Multiculturalismo e direitos humanos: o confronto entre a universalidade e o relativismo cultural

Abstract

With the phenomenon of globalization and the accelerated development of means of transportation, technologies and communication, different regions of the world were brought together, enabling the approximation of people from different cultures, resulting in another phenomenon: the multiculturalism. Furthermore, it is a fact that all human beings are holders of basic rights, which could never be relativized or even violated, precisely because they are directed to each and every individual – they are the so-called Universal Human Rights. Thus, it is from the universality, main characteristic of the Human Rights, that the scope of these rights encompasses all human beings anywhere in the world. However, according to cultural relativism, a place where this universality does not exist, local knowledge has more validity than an international order regarding the rights of every individual. The main purpose of this work is to determine how to proceed before the conflict of interests between universality and cultural relativism, so that Universal Human Rights are respected and considered within each culture, having as basic support, the foundation of Human Rights, because both the existence of these Human Rights and the definition of the rights that will compose this set, are due to the dignity of the human person. Thereunto, a bibliographical, documentary and theoretical research was carried out through deductive method, and as technique, the textual and interpretative analysis.