Intersectional Dialogue – A Cosmopolitical Dialogue of Ethics
Rebecca Adami
Stockholm University
Abstract
The article is based on a critical cosmopolitan outlook on dialogue as not aimed at reaching consensus, but
rather keeping dialogue of difference open, with the ability to reach common understanding of human rights on
conflicting grounds. Intersectional dialogue is used as a concept that opens up possibilities to study, in a
pragmatic sense, the ‘cosmopolitan space’ in which different axes of power met in the historical drafting of
human rights. By enacting analysis of United Nations (UN) documents from 1948 on the process of drafting the
Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) the conceptualization of intersectional dialogue is put to
work. The utopian foundation for deliberative democracy as dialogue in the absence of power and interest does
not acknowledge the power bound context in which the human rights were negotiated; where conflicting and
sometimes agonistic narratives on the ideological foundation of human rights were debated on an international
arena in 1946-48.
Introduction
There are some main challenges faced in a plural world, of conflict and intersection of power,
which are not dealt with properly in a traditional view of dialogue as reaching consensus on
rational arguments. Inter-cultural dialogue has been one response to cross-cultural conflicts –
although the paper argues that it can be limiting to discuss culture in a static notion,
disregarding the intersection of power and social categories people are moving between in
interaction with others (Adami & Schumann forthcoming). Instead, the paper introduces a
new methodological concept, useful for analyzing dialogue in diverse cosmopolitan spaces,
which will be elaborated further on in the paper. This cosmopolitan vision and the elusive
goal of democratic place-making can be framed in the language of thick and thin as used by
Michael Walzer (1994) where ethics and morals are thought of in one’s local context (thick
with cultural values that form social boundaries for inclusion) and in more cosmopolitan
contexts where the moral considerations reach beyond our close relations and social ties
(where thin is associated with universalism, of including everyone on the basis that what
grants entry is based on a rather thin set of common values or ideas). The question of power
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 45
ISSN: 1837-5391; http://utsescholarship.lib.uts.edu.au/epress/journals/index.php/mcs
CCS Journal is published under the auspices of UTSePress, Sydney, Australia
and its relation with space is fundamental in considering and recognizing spaces where ethics
and rights are negotiated.
Intersectional dialogue acknowledges that people in different power positions intersect in
changing relational contexts. Intersectional dialogue hence refers to the way in which power
intersects when individuals position themselves in dialogue by drawing on different cultural
narratives (Adami 2012). The importance of keeping dialogue open is reached in this sense
by putting conflict and agonism at the heart of political dialogue. The paper builds this
conception of intersectional dialogue on three main aspects that a traditional view of dialogue
fails to acknowledge, namely: 1) how power and interest intersect to frame what is said and
by whom 2) how agreement can be agreeing to disagree, keeping conflict at the center of
dialogue (Mouffe, 2005; Todd, 2010) and 3) how competing ‘truth claims’ can reach
universal common ground if dissent about interpretation is respected (White, n.d.).
Dialogue as an Ethical Challenge for Cosmopolitanism – Facing Pluralism
In a more socially interconnected world characterized by war, conflict and inequality we
encounter challenges in safeguarding cosmopolitan ethics such as human rights and at the
same time taking into account pluralism and cultural diversity. Human rights as a common
ethics based on a shared humanity has been problematized as overshadowing difference in
human encounters. Keeping an openness towards otherness while granting human dignity
beyond cultural boarders is an ethical challenge regarding human rights. We can see
tendencies of a cosmopolitan turn, from a cosmopolitanism focusing on sameness as drawn
by Martha Nussbaum (Nussbaum, 1998), to a more pluralism-oriented cosmopolitanism, as
drawn by Sharon Todd (Todd, 2010). The critical-ethical dimension of cosmopolitanism has
been raised in this cosmopolitan turn by urging an awareness of the plurality of voices on
different interpretations on rights and duties, generally marginalized under hegemonic power
structures in human rights discourses. The notion of a presumed dichotomy of universal
notions of human rights and contextually rooted cultural, ideological and religious values
(Mutua, 2002) seems to question the very notion of universally claimed human rights. Lynn
Hunt (2007, p. 36) asks how the invention of universal human rights in the eighteenth century
could become thinkable when several categories of persons – women, the poor, Blacks –
were considered subservient and unequal?
