My PhD idea, as I wrote it for my Mum

Human rights. All kinds of people use them to get what they want: communists, capitalists, atheists, priests, and tribal leaders. And we cant prove that any of them are cheating when they do this. After all, there are human rights to religious freedom (even for Islamic fundamentalists? You must be joking), and even to annual paid holidays (even in capitalist economies? No-one takes these things seriously).

My question is whether it matters that everyone, whatever their views, talks about rights. Some people say it doesn't. They say its just another way of doing politics. Others, however - and in some ways I agree with them - say it does matter. They say that talking this way - about my rights instead what is right, for example - encourages people and groups to think only of their needs and desires, and never of sacrifices or the greater good.

This is easy to say, but difficult to show or prove. I would like to try though. I want to look at three recent political disputes in Africa (one in Namibia, one in Botswana and one somewhere else - to be decided, maybe northern Uganda) that ended up being decided in human rights courts. I would like to compare what actually happened with what might have happened if these cases had been settled in the 'old way' (i.e. before the end of the Cold War and the founding of the new human rights courts).

For example, the Botswana case involves a struggle between the government and some semi-nomadic people who live in a reservation made by the British when they were colonial rulers. The government thinks, like the British used to in the nineteenth century, that these people are 'backward' and primitive and should change their way of living. In the 1970s, if anyone was actually listening, spokespeople for nomadic tribes used to say things like 'You shouldn't move us from our land because of our way of life is ancient, beautiful and in tune with nature. Not like your violent, capitalist, polluting Western ways'. Now the San (the Botswanan nomads), helped by a big international charity (Survival International), say 'You shouldn't move us from our land because its against international law. We have a human right to our indigenous culture, granted by United Nations treaties signed by Botswana'.

Now the dilemna here is that even if the old way was more noble - talking about principles instead of laws - it may not have helped vulnerable people at all. African governments, like all governments, often don't care about other people's principles or ways of life, but sometimes do the right thing when powerful Westerners turn up talking about violations of international law. Its not always so simple however. In the Botswana case, a relatively poor country was being asked to provide water supplies to an area of desert the size of Wales in order to help 600 people preserve their 'traditional' way of life. Could this money not have been spent more efficiently on poor people elsewhere in the country? Couldn't a way of integrating those 600 people into the rest of society in as least a painful way as possible have been found? Quite a few anthropologists certainly think so. The Botswanan government is basically an honest one, even if it has very Victorian views. Couldn't this have been solved by old-fashioned negotiation?

The big question for me, however, is did the fact that people were talking about 'their rights' stop them from even thinking about these things - about the bigger picture? This is especially important for the Western organizations that supported the nomads. I would try and found this out by interviewing people involved in these cases.

If it did stop them thinking about the greater good, finally, then is it too late to start thinking about another, better way of talking about and doing international politics today? Are people now just talking about human rights because its fashionable, even though they think that the whole idea is a bit dodgy, or has it already changed the way people think? Does an obviously better and realistic way even exist?