During the past decades the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (hereafter: UDHR) has increasingly been portrayed as an ode to Northern human rights positions. Liberal commentators from the Global North have created the impression that the UDHR is simply an expression of their natural law aspirations.

 

These attempts to frame the UDHR as an expression of liberal universalism do not do justice to the Southern contributions made to the international human rights system since World War II. Thus, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man served as a source of  inspiration during the drafting of the UDHR. Southern delegates, such as the Chinese representative Zhang Peng Chun, played a key role in the drafting process.

 

Since the adoption of the UDHR and the major human rights covenants Southern states have further contributed to the development of the international human rights system by adopting a number of important human rights instruments, it is important to put a halt to the tendency to exaggerate the Northern role at the expense of the Southern contribution to the human rights system. Setting the record straight will be part of the initiative to build a community of shared future of mankind, which was launched   by President Xi Jinping at the international level in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos on 17 January of this year.

 

In the spirit of President Xi's call for building a community of shared future for mankind, the Cross-cultural Human Rights Centre (hereafter: CCHRC) has taken the initiative to draft a document which highlights the elements of the UDHR which resonate in particular in the Global South. This has resulted is the 'Comprehensive Southern Vision on Human Rights' (hereafter: CSVHR), which has been attached as an annex to this paper. The document is based on the UDHR as interpreted in light of regional human rights documents, as well as practice developed by Southern states expressed in policy papers and government documents.

 

In this paper a number of key elements of the Comprehensive Southern Vision will be explained. In section 2 the parts of the CSVHR will be discussed which underscore that the UDHR was meant to be a people's charter. Section 3 will highlight the elements of the CSVHR which deal with culture and religion as sources of human rights. Section 4 will reflect on those aspects of the CSVHR which can play a major role in building a community of shared future for mankind in the area of human rights.