Cultural relativism is the idea that a person’s beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person’s own culture, and not be judged against the criteria of another. It was established in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students.
Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: “civilization is not something absolute, but is relative, and our ideas and conceptions are true only so far has our civilization goes”. Challenging the attitude that Western cultures were obviously superior, the Boasians insisted that a society’s customs and ideas should be described objectively and understood in the context of that society’s problems and opportunities. This approach is known as cultural relativism. However, Boas did not coin the term.
Cultural relativism was, in part, a response to Western ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which one consciously believes that one’s people’s arts are the most beautiful, values the most virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful. Franz Boas, originally trained in physics and geography argued that one’s culture may mediate and thus limit one’s perceptions in less obvious ways. Boas understood “culture” to include not only certain tastes in food, art, and music, or beliefs about religion; he assumed a much broader notion of culture, defined as: The totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behavior of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually in relation to their natural environment, to other groups, to members of the group itself, and of each individual to himself.
This view of culture confronts anthropologists with two problems: first, how to escape the unconscious bonds of one’s own culture, which inevitably bias our perceptions of and reactions to the world, and second, how to make sense of an unfamiliar culture. The principle of cultural relativism thus forced anthropologists to develop innovative methods and heuristic strategies.
As a methodological tool:
Boas and his students realized that if they were to conduct scientific research in other cultures, they would need to employ methods that would help them escape the limits of their own ethnocentrism. One such method is that of ethnography: basically, they advocated living with people of another culture for an extended period of time, so that they could learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially, into that culture. This is most obvious in the case of language. Although language is commonly thought of as a means of communication, Boas called attention especially to the idea that it is also a means of categorizing experiences, hypothesizing that the existence of different languages suggests that people categorize, and thus experience, language differently (this view was more fully developed in the hypothesis of Linguistic relativity).
In this context, cultural relativism is an attitude that is of fundamental methodological importance, because it calls attention to the importance of the local context in understanding the meaning of particular human beliefs and activities.
Comparison to moral relativism
According to Marcus and Fischer, people misinterpreted cultural relativism to mean that all cultures are both separate and equal, and that all value systems, however different, are equally valid. Thus, they argue that people came to use the phrase “cultural relativism” erroneously to signify “moral relativism”.
People generally understand moral relativism to mean that there are no absolute or universal moral standards.
The nature of anthropological research lends itself to the search for universal standards (standards found in all societies. In 1944 Clyde Kluckhohn attempted to address this issue: The concept of culture, like any other piece of knowledge, can be abused and misinterpreted. Some fear that the principle of cultural relativity will weaken morality. The principle of cultural relativity does not mean that because the members of some savage tribe are allowed to behave in a certain way that this fact gives intellectual warrant for such behavior in all groups. Cultural relativity means, on the contrary, that the appropriateness of any positive or negative custom must be evaluated with regard to how this habit fits with other group habits. Having several wives makes economic sense among herders, not among hunters. While breeding a healthy scepticism as to the eternity of any value prized by a particular people, anthropology does not as a matter of theory deny the existence of moral absolutes. Rather, the use of the comparative method provides a scientific means of discovering such absolutes. If all surviving societies have found it necessary to impose some of the same restrictions upon the behavior of their members, this makes a strong argument that these aspects of the moral code are indispensable.
Although Kluckhohn was using language that was popular at the time (e.g. “savage tribe”) but which is now considered antiquated and coarse by most anthropologists, his point was that although moral standards are rooted in one’s culture, anthropological research reveals that the fact that people have moral standards is a universal. He was especially interested in deriving specific moral standards that are universal, although few if any anthropologists think that he was successful.
There is an ambiguity in Kluckhohn’s formulation that would haunt anthropologists in the years to come. It makes it clear that one’s moral standards make sense in terms of one’s culture. He waffles, however, on whether the moral standards of one society could be applied to another. Four years later American anthropologists had to confront this issue head-on.
Statement on human rights
The transformation of cultural relativism as a heuristic tool into the doctrine of moral relativism occurred in the context of the work of the Commission of Human Rights of the United Nations in preparing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
Melville J. Herskovits prepared a draft “Statement on Human Rights” which Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association revised, submitted to the Commission on Human Rights, and then published. The statement begins with a fairly straight forward explanation of the relevance of cultural relativism:
The problem is thus to formulate a statement of human rights that will do more than phrase respect for the individual as individual. It must also take into full account the individual as a member of a social group of which he is part, whose sanctioned modes of life shape his behavior, and with whose fate his own is thus inextricably bound.