46 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
When doing analysis on historical declarations like the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, it is important not to regard the text as being without authors. Many scholars (Hunt,
2007; Mutua, 2002) have assumed that the declaration was the result of the work of a few
western delegates to the UN, who dominated the thinking and wording of human rights as
based in western humanism and natural law. Scholars such as Michael Ignatieff (Ignatieff &
Gutmann, 2003) and Makau Mutua (Mutua, 2002) have argued that human rights are a
western project, in need of contestation and re-articulation from other cultural perspectives.
This is the dominant view of the creation of human rights in the UDHR, which has
overshadowed other voices in international relations on delineations and different cultural
and ideological foundations for universal human rights.
The ways in which to read and analyze political and international policy texts on human
rights are vast, however a traditional approach to policy ‘as based upon idealist assumptions
about the nature of language itself which take it to be a transparent vehicle for the
transmission of information, thoughts and values’ (Codd, 1988, p. 235) has been criticized by
John A Codd (1988), who argues for policy analysis to examine the effects the text has on
readers and to ‘expose the ideological processes which lie behind the production of the text’
(Codd, 1988, p. 235). The readers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights interpret the
text into their own context and the UDHR has been translated into more than 370 different
languages, which makes it among the most translated documents in the world. Codd (1988)
argues that these kind of texts “contain divergent meanings, contradictions and structured
omissions” (Codd, 1988, p. 235) so that it has different meaning for different readers. In
order to analyze the ideological processes that lie behind the production of the UDHR, I have
developed the analytical concept of “intersectional dialogue” to capture how power struggles
frame dialogues and hence influences the leaving out of references to particular values in the
text, making agreements to disagree possible. Codd names this critical analysis a form of
“textual deconstruction” (Codd, 1988, p. 235).
A significant number of scholars have acknowledged the lack of effective intersectional
methodologies in policy analysis (Hancock, 2007; Nash, 2008; Phoenix & Pattynama, 2006).
Efforts to move beyond one-dimensional policy analysis are met with challenges in applying
an intersectional approach since there is a lack of clearly defined intersectional methodology.
Various tools to operationalize intersectionality have been developed (Crenshaw, 2006;
Parken, 2010; Symington, 2004). These methods aim at illuminating how social categories of
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 47
difference intersect in constantly changing ways in order to expose undemocratic dialogues
(Hankivsky et al., 2010). Nira Yulu-Davis (Yuval-Davis, 2006), Myra Ferree (Ferree, 2009)
and Birte Siim (Siim, 2011) have all argued for the need to enact analysis of intersectionality
on regional and international levels.
The UDHR may seem to be rooted in western thinking, but reading the policy document only
reveals the resulting text, not the process towards it. I argue, following Codd’s critique, that it
is important to take into account who wrote the text and in what historical context, in order to
make the declaration more transparent for its readers. Such a reading may question the
dominant narrative on human rights as western, and additionally re-vitalize the importance of
research into different ideologies and faiths that ground human rights in other, non-western,
philosophies. Hunt argues that the invention of human rights was made possible due to
western philosophy, hence she traces the discourse on human rights to a Eurocentric doctrine,
neglecting the actual people who participated in drafting the UDHR, coming from all corners
of the world. I argue that in order to understand the impact of the UDHR internationally and
its potential for social and political re-imagination in diverse contexts, the process leading up
to the first international document of human rights needs to be further researched by studying
the vast historical material from the UN Archives and the UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library.
To see human rights as a western universalism seems to be underpinned by a notion of
dialogue as reaching consensus on common philosophical and ideological ground that
underscore the argument that the actual working process when human rights were drafted in
1948 was a process characterized by domination of western thoughts. The primary sources
from 1946-48 reveal quite the opposite.
Towards a Cosmopolitical Notion of Dialogue
This historical process of creating the UDHR, when seen as a process of efforts for dialogue
on an international arena, has been interpreted, I argue, through a dominant Habermasian
view of dialogue as in absence of power relations, where so called “less-rational” arguments
had minor influence on the creation of the text, a text hence built on consensus about the
philosophical and ideological foundation of human rights. The view of deliberative dialogue,
characterized by thoughts on rationality and consensus, has been developed by Jürgen
Habermas (1984) and later Sheyla Benhabib (Benhabib, 2006). The aim of reaching
consensus in dialogue can, according to Habermas, be reached based on an ideal
48 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
communication, where reason and argument leads the rational being to the best decisions.
