The answer, of course, is that the notion of human rights builds on the idea of a shared humanity. These rights are not derived from citizenship of any country, or membership of any nation, but taken as entitlements of every human being. The concept of universal human rights is, in this sense, a uniting idea. Yet the subject of human rights has ended up being a veritable battleground of political debates and ethical disputes, particularly in their application to non-Western societies. It is often asserted that Western countries recognize many human rights, related for example to political liberty, that have no great appeal in Asian countries.
Many people see a big divide here.
The temptation to think in these regional and cultural terms is extremely strong in the contemporary world. The claim is that in the system of so- called Asian values, for example in the Confucian system, there is greater emphasis on order and discipline, and less on rights and freedoms. Many Asian spokesmen have gone on to argue that the call for universal acceptance of human rights reflects the imposition of Western values on other cultures. For example, the censorship of the press may be more acceptable, it is argued, in Asian society because of its greater emphasis on discipline and order. This position was powerfully articulated by a number of governmental spokesmen from Asia at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993.