Social/Cultural Imperialism and International Human Rights

I'm taking a class right now on theories and efforts surrounding international human rights. The premise is, essentially, that there are certain privileges/immunities/rights that inhere from the human condition, i.e. you have basic rights by virtue of just existing. This is not to say, of course, that you cannot somehow forfeit these rights necessarily, but the premise is that at the outset, you do have these rights. I think this is a general principle that all people can agree on, though to different extents. A major obstacle to the implementation of such human rights is the lack of consensus among civilized countries and the lack of any unifying force to impel said nations to enact parallel schemes within their own countries to guarantee these rights.

Enter the United Nations. Up until its creation, the lack of uniformity and dialogue between nations had left international human rights as a mere aspiration, nothing more than a nice idea. Now there exists an entity with the power to influence the actions of many nations in a single act. Advances in human rights came as the U.N. enacted treaties addressing issues like genocide, war crimes, torture, and crimes against humanity. The countries that signed these treaties were then bound to enact laws pursuant to these treaties.

The U.N. also enacted a wide variety of what might be termed "social" conventions and treaties, such as the Convention to Eradicate Racism and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Although the U.S., notably, has not ratified CEDAW and is therefore immune to its conditions, the basic provisions in these conventions mirrors a distinctly western point of view with which, in my opinion, most Americans would fall in line. For example, we should strive to eliminate racism, treat women fairly, and such. In Western nations, these ideals have often been mirrored in criminal/civil law. I term these notions as "liberal" in the sense that they have brought about social change or evolution.

But what about nations that don't adhere to the Western tradition? What about cultures whose norms and values clash with these ideas? Liberals will often profess to respect and promote diversity and personal identity in all its forms, but treaties and conventions like these make me wonder if that's really the case.

Take, for example, the practice of female mutilation among some African cultures. For a variety of cultural/religious reasons, the ritual of removing or disfiguring certain parts of the female anatomy is seen as standard and accepted practice. Of course we in the Western world find this abhorrent. But to those communities that practice it, there are real spiritual, social, and cultural reasons for retaining the practice. This presents a problem: on the one hand, a supporter of women's rights would say that this is a clear violation of women's rights under CEDAW, assuming the country in question had ratified the treaty. Yet, other provisions of international human rights documents (such as the ICCPR) clearly state that all individuals and groups have an inherent right to self-determination, meaning that they are mostly free to determine how they will live within their subsets of society. For an outsider to come in and say "that's an awful practice, you can't do that!" seems to sit in direct contravention to such an idea. The same issue presents itself when considering the mandate in Muslim cultures that women cover themselves in specific ways, i.e. headscarves or bhurkas. Do we as Westerners have the right to tell those cultures what they can or cannot do via international human rights treaties? Or do we respect the beliefs and norms of cultures that are not our own? What about child labor? Economic policies?

I'm afraid that the same ideology that condemns cultural imperialism actually pursues such a course when it manifests itself in international rights documents. It's one thing to operate for change within your own society. It's entirely different for an outside body to tell a nation/group what it may or may not condone in the realm of social, economic, or cultural policies. People who support such measures may argue that we should, for example, fight for equality of race everywhere because it's just the right thing to do. This may be true in an objective sense--in other words, it may be an intrinsic, universal truth that nobody should be judged on the basis of his race or religion. I would certainly agree with that idea personally.

However, in order to justify changing other cultures to fit another's perceptions of right and wrong, two things must happen. First, the proponents must somehow be qualified to dictate or interpret universal truths. In other words, you've got to be the "know-all-end all" of truth and reason. You'd have to be more than merely human, in other words. You'd have to be God. In assailing to change another's culture or practice without being a member of the same, we essentially engage in paternalism, implying that we know what's good for someone else better than they do. This hardly sounds tenable to me if we acknowledge the inherent equality of mankind. Second, you have to abandon the relativist rationale that underlies much of "rights" talk in favor of an objective framework. You can't, in other words, say on the one hand, "Let them be free to act as they please" and on the other hand say "Thou shalt do X because it is the right thing to do." Within a particular group, that can certainly be done--cultures and religions impose all kinds of rules and regulations on their own, and gain their authority from the voluntary assent of the governed. But you can't say the same for intercultural or international situations. Surely we would not tolerate Iran, for example, attempting to enforce its own interpretation of the role of women on our culture. Yet western civilization attempts to do this very same thing to other cultures via mechanisms such as U.N. human rights treaties.

Are we in the Western world justified in defining norms of behavior for other countries and cultures? If so, how? And if not, how can one justify the U.N.'s general adherence to a Western-oriented conception of human rights?