Ireland: US president George Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair have "colonised" and "devalued" the language of human rights, Dr Joshua Castellino of NUI Galway's Irish Centre for Human Rights has said.
Marking the publication in Galway last night of a book he has co-written on minority rights in Asia, Dr Castellino said that the two leaders had sought to "abuse the value" of concepts developed through the UN over 50 years ago.
While he welcomed the deposing of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, imposition of a "western hegemony" and perpetration of atrocities in the name of "human rights" did not represent democracy, he said.
It would also make serious structural change far more difficult to achieve.
The EU has been using trade as a "very important hook" to encourage human rights, and the Irish Government should be more forthright in ensuring human rights are a central feature when discussing trade and development aid in Asian regions, Dr Castellino said.
Minorities in five Asian regions, including the Middle East, are disadvantaged, he says.
There is the dearth of a regional system for protection of human rights and the "ambivalence" of some Asian states towards existing systems, Dr Castellino and his co-author, Dr Elvira Dominguez Redondo, argue in their book.
Asia has no model similar to the African Union or the European Convention on Human Rights, and regional rivalries exacerbate the situation.
The authors analyse the principles and applications of law on minority law in China, India, Malaysia and Singapore, and engage in a comparative constitutional analysis of the four selected states.
"It is far more valid to compare China to India than to compare China to Ireland, because of population levels and local conditions, and we do identify certain models of good practice," Dr Castellino told The Irish Times.
"We have discovered local groups which are empowering their own people, and there are, for instance, certain legal models in China which are far superior to similar models in Europe, but the problem lies in implementation.
"The final benchmark can be judged by the protection of the most vulnerable," Dr Castellino adds, "otherwise, human rights are nothing more than a club for the more privileged."
The book's publication is one of a series of events taking place at a summer school on minority rights and indigenous peoples, hosted this week at NUI Galway by the Irish Centre for Human Rights.
Experts from India, Iran, Ireland, Chile, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa, Greece, Belgium and Britain have been participating.
Key speakers have included Prof Patrick Thornberry, one of 18 independent experts on the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, a Muslim feminist from Iran who was imprisoned for two months during a crackdown by the Iranian government on civil liberties, has also been speaking at the summer school.
Parallel events have included a special showing of the Irish film on Travellers, Pavee Lacken, and a discussion with its producers.
• Minority Rights in Asia by Dr Joshua Castellino and Dr Elvira Dominguez Redondo is published by Oxford University Press at £60