new agendas within international relations. Therefore, naturally, there are disputes regarding everything from defining a human rights violation to the near impossible task of finding ways to stop human rights violations. These disputes are spelled out in the multiple and very different theories proposed by scholars, academics and state actors.
             These theories do not cause human rights violations, although some states may use a theory such as cultural relativism to defend their actions, such as in the Bangkok Declaration, I believe the cause of human rights violations lies much deeper in the nature of human beings. The human species has always, as far back as history can take us, competed against one another for power, land, resources, pride, religion and so on. Men like Hitler and Amin are not products of theories; rather they are products of humanity. With human nature being an impossible thing to control, we must overcome it by going beyond it in an attempt to allow humans and more broadly states to achieve their goals without harming others. This is the integral role that human rights theories have assumed. Therefore, although human rights theories are not responsible for the causes of human rights violations, they are the means by which we can attempt to stop those violations, and the foundation on which human rights issues can be advanced.
             The human rights theories that I intend to discuss and draw ideas from include cultural relativism, universalism, and communalism. I will discuss each in their pure form as well as the toned-down versions such as Bhikhu Parekh's non-ethnocentric universalism. From these theories, I intend to present certain criticisms of each, mainly of universalism, and certain strengths of each, thus deriving the best parts of each theory to create my own.
             The universalistic view of human rights is based on the assumption that all human beings are the same on some identifiable level of their ...