Introduction

This year, on December 10, it will be exactly 60 years since the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration's aim was togive all ‘members of the human family', regardless of sex, race, nationality, and class, legal protection against oppression, discrimination, and poverty. The need for human rights had been demonstrated in the previous decade by the Nazi atrocities against Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and others, ‘barbarous acts' which had ‘outraged the conscience of mankind'. According to the Declaration's Preamble, these acts had made ‘recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights' of every human being an urgent and universal cause. Yet this does not mean that human rights should be endorsed and promoted uncritically. Because the appeal to these rights implies not only legal but also strong moral claims, it always risks silencing other voices, alternative views on how to attain justice.