Habermas does mention symmetry between the participants and sets up criteria for the ideal
communication situation, but he does not in his earlier work elaborate on the causes or
consequences of social inequality or oppression, hence the theoretical point lacks a
perspective of power analysis. How can dialogue be understood in a pluralistic world, with
conflicting worldviews and diverse morals of agonistic value systems and cultural morals?
Mikael Carleheden (Carleheden, Lidskog, & Roman, 2007) criticizes the theory of Habermas
(1984) for not acknowledging power positions, and argues that it neither considers social
inequality nor cultural pluralism. Studying international policy work and international efforts
for dialogue surrounding the creation of declaration, conventions and other proclamations,
the policy texts in themselves may not reveal the tensions and conflicts over meaning and
words, that preceded their drafting. Neglecting these power debates and negotiations risks
losing the dimension of ambivalence and the openness in policy texts on human rights for
different and opposing interpretations and readings. Hence, some of the political imaginary of
human rights may be lost in universal declarations like the UDHR through de-contextualized
and de-historicized readings of the text.
Benhabib (2002, 2006) proposes ‘translation’ between particular and universal notions of
human rights in order to enhance local and cultural claims in relation to universal aspirations
on rights. Such international efforts to create regional and international arenas for discussing
human rights practices risk de-legitimizing the role of conflict in democratic practices, I
argue, if the ‘local’ and ‘particular’ is exclusively linked to non-western claims, whereas the
‘universal’ is conflated with western notions of human rights, as based on a certain kind of
individualism and liberalism.
Chantal Mouffe (2005) has stressed the importance of keeping conflict at the center of such
dialogue, in order to accept that hegemonic power structures are at work in any dialogue.
Mouffe (2005) aims her critique, not at the concept of human rights, but at the institutions
that are supposed to uphold the notion of human rights, and she suggests that conflict over
interpretation regarding human rights is what keeps dialogue open for different and agonistic
opinions. She presents a pluralistic democratic alternative by introducing the concept of
’conflict consensus’ arguing for the need of collisions between different political positions
and critiques a traditional view of dialogue, for not taking into account conflict and dissent
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 49
about interpretations, since the aim of consensus and harmony actually put at risk political
solutions to questions of cross-cultural conflict (Todd, 2010, p. 105).
Crucial in this argumentation towards a more conflict-oriented analysis of dialogue that
acknowledges how power intersects in human relations, is a problematization of the
conflation of universalism with western notions of human rights and local interpretation with
non-western cultures, since without this problematization any effort to truly contextualize
international documents may reify hegemonic notions of the concept of ‘human rights’.
Paternalistic notions of universality generally accompany a traditional view of dialogue as
leaning towards universalism where the rational is equalized with dominant narratives of
‘truth claims’. As Todd notes, ‘both within certain strands of cosmopolitanism itself and
within democratic theory broadly speaking, there exists a deep suspicion of such universal
aspirations’ (2010, p. 216). Todd not only takes into account difference and pluralism in
discussing human rights but equally faces conflict in dialogue which she says non-critical
cosmopolitanism fails to acknowledge. This notion of agonistic cosmopolitics is what the
paper leans towards in re-thinking dialogue through an intersectional approach.
An Ethical Dimension of Dialogue
In order to take into account not only what was spoken but also the actual concrete beings
who participated in the debates, the paper draws on Michael Bakhtin’s notion of an aestethic
approach to dialogue (Bakhtin 2004). To be aesthetic in a Bakhtinian sense is to contribute
value to another by seeing the dialogue from without and trying to see what can be seen by
another. In other words to give legitimacy to one’s opponent by seeing what makes sense
from the other position, even though the opponent’s position might seem remote to oneself.
‘An aesthetic approach creates room for the individual, as a unique personality, to remain un-
finalized, incomplete and with a capacity to change and contribute in dialogue throughout the
life span’1. Hence an ethical challenge with dialogue and any analysis of dialogue is to leave
room in the analysis for people’s uniqueness, influenced and changed throughout individual
lifespans rather than analyzing meaning limiting people within cultural or social categories. It
is upon this notion of people’s uniqueness that a narrative approach to intersectionality is
valuable, in order to understand how individuals position themselves in dialogue by orienting
1 E. J. White, ‘Bakhtinian Dialogism: A Philosophical and Methodological Route to Dialogue and Difference?
EJ White Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand PO Box 17-310’ (n.d.), accessed January 29, 2013.
