded has happened: human rights are now written into real laws and treaties.

The Marxist critique

In “On the Jewish Question” (written in 1843, published in 1844), Karl Marx argued that the rights of man in the French and American declarations were the rights of the isolated, self-interested individual, separated from community. The right to property, he said, is the right to enjoy one's possessions without regard to others. Formal rights could leave untouched the economic power that shapes real lives. Political emancipation was not yet human emancipation.

Reply: defenders accept part of this, which is why economic and social rights were included in the UDHR. They add that societies that dismissed civil rights as merely “bourgeois” often became the worst abusers of them.

Sovereignty

The principle of state sovereignty holds that each state governs its own territory without outside interference; the UN Charter itself protects matters within a state's domestic jurisdiction. Critics argue that human rights pressure can be selective, used against rivals while allies are excused, and can even justify military intervention. Defenders reply that how a state treats its people is a matter of shared concern, and that in 2005 world leaders accepted a Responsibility to Protect populations from genocide and mass atrocities.

Rights inflation

A last criticism is that too many things have been called rights. Some philosophers in the 1960s argued that rights such as “periodic holidays with pay” (UDHR Article 24) cannot be universal human rights, since many countries cannot provide them. If everything is a right, the word loses its force. Defenders answer that the remedy is to distinguish core rights from their fuller realization, not to drop social rights altogether.

Worked example: a hard case between universalism and culture

Imagine a rural community where custom says daughters inherit less land than sons. A young woman asks a national court to apply the constitution's equality guarantee and give her an equal share. Village elders object that their inheritance customs are part of a whole way of life, tied to marriage, family duties and land that must stay with the clan.

A relativist concern: outsiders, including national judges in a distant capital, may not understand how the system fits together. Changing one rule could disrupt others: perhaps sons carry duties to support elderly parents that daughters do not. Imposing a rule from outside may also breed resentment and make change less likely to last.

A universalist reply: the young woman is herself a member of this culture, and she is the one asking for change. Treating “the culture” as speaking only through its elders silences her. The right to equality exists precisely to protect individuals when their communities treat them unequally.

A middle path many human rights workers favor: work with the community, not against it. Hear the elders' reasons, look for ways the underlying duties can be shared fairly, and support local voices pressing for change. Rights are universal, but how they take root in a particular place often depends on persuasion and local leadership, not only court orders.