Review Article Jack Donnelly’s Universal Human Rights Theory and Practice

Universal human rights is a problematic concept to define and even more difficult to apply. Proliferated by the ongoing Iraqi prison abuse scandal, it remains one of the most contentious debates in international relations discourse. Some scholars have even gone so far as to argue that by negating the diversity amongst global cultures and by promoting a monolithic set of social values, the mere notion of universal human rights reinforces neocolonialist arguments by obliquely signifying Western hegemony over the developing world.