50 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
themselves in relation to their experience of interactions, practices and cultural narratives
embedded in their life stories. However, without acknowledging how power and oppression
can silence individuals in dialogue, the critical notion of intersectionality loses its potential of
exposing hegemony. Intersectional dialogue enhances the notion that people position
themselves differently depending on context and intersection of power due to that positioning
where cultural narratives play the role of relating meaning to known value systems (Adami
2012). Dissent about interpretation of ‘universal human rights’ is acknowledged when
analyzing dialogue as intersectional.
Post structural, post colonial and feminist perspectives have represented alternative, counter
narratives of particularism to this dominant narrative of universality. In the notion of
intersectional dialogue developed in the paper, it is held that people draw on particular or
cultural narratives when positioning themselves in relation to dominant narrative of
universality.
Exposing Power in Undemocratic Dialogues
Looking at the primary sources from the UN and the UNESCO archives and building on
earlier research on the drafting of the UDHR (eg Morsink, 1999; Lauren, 2011, Glendon,
2001, Adami, 2012), a different picture than a consensus oriented process emerges, which
cannot be captured adequately in its complexity by a model of dialogue in the absence of
power and conflict. Rather, the drafting process of the UDHR in 1948 was a power struggle
after the Second World War between East and West (of different values and political
ideologies), between North and South (of colonialism and national independence), and
between an inclusive or exclusive understanding of equality and humanity ( as referring to
only men or to women and men). During the drafting of the UDHR in 1946-48,
representatives from different continents, countries, religions, political systems and traditions
met on a diplomatic arena, forced into dialogue and compromise for the universality of the
human rights they wanted to defend in contrast to the atrocities of the World War Two. In
order to expose this process in the reading of the UDHR, there is a need for a new way to
theorize the social and political conflicts that occurred in the aftermaths of the World War
Two. It is against this background of power relations between individuals and groups in this
historical and specific context, I argue, that the development of an intersectional alternative to
intercultural dialogue is needed. Intersectionality as used in the paper should be understood as
not only regarding intersections of power in discourse but also taking into account the actual
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 51
individuals giving voice to the spoken. This notion of intersectionality as the positions that
individuals take in different arenas will be elaborated further on. Intersectional dialogue re-
frames the conflict between particular and universal in international policy development on
human rights through its emphasis on relationality that makes every contextual and historical
encounter unique in how power intersects in dialogue.
By introducing the analytical concept of intersectional dialogue the paper takes into account
the notion of conflict and tensions faced in aspirations for cosmopolitan dialogue on universal
ethics and values, such as human rights. Secondly, by referring to the working process of
drafting the UDHR in 1948 as a cosmopolitan space (cf. Schumann & Adami forthcoming)
the paper leans towards what has been referred to as critical cosmopolitanism, a critique
against cosmopolitanism as a universalism in the sense of polite tolerance. Space is used to
illustrate how people from different cultural backgrounds met in a certain time and place with
a common task to negotiate on cosmopolitan ethics in a declarative sense. Critical
cosmopolitanism takes conflict and imperfection of human beings into discussions on co-
existence and on the common claim for universal human rights. The dichotomy which has not
yet been reconciled theoretically between universal values and particular cultural values is
met pragmatically in the paper by exploring their relation in a specific historical and
relational context, in 1948 (Adami, 2012).
Background to the Drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights
The tensions in the world were strong after the Second World War. The UN Commission
which had been appointed for the task of drafting an international bill of rights faced great
challenges in cooperating since the conflicts between the Soviet Union and the USA were
fought as an ideological battle between communism and liberalism, and the de-colonization
and increase of independent states led to an increase of member states in the UN and in the
light of political claims for equal rights of women. Delegates representing post colonial
countries met in discussions with their colonial rulers, delegates from what would become the
power struggle between the East and West block in the Cold War after the Second World
War met from opposite sides of economic ideologies and Islamic nations met with former
Christian crusaders. In other words, the historical context for the drafting process challenged
power positions, creating a possible conflict zone with domination of some over others
(Adami 2012). Still, the de-stabilization of international relations through the World War
52 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
Two and the shared condemnation of the defeated Nazi Regime, created a window of
opportunity for the delegates who were assembled from different parts of the world to create
and vote through a universal declaration on rights and duties of people. In such times of
social change, intersection of conflict and cohesion were at work. When studying the
international policy process of drafting the UDHR in 1948 that included people from
different cultures and ideological background, divisions that were transformed into dialogue,
recognition and inclusion can be analyzed.
