Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik explore and assess the potential forces of both the pros and cons, so that ways and means could be found to collectively set our global society on the path towards real freedom, justice, stability, and peace. A Certain Progressive and Democratic Global Framework All the above considerations take the whole subject matter under discussion into the world of politics of human rights. It is therefore deemed appropriate to look into how it is worked out in real life. For this purpose, two preliminary interrelated points are suggested here. The one is concerned with the nature and reality of human rights itself; the other with the creation of progressive and democratic international human rights instruments on the part of the United Nations. First, human rights are certainly not something to come by as gifts. They are, from Tony Evans’ historical observation, “concerned with establishing and maintaining the moral claims that legitimate particular interests”, or in Neil Stammers’ more precise explanation, “ideas and practices concerning human rights are created by people (sic) in particular historical, social, and economic circumstances”3 To put it strictly on empirical ground, they are the straightforward result of struggles, and hardly characteristic of any specific culture or tradition. Perhaps, Heiner Bielefeld’s analysis can very well help clarify the issue here: … Human rights did not develop as a “natural unfolding” of humanitarian ideas deeply rooted in the cultural and religious traditions of Europe. On the contrary, people in the West, too, had (and still have) to fight to have their rights respected. …These rights … are achievements brought about in long-lasting political conflicts during the process of modernization in Europe. 3 Tony Evans, “Introduction: power, hegemony and the universalization of human rights”, in Tony Evans, ed., Human Rights Fifty Years On, Manchester University Press, 1998, p. 4. 28 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND