Chancen und Risiken post- und dekolonialer Menschenrechtskritik am Beispiel der Strafverfolgung aufgrund der sexuellen Orientierung in Uganda

Post- and decolonial approaches tend to subject human rights institutions to severe criticism. Far from providing protection from abuses of power, the human rights protected by the UN and regional systems in Europe and the Americas are said to entrench Western dominance over the Global South. On this view, human rights ought to abandon their Western roots and be reconstructed on a more inclusive basis, if they are not altogether irredeemable.
While certain aspects of this critique are well-founded, its often unrelenting zeal risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This danger is illustrated by Uganda's Anti-homosexuality Act 2003, which has been defended through arguments that can claim plausibility within post- and decolonial frameworks. The situation is all the more tragic since such critiques are indeed capable of deepening and broadening our human rights understanding. It is therefore necessary to delineate limits that prevent post- and decolonial critique from being instrumentalized for ends that most of its proponents do not endorse.