At the first session of the Drafting Committee, the UK delegate reminded his colleagues ‘of
the historical situation in which the Committee met. It was one, he said, where Germany and
other enemy countries during the war had completely ignored what mankind had regarded as
fundamental human rights and freedoms. The Committee met as a first step toward providing
the maximum possible safeguard against that sort of thing in the future.’2 In this historical
context, there was a collective aim of the delegates, limiting a static dominance of some over
others and enhancing a kind of dialogue where the power positions were under constant
change and negotiation. It took three weeks for the 58 delegates from different parts of the
world to first negotiate and discuss and later pass two articles in the Declaration. After a
whole month the delegates had passed only three out of thirty articles. The delegates met over
hundred times, which gives an idea of how tense the power relations were within the UN
Commission and how much time it took for all delegates to debate different aspects of human
rights.
The “fathers” of the UDHR have been referred to as René Cassin (Lauren, 2011) and John
Humphrey (Morsink, 1999) although it is questionable if this can be taken for granted, since
their initial drafts that emphasized the rights of Man were reworked in more than seven
versions of the UDHR. The UDHR was written at a time when colonial empires started to
break up. It could be presumed by this that the colonial powers dominated the discussions
when in fact two of the most influential drafters, the delegation from Lebanon and from the
Philippines, were from countries gaining their independence in 1946, the year the UN
Commission was established. Syria also joined that year. In 1947 India, Burma, Pakistan
gained their independence; both India and Pakistan played an active role in the drafting
process. In 1948, 56 member states to the UN voted for the Universal Declaration on Human
2 UN Archives, E/CN.4/AC.1/SR.7, p.5.
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 53
Rights. There was an underrepresentation of African countries in 1948, a fact that would be
heavily criticized over the following years, until the World Conference on Human Rights in
Vienna 1993, were 177 member states were represented.
The drafting process is too complex and the historical material too rich to be captured in this
paper, however, I draw on three characteristic aspects of the drafting process that points back
to the conceptual framework of “intersectional dialogue” to illustrate some examples on how
different intersections of power framed the dialogue. I focus particularly on the impact of
colonial power structures and how these positions between newly independent state delegates
and delegates from colonial powers, such as England and France, were re-negotiated during
the drafting process, especially in the question of rights for people under colonial rule.
Secondly, I expose how disagreements were a basis for agreement, and how this
acknowledgement of keeping conflict at the center of dialogue is crucial in intersectional
analysis of dialogue. Thirdly, I highlight the influence of the women delegates to the UN
(who, although in great minority, held power positions related to other positions than gender)
and how the East-West power relation impacted on the enforcement of gender-neutral
language in the final UDHR text. Using the conceptual framework of “intersectional
dialogue” when analyzing the primary UN sources from 1946-48 raises questions that focus
on: Who participated? What axes of power were operating in the discourse? How did the
delegates position themselves in relation to each other, in terms of influence over the
discussions and voting, during the debates? Whose voice was heard and to what extent? From
these questions evolves a different picture than a consensus oriented drafting process,
portraying the endless negotiations and changes in power positions during the creation of the
UDHR.
Power Bound Dialogue Within the UN Commission on Human Rights
In June 1946 the UN Commission on Human Rights was established. During the two years it
took to draft the UDHR, the member states of the UN had increased due to the number of
newly independent states that before the Second World War had been under colonial rule
(like India and Pakistan). The colonial powers, joined by nations form Latin America, did not
support the inclusion of human rights in territories under colonial rule. Still, voices were
raised from a number of states for the rights of people living under colonial rule. Even though
the delegate from the Philippines, Romulo, was representing a former colony in relation to
England’s delegate, Noel Baker, who represented a colonial power, Romulo had a strong
54 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
rhetoric in human rights as a journalist who had won the Pulitzer Prize for articles predicting
the end of colonialism. With the pressure from human rights activists and media covering the
work in the UN Commission, it was hard for the colonial powers to neglect the arguments for
human rights for ‘dependent people’, as people living under colonial rule were called. Hence,
in the UDHR, there was no mention of "rights of citizen's" but "everyone, regardless of
nationality or place of residence" were entitled to all the rights set forth in the declaration.
