Aaron Rhodes

No one concerned about the erosion of freedom in the world can afford to be complacent about the state of international human rights, or simply blame it on bad actors. The UN’s bureaucratic human rights mechanisms increasingly fail to protect individual human rights, yet offer cover to human rights abusers.

China needs to solve the Hong Kong problem, and time is running out before the October 1 National Day celebration,…

In this episode of the Foreign Policy ProvCast, Aaron Rhodes speaks on his article about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in the Winter 2019 issue of Providence’s print edition. He also addresses the differences between human rights and political questions, the human rights situation in various countries, how China violates these rights with its reeducation camps for Uighur Muslims, why he’s pessimistic about the future, and what the global community can do to reform and promote human rights.

Truths about human rights have, indeed, been discovered in the West, but are not the property of the West and do not apply only in the West. But Trump implied that these were simply local, particular, and culturally-specific “values.”

Buzz has begun about a possible U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council. It is no wonder; the Human Rights Council is largely a sham.

At Davos on January 17, President Xi Jinping spoke of China’s determination to play a responsible role to “secure peace and reduce poverty.” Xi was applauded. Yet China abuses the fundamental human rights of its people, undermines international human rights institutions, and indeed subverts the very concept of individual human rights.

The over-emphasis on human rights multilateralism, despite its paltry results (not to mention the expanding range of human rights claims), has undermined faith in those standards and, indeed, faith in the idea of human rights itself.