Can human rights survive the decline of global Western hegemony? Rights supporters will no doubt find the question uncomfortable, if not heretical, for it contravenes the very tenets on which the international human rights enterprise has long rested: its claim to universality, its anchoring in impersonal international norms, and its demonstrated record of trying to hold accountable both non-Western and Western governments for their rights violations. Not only that, but the argument that human rights are in essence a Western imposition has long been rights-abusing governments’ weapon of choice to reject international scrutiny and hound rights activists at home. 

Human Rights on the Edge