Abstract
This paper reviews the constraints governing declarations of human rights, recognizing the major conceptual progress while also directing attention to unresolved issues that are mainly cultural. Normative blindness refers to salient issues regarding sexual and other mutilations, weapons testing, or arms control as viewed from the margins. A recognition of human rights abuses resulting from global commercialism is critical to a non-hegemonic human rights movement while comparison requires us to become more self-conscious about the role of Euro-American human rights activism as a hegemonic project. A leap forward calls for a broad gauged philosophy of human rights in which no place or country or enterprise is exempt.
Keywords
excision; human rights; islam; women