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Rights Of Culture, Rights Of Conscience, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this contribution I take up a particularly troubling issue in the theory of human rights. It is the issue of intervention to defend or uphold — or re-assert and re-establish — human rights. The issue is a troubling one because intervention in the affairs of others is always something we should be wary of, not least because history is full of unhappy episodes of intervention, from the Spanish in the Americas to the Chinese in Tibet. Indeed, so difficult and complex are the issues raised that one might be tempted in a discussion of human rights simply to separate …