Asia, Enforceable Benevolence and the Future of Human Rights

<jats:p> What happens to human rights discourse in Asia will be of critical importance to the future of the whole human rights project. There are at least three possible scenarios: acceptance, rejection and transformation. Majority western opinion hopes for the first but expects the second. This article argues for the third, transformation. Central to the argument is the construction of an ideal type – enforceable benevolence – of a distinctively Asian human rights regime. Although this ideal type has been constructed on the basis of a consideration of Asian thought and practice, it has yet to be fully realized anywhere. In the meantime it represents a sociologically appropriate standard against which to judge the progress or not of Asian societies towards the realization of what I argue is their own vision of human dignity. </jats:p>