Are My Rights Really All That Different From Yours?

In a post on Change.org's Humanitarian Relief blog last week, Neha Erasmus, a seasoned international NGO worker, engages in a back-and-forth with Michael over her critiques of the Save Darfur movement, and human rights advocacy more broadly. In one of the posts, she argues:

"While I agree that there are basic shared human principles or ‘truths', I don't think they have been captured in human rights discourse, which is the guiding foundation for ‘international' activism. Human rights discourse is an essentially individualistic framework, whereas most cultures of the global South (or third world) are formed on a communitarian value system."

This is an oft-expressed criticism of "human rights," which certainly has validity. However, I fail to see, when looking at the specifics of a situation like Darfur, how the distinction between individual and communitarian value systems actually plays out --- or how drawing the distinction, writ large, is a legitimate criticism of human rights advocacy in the specific context of Darfur.

Among the first rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are the rights over one's own existence and physical well-being. How are the rights to "life, liberty and security of person," to be free from slavery or servitude, and not to be subjected to torture any different in a communitarian value system, than in one that focuses on the individual? What are the implications, in practice, of this supposed distinction?

Despite our great global diversity, I agree with Michael: "values differ, but only to an extent." To say that "most cultures of the global South (or third world) are formed on a communitarian value system" is not to say that the rights advocated for by Western activists on Darfur --- which is essentially centered on the protection of civilians (non-combatants) from massacres and other violent abuse at the hands of the government and its proxies --- do not also apply within such systems.

More broadly, if we accept that some social value systems might view certain forms of violence (against women, for instance) differently, are we protecting cultures, or trapping people in them?  Where do we draw the line?