The UDHR’s would-be critics objected to its drafting, not its universality

Evidence

Obiora Chinedu Okafor has suggested that ‘the tension between the universality and relativity of human rights (in almost all its shades) was present at Bandung, however subtly.’ It is nonetheless important to note that, while delegates argued over the legitimacy of the UDHR’s claim to be a ‘common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations’, those who resisted endorsing it largely avoided the language of cultural relativism later made prominent in the so-called ‘Asian-Values Debate’. Instead, they followed the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, who pointed out that his country (like many others) had been excluded from the drafting of this ‘universal’ declaration and from the UN (China’s UN seat having been given to Taiwan in the wake of China’s 1949 Communist Revolution). — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 277

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s human-rights discourse work: distinguishes the later ‘Asian Values’ cultural-relativism framing from the earlier, more politically potent exclusion-from-drafting critique. — connects to: The UDHR’s drafting was a pluralist debate, not a Western imposition. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 99; Soviet delegates at the UDHR drafts rejected civilisational hierarchy language as obsolete — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 77; Neoliberal theorists opposed the UDHR as a false bureaucratic universalism (+2 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘who got to draft the universal’ — how procedural exclusion, not cultural difference, was the stronger postcolonial challenge to the UDHR, and how that challenge was later reframed as cultural relativism.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal theorists opposed the UDHR as a false bureaucratic universalism #contradicts (0.85)
• 1940s drafters of the UDHR saw social rights as a working-class victory #qualifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 149
• The UDHR’s flexible social rights language proved compatible with neoliberal poverty management #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 64