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What is a human rights culture?

A human rights culture is a "lived awareness" of human rights principles among people throughout the world. By "lived awareness" I mean that the principles of such documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not known merely cognitively, that is, in the "head," but also on the feeling level, the "lived" level of the heart. It is not good enough for society to only "know," for example, that health care, shelter, and security in old age, for example, are human rights, it is important for a society to act upon this knowledge in ways that can guarantee these rights for every person, everywhere.Issues, of course, are complicated. Every right does have a corresponding duty, according to the Universal Declaration, such that it can easily be said that what we are talking about is a culture of human duties. Thus, the right to health care requires the duty for each of us to keep healthy, eat correct foods or exercise, for instance. Yet, we must remember that it is the duty of government to create a "social and international order" as stated also in the Universal Declaration so that food is nutritious, accessible, culturally relevant at an affordable cost and that our towns and cities have ample enough opportunities for us to develop not only in body, but, mind and spirit as well.Finally, as we shall see, such a culture will necessitate a "lived awareness" of the interdependency and indivisibility of rights. In other words, roughly, as organs of the human body function interdependently, so, too, do human rights. In brief, the right to health care, for example, is dependent upon such rights as education (our health personnel must be educated); employment (they must receive a meaningful wage); and rest and leisure (they must have ample time to rest).What further complicates matters is also what has become known as "cultural relativism." Thus, some cultures might believe that it is appropriate for a couple to be betrothed, rather than "choosing" each other, choice of spouse considered a human right according to the Universal Declaration. While we may also have a "knee jerk" response to condemn such cultures that engage in practices like female genital mutilation (FGM), we must recall the ancient injunction to examine the log in one's eye before plucking it from another's. Thus, some cultures condemning practices such as that may be rampant with deaths from anorexia nervosa or they may be stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, threatening the basic human right to peace. Creating a human rights culture, then, is a kind of paradox. On the one hand, we have the standards set out in major human rights documents drafted by the United Nations and to some extent regional organizations like the African Union, the Organization of American States, and the European Union. On the other hand, we must recognize, like Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairperson of the Drafting Committee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, who said of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that it was a "good document... not a perfect one," and that human rights discussions cannot take place in philosophic-historical vacuum. Perhaps, it is our questioning together, acknowledging the importance of incorporating the voices of the oppressed in the policy debates, or what the philosopher Merleau Ponty has called the "happiness of reflecting together,” that may help us bring about such a culture where we treat one another with decency and human dignity.