The bulk of this statement emphasizes concern that the Declaration of Human Rights was being prepared primarily by people from Western societies, and would express values that, far from being universal, are really Western:
Today the problem is complicated by the fact that the Declaration must be of world-wide applicability. It must embrace and recognize the validity of many different ways of life. It will not be convincing to the Indonesian, the African, the Chinese, if it lies on the same plane as like documents of an earlier period. The rights of Man in the Twentieth Century cannot be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture, or be dictated by the aspirations of any single people. Such a document will lead to frustration, not realization of the personalities of vast numbers of human beings.
Although this statement could be read as making a procedural point (that the Commission must involve people of diverse cultures, especially cultures that had been or are still under European colonial or imperial domination), the document ended by making two substantive claims:
- 1. Even where political systems exist that deny citizens the right of participation in their government, or seek to conquer weaker peoples, underlying cultural values may be called on to bring the peoples of such states to a realization of the consequences of the acts of their governments, and thus enforce a brake upon discrimination and conquest.
- 2. Worldwide standards of freedom and justice, based on the principle that man is free only when he lives as his society defines freedom, that his rights are those he recognizes as a member of his society, must be basic.
These claims provoked an immediate response by a number of anthropologists. Julian Steward (who, as a student of Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, and as a professor at Columbia University, was situated firmly in the Boasian lineage) suggested that the first claim “may have been a loophole to exclude Germany from the advocated tolerance”, but that it revealed the fundamental flaw in moral relativism: Either we tolerate everything, and keep hands off, or we fight intolerance and conquest—political and economic as well as military—in all their forms.” Similarly, he questioned whether the second principle means that anthropologists “approve the social caste system of India, the racial caste system of the United States, or many other varieties of social discrimination in the world.
Steward and others argued that any attempt to apply the principle of cultural relativism to moral problems would only end in contradiction: either a principle that seems to stand for tolerance ends up being used to excuse intolerance, or the principle of tolerance is revealed to be utterly intolerant of any society that seems to lack the (arguably, Western) value of tolerance. They concluded that anthropologists must stick to science, and engage in debates over values only as individuals.
The news increasingly reports behaviors that Western countries consider to be violations of human rights. Examples range from jailing people for expressing certain political ideas to ethnic massacre. But faced with criticism from the West, people in other parts of the world are saying that the West should not dictate its ideas about human rights to other countries. Indeed, many countries say that they have different codes of ethics.
- Are the Western countries being ethnocentric by taking their own cultural ideas and applying them to the rest of the world?
- Should we instead rely on the strong version of the concept of cultural relativism, considering each culture on its own terms?
If we do that, it may not be possible to create a universal standard of human rights.
What we do know is that all cultures have ethical standards, but they do not emphasize the same things. For example, some cultures emphasize individual political rights; others emphasize political order. Some cultures emphasize protection of individual property; others emphasize the sharing or equitable distribution of resources. People in the United States may have freedom to dissent, but they can be deprived of health insurance or of food if they lack the money to buy them. Cultures also vary markedly in the degree to which they have equal rights for minorities and women. In some societies, women are killed when a husband dies or when they disobey a father or brother.
Some anthropologists argue strongly against cultural relativism. For example, Elizabeth Zechenter says that cultural relativists claim there are no universal principles of morality but insist on tolerance for all cultures. If tolerance is one universal principle, why shouldn’t there be others? In addition, she points out that the concept of cultural relativism is often used to justify traditions desired by the dominant and powerful in a society. She points to a case in 1996, in Algeria, where two teenage girls were raped and murdered because they violated the fundamentalist edict against attending school. Are those girls any less a part of the culture than the fundamentalists? Would it make any difference if most Algerian women supported the murders? Would that make it right? Zechenter does not believe that international treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, impose uniformity among diverse cultures. Rather, they seek to create a floor below which no society is supposed to fall.