There were a few women in the UN Commission, Eleonor Roosevelt, delegate from USA and
Hansa Metha, delegate from India. As the only female delegates to the UN Commission, their
voices risked being marginalized, but looking from an intersectional approach, we see that
other power positions were at work than the gender based. Eleonor Roosevelt was delegate
from one of the great powers, and widow to the American president Franklin Roosevelt. She
was in a power position both regarding class, race, nationality and political influence in
relation to many male delegates in the UN Commission. She also acted as chair in the UN
Commission. Hansa Metha, the Indian delegate was a legislator, an activist in the movement
that led to India’s independence in 1947 and had been a sharp, outspoken critic of Britain’s
colonial policies (Glendon, 2001).
The delegate from India, Metha, said ‘she did not like the wording of ‘all men’ or
‘should act …like brothers’. Such phrases, she said ‘might be interpreted to
exclude women, and were out of date.3
The rhetoric used by the delegates who were in a power position of not being affected by
gender-based discrimination was focused on a language, which to them seemed neutral and
inclusive. The term ‘all men’, which was used in the first drafts of the declaration, was
according to many delegates gender neutral, based on the argument that women were
included in the term ‘men’. One could assume that Eleonor Roosevelt, as a woman and from
a liberal USA would have fought for inclusion of women’s rights in the debates, but she often
took a gender-blind position and did hence not understand why ‘all men’ would not include
all women too. In the UN Commission, though, there were women like Hansa Metha, who
had fought for the equal rights of women in India and she argued for changing the wording of
‘all men’ to ‘everyone’4. Gender is one of many parameters influencing claims of rights, and
3 UN Archives, E/CN.4/SR.34, p.4
4 ibid.
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 55
it is interesting to note that the male delegates of the UN Commission from the Communist
countries fought for the inclusion of a gender-neutral language, based rather on their
ideological conviction. The wording ‘all human beings’ was approved, which frees Article 1
of sexist implications.
When the article on right to work and equal pay was voted on, neither Eleonor Roosevelt nor
Hana Metha voted for the adoption of specific mention of non-discrimination of women in
such an article.
The BSSR delegate expressed his astonishment that the representative of India, herself a
woman, was opposed to paragraph 4 (mentioning nondiscrimination against women
regarding pay). The importance of such a provision was great, in view of the fact that women
had been discriminated against in the matter of pay almost more than in any other aspects.
Moreover, the Commission on the Status of Women had adopted a resolution, requesting that
the Declaration should contain a provision with regard to equal pay for equal work. 5
That Hansa Metha and Eleonor Roosevelt were against specifying nondiscrimination of
women was not because they objected to equal rights to equal pay, but because they felt that
any specific mention of women in the article would have rendered weaker the sense of
inclusion of women in the term “everyone” in other articles of the declaration. The
representative of UK declared that, ‘in spite of the arguments of the USSR representative, he
would be guided by the views of the two female members of the UN Commission’6. Does
this illustrate that women have greater influence in debates on human rights of women than
men? I argue that an intersectional dialogue contains complex power relations that are under
constant negotiations, which means that when people meet in cosmopolitan spaces, their
belonging and rational for argumentations cannot be limited to analysis that focuses only on
gender, culture, ethnicity or faith, but depend on how they want to position themselves in
relation to a multitude of social belongings, connected to diverse cultural narratives.
5 UN Archives, E/CN.4/SR.66, p.6
6 UN Archves, E/CN.4/SR.66, p.6
56 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
Giving Legitimacy to Ones Opponents – or Agreeing to Disagree
The UN Commission held over hundred sessions between 1946 and 1948 and governments
appointed individuals with the capacity for rhetoric and intellectual debates; there were
professors, authors, diplomats and human rights activists, who could discuss human rights
through different perspectives.
