1 DRAFT: May 28, 2014 Human rights, Southern Voices, and ‘traditional values’ at the United Nations Christopher McCrudden * I. Introduction I first saw the musical Fiddler on the Roof in the early 1970s, when my mother and I temporarily escaped the mayhem of Belfast (then on the verge of near civil war and immersed in sectarian bloodshed) for a long weekend in the comparative safety and tranquility of Dublin. Seeing Fiddler at that time, in these conditions, was particularly poignant. On the surface, it was deeply particularistic, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905 in the shtetl of Anatevka, at a time when the Jewish community there has to cope with deep anti-semitism and occasional pogroms. Yet, sentimentalized though it was, it spoke of issues that appealed across ethnicities, religions, localities, and generations: ethnic violence not far from the surface, expulsion, and displacement; themes that resonated with our experiences. The dominant theme of Fiddler, also universal and just as relevant for us now, was the relationship between tradition and modernity, a relationship that is encapsulated in the constant worries that the father, Tevye, has about his five daughters. As the drama unfolds, his three eldest daughters successively choose husbands, each more distant than the last from the Jewish shtetl traditions that he values. This occasions wry reflections from Tevye on the pressures that modernity puts on the traditional values of his community and his faith. How is it possible to keep the latter in the face of the former? Memories of Fiddler flooded back when I read the texts of the ‘traditional values’ resolutions, passed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2009, 2011, and 2012, which were the result of a highly controversial initiative spearheaded by Russia. 1 Do these ‘traditional values’ underpin human rights? If not, why are religious traditions or, indeed, any traditional values worth preserving at all? Why are they valuable from the point of view of adherents to that * FBA; Joint Straus/Senior Emile Nöel Fellow, NYU Law School (2013-14); Leverhulme Major Research Fellow (2011-14); Professor of Human Rights and Equality Law, Queen’s University Belfast; William W Cook Global Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. 1 The United Nations Human Rights Council passed the resolution A/HRS/16/L.6 entitled ‘Promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms through a better understanding of traditional values of humankind’, 24 th March 2011. Previous resolutions: 12/21 of 2 October 2009. Later resolution: 21/3 of 27 September 2012.