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Cultural Relativist And Feminist Analysis

1314 Words6 Pages
The article, “Cultural Relativist and Feminist Critiques of International Human Rights – Friends or Foes?” by Oonagh Reitman seeks to address how cultural relativist and feminist sees the existence of the international human rights, specifically women’s human rights. The research problem being addressed is the similarities between these two critiques of international human rights and how these two critiques have come to defy one another when it comes to the term of women’s international human rights. The author has made it clear that this is a debatable issue. The cultural relativist argued on the universality of human rights, which contradicts with the statement that human rights are those held simply by virtue of being human and whose substance, form and interpretation are not subject to variations in culture (Donnelly 1989: 109-110). Cultural relativist uphold that culture is the principle source of any rights or rules, they argued that the existence of women’s human rights cannot be universally applied. As relativist reservations at the international forum that dominantly driven by religious objection which mostly based on Islam and Catholic values, they have also seen human rights as a specific ideology of western imperialism. The author believes that the presence of cultural relativist has become the obstacle of the protection and implementation of the international women’s human rights. Feminist, on the other hand, fully support the agendas of, in this case the
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