The global South and the battle for rights

It is claimed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has left the population of African, Asian and Latin American countries indifferent, who consider the conflict a privileged affair of the North.

It was seen in the statements of the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador: "We do not believe that this war concerns us."

Also in the equidistant attitude of President Lula da Silva in Brazil, for whom the Ukrainian President Volodímir Zelenski would have the same responsibility as Vladimir Putin, and in general in the nations that abstained from voting at the UN.

We would find ourselves before the response of the global South, a concept stemming from the former Third World, an essential geopolitical scenario in which Putin aspires to reset a Cold War 2.0.

from the

, the West against the rest, under the aegis of the “unlimited friendship” of Beijing and the Kremlin.

The president of Russia has discovered at the juncture of the war the opportunity to try to discredit the United States, the European Union and rise up as a champion of the global South.

Not long ago, the president indulged in an offensive of reproaches that opened the scene of the contest: "From the colonization of Africa to the opium wars in China... for centuries, the West has tried to bring freedom and democracy to the world … in fact, the exact opposite is true,” he said.

Putin, the one who invades and destroys the Ukraine with missiles, the one who lets its citizens freeze to death with the same indolence that Stalin let them starve to death ninety years ago, accused the West of being imperialist and hypocritical and proposed to end the hegemony of United States through a Moscow-led anti-colonial movement that counts,

This narrative, which finds a receptive environment in the feelings of grievance in the global South, perceives human rights as one more tool of the moral supremacism historically exercised by white Westerners who selectively blame third countries, according to their interests.

Opinion shared by Beijing.

For the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, human rights lack universality as they are culturally relative, dependent on different local perspectives, and detrimental to the collective interests that ultimately define the common good.

It is the debate on "Asian values" launched at the end of the 90s by the then president of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew,

according to which the granting of individual liberties was an inappropriate decision for Asian societies and in general for non-Western countries that prioritized social stability as the foundation of economic growth.

The Singapore model, a strong state, proven economic success and civic restrictions—an illiberal democracy—would provide the alternative model.

In this line, and in defense of their traditions, Saudi Arabia and Iran positioned themselves, considering that the rights conflicted with the principles of Islamic law, especially with regard to the condition of women.

would provide the alternative model.

In this line, and in defense of their traditions, Saudi Arabia and Iran positioned themselves, considering that the rights conflicted with the principles of Islamic law, especially with regard to the condition of women.

would provide the alternative model.

In this line, and in defense of their traditions, Saudi Arabia and Iran positioned themselves, considering that the rights conflicted with the principles of Islamic law, especially with regard to the condition of women.

Arguments these questionable.

The text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights collects the voices of men and women of diverse origin, among which stands out the former head of the Chinese delegation to the UN and vice president of the commission in charge of drafting it, Peng Chun Chang .

Committed to the purpose of uniting the moral principles of the different philosophical traditions, Chang came to affirm that the Declaration reconciled the ideas of Confucius and Thomas Aquinas.

In any case, the letter represents a greater consensus than that of any regime that refutes it.

On the other hand, it is true that rights are often advocated from double standards and in an unnecessary tone of instructive preaching.

European States, by raising the banner of rights in their foreign policy, recurrently contradict themselves, for example, by exporting weapons to non-democratic regimes, such as Qatar.

Interests and ideals marry with difficulty, since the coherence between intentions, decisions and actions is a puzzle that is difficult to fit.

It was experienced at the time by the progressive mayor of Cádiz, José María González,

, when the signing of a contract to build corvettes between the shipping company Navantia and Saudi Arabia placed him in the dilemma of having to choose between “defending bread or defending peace”.

He kept the bread.

Hypocrisy is denounceable and correctable, but in no case does it detract from the legitimacy of rights.

Neither the fold, a widely shared phenomenon.

In this sense, few cases currently attract as much attention as the conforming silence of Muslim countries towards the treatment given by China to the Uyghur Muslim minority or the indifference in the Middle East in the face of the brutal repression of the Ayatollahs' regime for the protests of the last few weeks in Iran.

Criticism of rights comes mostly from authoritarian leaders and is convenient for illiberal States that resort to anti-Western rhetoric to annul a central aspect of them, the recognition of the individual as a political subject.

The rights debate is not a matter of

, but a question that confronts tradition and modernity.

The affirmation of freedom is present in all cultures, but exclusively: for the elites, for God (or the gods) and his intermediaries, for the rulers who decide for the collective.

The West crafted rights against their traditions.

What is new, what is recent, the great leap from tradition to modernity, resides in the consideration of the egalitarian nature of freedom, the possibility that ordinary people can decide on the decisions of the rulers that affect them, and thereby legitimize the exercise of power.

This is what is happening in the protests in Iran and China, two countries whose governments question the universality of rights due to their cultural nature.

An unexpected turn in the global expansion of authoritarianism that seemed to reinforce the theses of Beijing and Moscow about the inescapable decline of liberal democracy.

Evidence of the vulnerabilities of the “dictator's dilemma” exposed by Andrew J. Nathan: due to their closed nature, dictatorships make more mistakes than liberal democracies;

if they open up to be more efficient, they give rise to a demand for greater freedoms; if they do not, they are answered by protests in an escalation of contestation-repression.

In Iran, young people demonstrate under the clamor of "woman, life, freedom" and in China they exclaim "we want freedom!", because as the Indian Nobel Prize winner in economics, Amartya Sen, writes in

"The supreme value of liberty is a powerful universalist presumption.”

It could not be less in the global South.

Eva Borreguero

is a professor of Political Science at the Complutense University of Madrid and author of the book

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