Summing Up Human Rights

In what is essentially an unequal world, preponderance on development, especially amongst the lower per capita income economies, is natural. The Eurocentric discourse on human rights is simply not applicable to large proportions of the world’s population. The notion of a basic minimum entitlement to goods and services is utopian given the technology and productivity levels that exist today. This entitlement by its very definition, involves a necessary redistribution of consumption patterns across the world. Given that the Earth has a finite amount of resources, only a finite amount of real wealth can be created. This in turn implies that unless the democratic frameworks in existence throughout the world are overturned, and the fundamental right to accumulate wealth through legal enterprise is denied, any meaningful discourse on redistribution of wealth and in turn basic human rights stands on shaky foundations.