Ontology and human rights

Abstract

This paper examines the question of whether human rights are related to ontology. It examines perspectives on this question from human rights theories in the Western and African traditions of philosophy and defends the thesis that a good account of human rights requires an explicit ontology of the human, and that taking this seriously engenders divergent conclusions about what rights are. It then proceeds to claim that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights adds substantive features to the International Bill of Human Rights, and that the Charter expresses Kwame Gyekye’s ontology of the human being.