Can the concept of cultural relativism be reconciled with the concept of an international code of human rights? Probably not completely. Paul Rosenblatt recognizes the dilemma but nonetheless thinks that something has to be done to stop torture and “ethnic cleansing,” among other practices. He makes the case that “to the extent that it is easier to persuade people whose viewpoints and values one understands, relativism can be a tool for change . . . a relativist’s awareness of the values and understanding of the elite makes it easier to know what arguments would be persuasive. For example, in a society in which the group rather than the individual has great primacy, it might be persuasive
Current debates
The debates over the “Statement on Human Rights”, then, was not merely over the validity of cultural relativism, or the question of what makes a right universal. It forced anthropologists to confront the question of whether anthropological research is relevant to non-anthropologists. Although Steward and Barnett seemed to be suggesting that anthropology as such should restrict itself to purely academic affairs, people within and without the academy have continued to debate the ways non-anthropologists have used this principle in public policy concerning ethnic minorities or in international relations.
Political scientist Alison Dundes Renteln has argued that most debates over moral relativism misunderstand the importance of cultural relativism. Most philosophers understand the Benedictine–Herskovitz formulation of cultural relativism to mean: [W]hat is right or good for one individual or society is not right or good for another, even if the situations are similar, meaning not merely that what is thought right or good by one is not thought right or good by another…but that what is really right or good in one case is not so in another.
Although this formulation clearly echoes the kinds of example anthropologists used in elaborating cultural relativism, Renteln believes that it misses the spirit of the principle. Accordingly, she supports a different formulation: “there are or can be no value judgements that are true, that is, objectively justifiable, independent of specific cultures.”
Renteln faults philosophers for disregarding the heuristic and critical functions of cultural relativism. Her main argument is that in order to understand the principle of cultural relativism, one must recognize the extent to which it is based on enculturation: “the idea that people unconsciously acquire the categories and standards of their culture.” This observation, which echoes the arguments about culture that originally led Boas to develop the principle, suggests that the use of cultural relativism in debates of rights and morals is not substantive but procedural. That is, it does not require a relativist to sacrifice his or her values. But it does require anyone engaged in a consideration of rights and morals to reflect on how their own enculturation has shaped their views:
There is no reason why the relativist should be paralyzed, as critics have often asserted. But a relativist will acknowledge that the criticism is based on his own ethnocentric standards and realizes also that the condemnation may be a form of cultural imperialism.
Renteln thus bridges the gap between the anthropologist as scientist (whom Steward and Barnett felt had nothing to offer debates on rights and morality) and as private individual (who has every right to make value judgements). The individual keeps this right, but the scientist requires that the individual acknowledge that these judgements are neither self-evident universals, nor entirely personal (and idiosyncratic), but rather took form in relation to the individual’s own culture.
Post-colonial politics
Boas and his students understood anthropology to be a historical, or human science, in that it involves subjects (anthropologists) studying other subjects (humans and their activities), rather than subjects studying objects (such as rocks or stars). Under such conditions, it is fairly obvious that scientific research may have political consequences, and the Boasians saw no conflict between their scientific attempts to understand other cultures, and the political implications of critiquing their own culture. For anthropologists working in this tradition, the doctrine of cultural relativism as a basis for moral relativism was anathema. For politicians, moralists, and many social scientists (but few anthropologists) who saw science and human interests as necessarily independent or even opposed, however, the earlier Boasian principle of cultural relativism was anathema. Thus, cultural relativism came under attack, but from opposing sides and for opposing reasons.
Political critique
On the one hand, many anthropologists began to criticize the way moral relativism, in the guise of cultural relativism, is used to mask the effects of Western colonialism and imperialism. Thus, Stanley Diamond argued that when the term “cultural relativism” entered popular culture, popular culture co-opted anthropology in a way that voided the principle of any critical function:
Relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror, who has become secure enough to become a tourist. Cultural relativism is a purely intellectual attitude; it does not inhibit the anthropologist from participating as a professional in his own milieu; on the contrary, it rationalizes that milieu. Relativism is self-critical only in the abstract. Nor does it lead to engagement. It only converts the anthropologist into a shadowy figure, prone to newsworthy and shallow pronouncements about the cosmic condition of the human race. It has the effect of mystifying the profession, so that the very term anthropologist (“student of man”) commands the attention of an increasingly “popular” audience in search of novelty. But the search for self-knowledge, which Montaigne was the first to link to the annihilation of prejudice, is reduced to the experience of culture shock, a phrase used by both anthropologists and the State Department to account for the disorientation that usually follows an encounter with an alien way of life. But culture shock is a condition one recovers from; it is not experienced as an authentic redefinition of the personality but as a testing of its tolerance … The tendency of relativism, which it never quite achieves, is to detach the anthropologist from all particular cultures. Nor does it provide him with a moral center, only a job.
