When Sovereignty Challenges Universality Human Rights at the Crossroads of Multipolarity

The world of the twenty-first century no longer moves within a single framework dominated by one pole of power. The shift toward a multipolar order has changed the way states view the relationship between internal authority and norms claimed to apply to all humanity. On one side stands the principle of state sovereignty as the foundation of classical international law. On the other stands the claim of the universality of human rights, born from particular historical experience yet presented as a moral truth that transcends space and time. The tension between the two has grown sharper. It is no longer merely an academic debate in lecture halls or United Nations forums. It has become a rhetorical weapon in diplomacy, a justification for domestic policy, and even an instrument of legitimacy in geopolitical conflict.

The thesis developed here is simple yet fundamental. The concept of universal human rights is facing a serious epistemic challenge. That challenge comes from narratives of local and national sovereignty that grow more confident in the multipolar era. States once compelled to accept the language of human rights as a condition for integration into the international system now challenge that language itself. They question not only its practical application but the philosophical and historical foundations that support it. The question that arises is no longer how to enforce human rights across the world but who holds the authority to define what counts as human rights, and on the basis of which epistemology that definition is made.

Background of the Tension in the Multipolar Era

The bipolar order of the Cold War and the unipolar order after 1991 provided a relatively stable space for the spread of the human rights narrative as a global standard. The ideological victory of the West allowed instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants, and various monitoring mechanisms to be treated almost as moral natural law. International financial institutions, trade organizations, and military alliances often linked assistance or membership to compliance with those standards. The result was a kind of false consensus in which rejection of universal human rights was equated with rejection of civilization itself.

Multipolarity alters that calculation. The economic and military rise of China, the resilience of Russia against Western sanctions, the consolidation of influence by India, Brazil, South Africa, and the Gulf states, and the strengthening of forums such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization create space in which states can reject external pressure without the risk of total isolation. In this new space, sovereignty is no longer viewed merely as a formal legal principle. It becomes a source of moral legitimacy that rivals universal claims. A state can assert that its model of development, social structure, and hierarchy of values constitute a legitimate expression of sovereignty that cannot be disturbed in the name of standards formulated elsewhere.

This phenomenon appears clearly in the way some governments respond to human rights criticism. They no longer merely deny the facts of violations. They attack the framework of judgment itself. Criticism of freedom of expression is treated as an attempt to import individualist liberalism that contradicts social cohesion. Criticism of internal security policy is treated as intervention that ignores the threats to stability faced by developing states. Criticism of the criminal justice system is treated as a form of moral superiority that turns a blind eye to differences in historical tradition. Thus the debate shifts from the realm of facts to the realm of epistemology. Who possesses the authority to judge, and on the basis of whose knowledge and experience is that judgment made?

Moral Universalism and Its Philosophical Roots

The approach of moral universalism in human rights is rooted firmly in the modern European intellectual tradition, particularly Immanuel Kant and the cosmopolitan tradition that followed him. Kant places the human being as a rational creature possessed of intrinsic dignity. That dignity does not depend on membership in a particular political community but on the capacity for rationality itself. From this arises the idea of a moral law that applies categorically without exception. In the context of international politics, this idea develops into the view that states are bound by moral obligations that transcend their national interests. Individuals possess rights that must be respected even by their own governments, and the international community holds a kind of responsibility to protect those rights when the state fails.

Contemporary cosmopolitan tradition expands this argument. Thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Thomas Pogge emphasize that global economic and political structures create interdependence that makes moral isolation impossible. Extreme poverty, cross-border environmental damage, and forced migration show that the fate of individuals in one state is bound to the policies of another. Therefore, claims of absolute sovereignty become morally unrealistic. Human rights function as a shared language that enables criticism of power, both the power of the state and the power of the global market.

This universalism possesses great rhetorical strength. It offers the hope that human dignity is not determined by place of birth, skin color, religion, or political system. It provides a foundation for social movements that demand the abolition of slavery, equality of rights for women, and protection of minorities. In many historical cases, the language of universality has helped mobilize concrete cross-border solidarity.

Yet that rhetorical strength also contains weakness. Universalism often operates with the assumption that moral rationality is homogeneous. It tends to regard what was considered rational in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe as projectable onto all humanity without substantive adjustment. This assumption overlooks the fact that the concept of the autonomous individual, the separation between public and private spheres, and the priority of negative liberty are products of particular history. When these concepts are imposed as a single standard, they can function as tools for judging and disciplining societies that possess different value structures.

Cultural Relativism, Legal Pluralism, and Postcolonial Critique

Opposite universalism stand various forms of cultural relativism and legal pluralism. Classical cultural relativism holds that moral values cannot be detached from the cultural context in which they grow. What is regarded as a violation of dignity in one society may be a meaningful and legitimate practice in another. This argument is often criticized because it can be used to justify practices widely considered cruel. Yet more sophisticated versions of relativism do not deny the existence of shared minimal standards. They only reject the claim that those standards are already final and have been fully discovered by one intellectual tradition.

Legal pluralism adds another dimension. It recognizes that within a single political territory, more than one system of norms can live. Modern state law is only one among many sources of normative authority, including customary law, religious law, and community practice. In this perspective, attempts to impose a single model of human rights centered on the atomistic individual can damage mechanisms of social protection that have long functioned within communities.

Postcolonial critique carries the analysis to a sharper level. It places the history of colonialism as a context that cannot be ignored in understanding the spread of human rights discourse. After formal independence, many formerly colonized states discovered that the language of human rights, previously used to demand freedom, had turned into a tool for assessing and correcting them. Standards claimed to be universal in fact often reflected the priorities and experiences of advanced industrial societies. When developing states emphasize the right to development, economic sovereignty, or political stability as prerequisites for the fulfillment of individual rights, they are regarded as evasive. Conversely, when advanced states emphasize civil and political freedoms while maintaining unequal global economic structures, they are regarded as consistent with universality.

