Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘too white’? The Cultural Relativism argument and its merits.

In 1948, when the 48 Member States of the then-UNGA voted to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR [1] [2] ”), little did they know that, despite living in the aftermath of the collective and horrific WWII experience, they were far from actually having human rights realized, as with time new arguments against the iconic UDHR surfaced. Out of which, the most famous is that the UDHR is ‘too white’ or does not cater to ‘non-white people’. This is known as ‘Cultural Relativism’ (“CR”). The CR argument at the onset does not stand its ground. This is because out of those 48 adopting states [3] , 32 were ‘non-white’ (if we include the South Americas) or 13 were ‘non-white’ (if we do not include them), with Afghanistan, Iran and China etc. as the adopting states as well. Even in the UDHR’s drafting, the representatives from the ‘non-white’ states such as C. Malik from Lebanon, P.C. Chang from China [4] and H. Mehta from India [5] etc. were actively involved. So then,