George Stocking summarized this view with the observation that “Cultural relativism, which had buttressed the attack against racialism, [can] be perceived as a sort of neo-racialism justifying the backward techno-economic status of once colonized peoples.”
Defence by Clifford Geertz
By the 1980s many anthropologists had absorbed the Boasian critique of moral relativism, and were ready to reevaluate the origins and uses of cultural relativism. In a distinguished lecture before the American Anthropological Association in 1984, Clifford Geertz pointed out that the conservative critics of cultural relativism did not really understand, and were not really responding to, the ideas of Benedict, Herskovits, Kroeber and Kluckhohn. Consequently, the various critics and proponents of cultural relativism were talking past one another. What these different positions have in common, Geertz argued, is that they are all responding to the same thing: knowledge about other ways of life.
The supposed conflict between Benedict’s and Herskovits’s call for tolerance and the untolerant passion with which they called for it turns out not to be the simple contradiction so many amateur logicians have held it to be, but the expression of a perception, caused by thinking a lot about Zunis and Dahomys, that the world being so full of a number of things, rushing to judgement is more than a mistake, it is a crime. Similarly, Kroeber’s and Kluckholn’s verities – Kroeber’s were mostly about messy creatural matters like delirium and menstruation, Kluckholn’s were mostly about messy social ones like lying and killing within the in-group, turn out not to be just the arbitrary personal obsessions they so much look like, but the expression of a much vaster concern, caused by thinking a lot about anthrōpos in general, that if something isn’t anchored everywhere nothing can be anchored anywhere. Theory here – if that is what these earnest advices about how we must look at things if we are to be accounted as decent should be called – is more an exchange of warnings than an analytical debate. We are being offered a choice of worries. What the relativists – so-called – want us to worry about is provincialism – the danger that our perceptions will be dulled, our intellects constricted, and our sympathies narrowed by the overlearned and overvalued acceptances of our own society. What the anti-relativists – self-declared – want us to worry about, and worry about and worry about, as though our very souls depended on it, is a kind of spiritual entropy, a heat death of the mind, in which everything is as significant, and thus as insignificant, as everything else: anything goes, to each his own, you pays your money and you takes your choice, I know what I like, not in the couth, tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.
Geertz concludes this discussion by commenting, “As I have already suggested, I myself find provincialism altogether the more real concern so far as what actually goes on in the world.” Geertz’ defense of cultural relativism as a concern which should motivate various inquiries, rather than as an explanation or solution, echoed a comment Alfred Kroeber made in reply to earlier critics of cultural relativism, in 1949:
Obviously, relativism poses certain problems when from trying merely to understand the world we pass on to taking action in the world: and right decisions are not always easy to find. However, it is also obvious that authoritarians who know the complete answers beforehand will necessarily be intolerant of relativism: they should be, if there is only one truth and that is theirs. I admit that hatred of the intolerant for relativism does not suffice to make relativism true. But most of us are human enough for our belief in relativism to be somewhat reinforced just by that fact. At any rate, it would seem that the world has come far enough so that it is only by starting from relativism and its tolerations that we may hope to work out a new set of absolute values and standards, if such are attainable at all or prove to be desirable.
Governmental usage
Several countries have used cultural relativism as a justification for limiting the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite the World Conference on Human Rights rejecting it as a refutation of human rights violations.
A 2011 study by international legal expert Roger Lloret Blackburn, examining the Universal Periodic Reviews, distinguishes several different groups of nations:
- One group consists of nations where the current regime has been installed by revolution, and that deny the need for political plurality: China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cuba, and Iran.
- Another group are certain Islamic nations that adhere to sharia and certain traditional practices: Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan.
- A third possible group is nations that give special rights to specific groups: Malaysia, Mexico, Indonesia, and Colombia.
Extra Resource
Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights
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Human rights– the rights everyone has simply because one is a human being.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights– the current consensus on internationally recognized human rights
Can and should human rights be universal? Whose universe?
This line of questioning is behind many human rights controversies. Broadly, there are two positions:
1. “Universalists” believe that the same human rights should apply to everyone, regardless of their culture or background.
2. “Cultural relativists ” believe human rights should take account of cultural differences. Cultural relativism states that values are defined by local culture as opposed to global ideology. Cultural relativists argue that human rights were developed by Western countries and are based on Western morality. They should therefore not be imposed on non-Western societies that have different histories, cultures and levels of development.
Cultural Relativism is the view that moral or ethical systems, which vary from culture to culture, are all equally valid and no one system is really “better” than any other. This is based on the idea that there is no ultimate standard of good or evil, so every judgment about right and wrong is a product of society. Therefore, any opinion on morality or ethics is subject to the cultural perspective of each person. Ultimately, this means that no moral or ethical system can be considered the “best,” or “worst,” and no particular moral or ethical position can actually be considered “right” or “wrong.”
In response, universalists argue that ideals like liberty and security belong to all of us. They are critical of cultural relativist arguments, which they see as an attempt to justify oppression of minorities or defend harmful cultural practices.
Cultural relativism has been criticized as a means for nations to pick and choose which rights they are willing to uphold.
SO, there is a tension between human rights as entirely universal and not subject to modifications due to culture, on the one hand, versus human rights as affected by the cultural demands of specific contexts, on the other.
This tension (perhaps “collision”) between the idea of “universal human rights” as an objective truth, and the cultural relativism of diverse communities throughout the world brings up all sorts of complicated arguments about imperialism and colonialism, objective versus subjective truths, ethnocentrism and xenophobia.
READ: Attached below is a PDF extract from the entry on “Human Rights” in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. James Nickel briefly discusses the issue of “Universal Human Rights in a World of Diverse Beliefs and Practices.”
 Here are some examples where universalists and cultural relativists have clashed. 1. In 2010, Europe and the US put pressure on Malawi to free jailed homosexuals. This sparked widespread anger in Africa, where some people believe homosexuality is not part of African culture and so should be outlawed.
2. Female genital mutilation (FGM) occurs in different cultures in Africa, Asia and South America. Arguments for FGM are sometimes religious, sometimes cultural. But FGM is considered a violation of women’s and girl’s rights by much of the international community and is outlawed in some countries.
3. In parts of the Muslim world where Sharia law is practiced, clashes with the international human rights movement are frequent. For example, in late 2000, a 13- or 14-year-old unmarried girl in Zamfara state in northern Nigeria was accused of having sexual relations. Zamfara had adopted a very strict interpretation of Sharia and the girl was sentenced to be flogged. The case caused international controversy over differing interpretations of who is considered a “child” and what constitutes “cruel, unusual or degrading punishment.”
Gender equality is controversial. In many parts of the world girls do not have the same access to education as boys. 4. In some Maasai communities in Kenya and Tanzania, parents do not want to send their children to school, although primary schooling is compulsory in both places. Some Maasai believe boys should be herding cattle and girls should be helping in the house, and that this is sufficient education for them. Is this a violation of the child’s right to education?
5. Should people living with disability have the same rights as everyone else? Many families and communities appear to disagree, and people living with disability – especially mental disability – are hidden away and stigmatized.
6. In some societies, women may not inherit or own property. Is this discrimination and a violation of women’s rights? Or is it a legitimate and acceptable part of those societies’ way of life?
The chart below provides other case studies illustrating how the two claims manifest themselves in particular issues in particular places: Islamic (Sharia) law in Iran, women drivers in Saudi Arabia, female genital mutilation in African countries, homosexuality in Uganda.
ANALYTICAL TOOLS
Some writers have tried to reconcile the competing claims of Cultural Relativism and Universalism Here are some perspectives from the Jack Donnelly article, “Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights”
Accordingly, here are some analytical “tests” that can be used to evaluate claims of universalism or relativism:
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed. Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Article 15. (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16. (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Article 17. (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21. (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26. (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. Article 27. (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author. Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29. (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
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