From this arises the charge of epistemic neocolonialism. The charge does not always mean that every human rights criticism is a form of veiled imperialism. It points more to a pattern in which moral knowledge is produced in centers of global power and then exported as neutral truth. States or groups that reject that knowledge are classified as backward, authoritarian, or not yet ready for democracy. Thus the power to define what is rational and moral remains in the hands of actors who already possess material and institutional advantage.

Communitarian views, developed, among others, by Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre, strengthen this critique from within the Western tradition itself. They argue that the individual cannot be adequately understood outside the community that shapes identity, language, and life goals. Human rights that are too individualistic can erode the social bonds necessary for a meaningful life. In non-Western contexts, this argument is often translated into emphasis on collective values, social harmony, and responsibility toward family and nation.

Concrete Dynamics in Diplomacy and International Politics

Differences of approach appear clearly in diplomatic practice. Western states tend to view human rights as an integral part of the liberal international order. Violations of civil and political rights often become the basis for sanctions, Security Council resolutions, or withdrawal of assistance. The main focus usually lies on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the rights of women in public space, and the protection of sexual minorities. This approach reflects the priorities of societies that have passed through the phases of nation-state consolidation and industrialization.

By contrast, many states in the Global South, including China and Russia, emphasize sovereignty and non-intervention as primary principles. They argue that every state possesses the right to determine its own path of development according to its historical, cultural, and economic conditions. Criticism of their human rights records is often met with charges of double standards. Why, they ask, are violations in Western-allied states often ignored while violations in states that challenge the existing order receive intense attention? Why do rights to housing, health, and decent work receive less international pressure than freedom of speech?

China offers the most systematic example of an alternative approach. Chinese human rights doctrine emphasizes the right to development as the most fundamental human right. Material progress that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty is presented as a concrete human rights achievement. Individual freedom is subordinated to the needs of stability and collective progress. Western criticism of digital surveillance systems, detention in Xinjiang, or restrictions on freedom in Hong Kong is answered with emphasis on threats of separatism, terrorism, and foreign intervention. In this narrative, sovereignty becomes a shield that protects a development experiment regarded as unique.

Russia follows a slightly different yet overlapping path. After the period of liberalization in the 1990s, regarded by many within the Russian elite as an era of state collapse, the ruling government constructed a narrative about traditional values, spiritual sovereignty, and rejection of liberalism regarded as destructive. Laws restricting the activity of foreign nongovernmental organizations, restrictions on nontraditional gender expression, and emphasis on the role of the Russian Orthodox Church as guardian of national identity are all framed as defense of cultural sovereignty against external pressure. The war in Ukraine has further hardened this narrative. Military intervention is presented not only as protection of security interests but as resistance against the expansion of a moral order regarded as alien.

States in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia display greater variation. Some use the language of sovereignty to protect authoritarian regimes from criticism. Others genuinely see that the priorities of development and stability differ from those of post-industrial societies. Forums such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and ASEAN often produce documents that emphasize cultural distinctiveness while still recognizing general principles of human rights. The result is a kind of dualism: formal acceptance of international instruments accompanied by substantive reservations in application.

This pattern creates a dilemma for international law. If every claim of sovereignty is accepted without limit, then the protection of the individual against arbitrary state power becomes weak. If every universal claim is applied without regard to context, then international law loses legitimacy in the eyes of a large part of the world's population that lives outside traditional centers of power.

Bridging Without Sacrificing Dignity

The remaining question is how international law can bridge this tension without sacrificing the protection of human dignity. An adequate answer must avoid two extremes. The first extreme is dogmatic universalism that treats every difference as a deviation to be corrected. The second extreme is absolute relativism that makes sovereignty a shield for every form of oppression.

A possible middle path is recognition that human dignity possesses a minimal core that can be defended across cultures while opening wider space for different interpretations and priorities. That minimal core includes prohibitions against arbitrary killing, torture, slavery, and systematic discrimination based on unchangeable characteristics. These prohibitions have obtained sufficiently broad support, including from non-Western religious and philosophical traditions, so that they cannot easily be rejected as purely Western products.

Beyond the minimal core, international law needs to develop more dialogical mechanisms. Rather than imposing particular institutional models, the focus can be shifted to substantive outcomes: whether a state's policies in fact reduce suffering and expand the capabilities of individuals to lead lives they value as worthwhile. An approach of this kind, similar to the capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, allows evaluation without requiring institutional uniformity.

In addition, the international system needs to reduce real double standards. When violations in allied states are ignored while violations in adversary states are loudly proclaimed, the credibility of the entire human rights discourse is damaged. Transparency and consistency in the application of criticism will strengthen rather than weaken the position of universality.

Finally, states in the Global South themselves bear a responsibility not to use the language of sovereignty as a pretext for internal oppression. Genuine sovereignty should protect the people, not merely protect the rulers. When governments employ anti-imperialist rhetoric to silence domestic opposition, they in fact betray the spirit of the decolonization struggle they claim to inherit.

The multipolar era need not mean the end of the protection of human dignity. It can become an opportunity to deepen understanding of what is truly universal and what is an expression of particular history. International law capable of learning from postcolonial and communitarian critique without abandoning commitment to the protection of the individual will be more resilient in facing the challenges of this century.

The greatest challenge does not lie in choosing between sovereignty and universality but in the capacity to rethink both simultaneously within a world that no longer possesses a single center of moral truth.

Published at ghiskafajari.com