Responsibility : a common key-notion in a world of diversity

Edith Sizoo, June 2008

Building on the excellent presentation of the theme for the workshop on “Uniting in Responsibilities in a Culture of Rights”, this position paper does not need to emphasise any further the necessity of linking Human Rights with the notion of Responsibility. As a well-known Professor of law, François Ost, formulated it : “Responsibility is the hidden face of Human Rights”.¹

Rather, I would like to draw attention to the necessity of making explicit what exactly is understood by the idea of “responsibility”.

In a period of increasing international communication -which by its very nature is intercultural- there is a tendency to use concepts which are supposed to be understood in the same way by communities rooted in a great variety of different histories and cultural contexts all over the world. Notions like “democracy”, “(good) governance”, “transparency”, “solidarity”, “development”, “human rights”, “terrorism” etcetera are used carelessly as if they are culturally understood and practised in the same way everywhere. This leads to numerous intercultural misunderstandings and conflicts.

¹F. Ost, H.Dumont, S. van Drooghenbroeck, et al. (dir), {La Responsabilité, face cachée des droits de l’homme), Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2005.

Downloads: responsibility_a_common_key-notion.pdf (30 KiB)

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