China named Dr. Peng-chun Chang, a former professor, ‘highly knowledgeable about the
West, Islam and Arabic culture, yet deeply committed to Confucianism and the values
inherent in Asian culture and philosophy’. Lebanon appointed Dr. Charles Habib Malik, a
former professor of philosophy, personally and professionally shaped by both Christianity
and Islam. The Philippines selected Carlos Romulo, public official and devoted Catholic,
who won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism’ (Lauren, 2011, p. 207).
Any common ground that could lead to satisfying answers as to what was meant with
concepts such as ‘by nature’, ‘inalienable’, inherent’, ‘reason’, ‘conscience’ or ‘morality’ was
hard to find, viewed through various philosophical, religious (and nonreligious), and
ideological perspectives. The delegates in the UN Commission sought to discover universal
principles by creating a discourse ‘wherein no regional philosophy or single way of life was
permitted to prevail’ (Lauren, 2011, p. 209).
The UN Commission asked UNESCO if they could initiate an inquiry on the philosophical
foundation for universal human rights. UNESCO appointed a Committee of philosophers
who consulted great thinkers from all over the world, and assembled their written replies. The
UNESCO Committee conducted parallel work to the UN Commission, which resulted in a \
list of universal human rights principles similar to the UDHR. This fact has not received
much attention in earlier research (Adami, 2012). The workings of the UN Commission and
the UNESCO Committee were different, the UN Commission being a political arena for
individual delegates giving lengthy speeches in order to influence each other’s opinions,
whereas the UNESCO Committee handled their work through written reports from various
parts of the world. UNESCO’s part was to consult philosophers and assemble their replies.
‘They thus invited one hundred and fifty very different leading intellectuals to send their
thoughts on the specific philosophical questions raised by international human rights’
(Lauren, 2011, p. 210). The report of the UNESCO Committee’s work, ‘Human Rights –
Comments and Interpretations’, consists of fundamentally different conceptions of human
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 57
rights, ranging from Islam to Communism and Hinduism and of competing interpretations on
the philosophical foundation of universal human rights. Human rights were referred to as
‘practical principles’ in the UNESCO Committee, since these intellectuals agreed that there
could not be an agreement on philosophical principles, but rather practical principles that
could be understood through competing moral systems.
Even though the philosophers could not find agreement on a philosophical foundation for
universal human rights, they found legitimacy in each and every ideology, philosophy and
religion that was represented in their philosophical inquiry, for universal human rights as
practical principles for action. Mahatma Ghandi contributed with a text discussing the
importance of duty towards one another. The question of duties was incorporated in the final
draft of the UDHR in article twenty-nine, ‘Everyone has duties to the community in which
alone the free and full development of his personality is possible’ (UDHR, article 29). The
Chinese representative discussed how human rights could be traced in Asian history and be
understood in relation to Confucius and humaneness as an ethical stance in social relations.
The Islamic representative explored how human rights needed to be secured within a society,
where security was fundamental for human beings in relation to food and clothing, housing,
education and health. Jacques Maritain, who was the chair of the UNESCO Committee, wrote
in the foreword to the report,
How, I asked, can we imagine an agreement of minds between men who are
gathered together precisely in order to accomplish a common intellectual task, men
who come from the four corners of the globe and who not only belong to different
cultures and civilizations, but are of antagonistic spiritual associations and schools
of thought? Because, as I said at the beginning of my speech, the goal of UNESCO
is a practical goal, agreement between minds can be reached spontaneously, not on
the basis of common speculative ideas, but on common practical ideas, not on the
affirmation of one and the same conception of the world, of man and of
knowledge, but upon the affirmation of a single body of beliefs for guidance in
action. (UNESCO, 1948)
Confronting Conflicting ‘Truth Claims’ – Dissent about Interpretation
There were different interpretations on the Islamic faith within the UN Commission. When it
came to freedom of religion in the Declaration, conflicts arose between different Moslem
delegates. In countries where religion and politics were separated, the freedom of religion
58 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
was viewed as an individual choice; the Lebanese delegate pointed out that freedom of
religion also meant the protection of the inner being of each individual 7.
