The Philosophy of Human Rights Protection
Essay of no more than 5000 words on the following subject.
‘Human rights do not really resolve the tension between competing interests and various visions of how the world should be; rather, human rights ideas provide the vocabulary for arguing about which interests should prevail and how best to achieve the ends we have chosen.’ (Andrew Clapham,2007).
Discuss this view of the concept of human rights and it’s role in the legal, moral and political world. What do you understand by the reference to "competing interests" and "various visions of how the world should be", and how may these interests and visions be relevant to the process of rights protection? Does the view that human rights ideas provide a vocabulary for argument suggest a limited role for the enterprise of achieving moral and political goals through such a legal process?