This study aims to uncover and analyze the cognitive–semantic differences between the Arabic term alami ‘universal’ and the English term universal in the language of the core international human rights treaties issued by the United Nations in New York and Geneva (2014) in their official languages, including Arabic and English. It seeks to clarify the underlying conceptual and mental relationships that shape these differences, and to identify the mechanisms that generate cognitive–semantic divergence between the two languages, given the inevitability of conceptual and semantic variation across texts belonging to distinct linguistic systems shaped by different cultural and spatiotemporal environments. The research adopts a contrastive methodology applied to the language of the basic international human rights treaties in both Arabic and English, within an interdisciplinary framework grounded in contemporary cognitive linguistics and its tools for addressing semantic issues. The findings reveal a significant cognitive–semantic disparity and a conceptual gap between ‘alami and universal at the levels of basic conceptual structure, semantic association, and contextual usage.