Article 18 on freedom of religion had not prevented other Muslim countries, like Syria, Iran,
Turkey and Pakistan from voting for the Declaration, though the Saudi Arabia delegation
abstained from voting on the article on freedom of religion. The Danish delegate supported
this perception of the Muslim faith, saying that: ‘the adoption would mean that the
representatives of 300 million Mohammedans would be unable to support the draft
declaration’ 8. The Indian delegate replied that the Indian constitution included ‘the right to
convert or be converted; that applied to the 40 million Moslems of India as well as to all
others’ 9. There was another conflict about religious faith in the UN Commission regarding
article one in the Declaration. The debate concerned inclusion or exclusion of reference to
God or Allah in the first article of the UDHR, which today reads:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in
a spirit of brotherhood. (UDHR, article 1).
The South American delegations argued that faith was uniting people from all over the world
and created understanding between people. There was a majority of religious states in the UN
Commission, but a majority did not mean domination and the dissent of interpretation was
acknowledged, by leaving out reference to God in the final text. We can today find in the first
article in the UDHR that reference to ‘God’, ‘Allah’ and ‘by nature’ was excluded from the
text, asserting freedom and dignity of everyone without reference to any particular ideology,
philosophy or faith. The dissent on why human beings should be seen as born free and equal
in dignity and rights was respected, leaving the current text open for interpretation on the
philosophical, ideological and religious foundation on universal human rights.
Conclusion
In 1948, people from all over the world met during intense discussions in over hundred
sessions to claim universal human rights. Exploring the drafting of the UDHR as an
7 UN Archives, A/C.3/SR.128, p. 405
8 UN Archives, A/C.3/SR.128, p. 407
9 UN Archives, A/C.3/SR.128, p.407
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013 59
intersectional dialogue, the importance of taking pluralism into account became evident.
Universal human rights needed to make sense in a plural world. According to Todd, agonism
and conflict keep dialogue open when put at the center of discussions, rather than being
silenced by domination and forced consensus. The UDHR was reached on conflicting
grounds with dialogue between people of different faith, sex, culture, political conviction,
class-generated conflicts, based on different morals and beliefs. Examples of opposing world
views in the UN Commission, that was set up to draft the declaration, was between the Soviet
Communist regime and South American Catholic countries and between the apartheid system
in South Africa and all other countries represented in the UN Commission. Human rights
were hence interpreted differently by the delegates of the UN Commission, by the Saudi
Arabia in contrast to India on the Islamic faith regarding freedom of religion and the right to
convert to another religion. Discussions on the origin of human rights illuminated the
contradiction between natural law and divine origin of human beings, though these opposing
perspectives were coincided by excluding reference to particular values in the declaration
(Adami, 2012). All these different views and perspectives collided when delegations from
opposing ideological contexts met in what has been referred to in this paper as ‘intersectional
dialogue’. Without neglecting the participation of western delegates to the UN Commission
on Human Rights, one finds counter narratives in the primary sources from the UN archives,
contrasting the western-oriented notions that have been re-enforced in contemporary
interpretations of the UDHR.
The concept of intersectional dialogue illustrates that people have a multitude of belongings;
one person can hold different identities and represent different belongings depending on the
social context, hence intersectional dialogue exposes hegemony and multiple oppression. A
person’s experience does not have to coincide with how others categorize the person, but
rather has relational, contextual and situational dimensions. Using this analytical concept of
intersectional dialogue when studying primary sources of UN documents from 1948
envisages how power structures intersected when people from all over the world met in
dialogue over universal human rights. Intersectional dialogue as an analytical concept can be
used in future research on policy and dialogue - enabling discussions on ethical challenges of
power and pluralism.
By enacting analysis of the drafting process of the UDHR, I emphasised in the paper how
conflict was kept at the center of the dialogue, in that the delegates gave legitimacy to their
60 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2013
opponents in debates, hence did not force an unjust consensus for the approval of the UDHR,
but rather let the incompatible and antagonist cultural, religious and political values held by
the delegates serve as the ground for a universal acceptance of human rights.
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Intersectional Dialogue – A Cosmopolitical Dialogue of Ethics
Abstract
Introduction
Dialogue as an Ethical Challenge for Cosmopolitanism – Facing Pluralism
Background to the Drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights
Power Bound Dialogue Within the UN Commission on Human Rights
Giving Legitimacy to Ones Opponents – or Agreeing to Disagree
Conclusion
References