A few final thoughts

Abstract

Without a doubt, the 20th century was the age of modernity. An almost invincible belief in technological as well as social engineering and the "constructibility" of society prevailed. Out of this has come the "developmental" perspective on protecting people's basic entitlements. In the process, the deepening of daily struggles for livelihood through economic, social and cultural rights has been lost. In fact, post-modernity, with its mistrust of principles as such, implies a further defeat: no objective standards of legitimacy are recognized any longer, and human rights are buried in cultural relativism. In this impasse we have suggested that the way out of this sterile debate between legal universalism and cultural relativism is an intercultural approach which acknowledges the diverse roots of human rights in different social, cultural and religious contexts while linking local practices and languages of human dignity and rights to international standards and mechanisms for human rights implementation. Our focus has not been on problem-solving and legal or socio-economic engineering but on people faced with the violation of their basic human dignity, how they themselves experience their struggle for livelihood and how they respond to humiliation. Coming closer to people in their unmet needs is perhaps the most promising perspective for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights in the 21st century.