Slavery and Serfdom : Violation of Human Rights

  • Arushi Gupta, VIPS, New Delhi
  • December 20, 2020

Content :

A main assertion that has been attempted to demonstrate in this paper is that the extension of the notion of human rights is focused on privileging the conceptions of bad of the perpetrator and thus codifying them. If evil  is in the beholder\'s eye, then certain negative acts may be described as evil or not based on perception in a certain way. What particularly distinguishes the connection between evil and human rights is that there is a continuing reification of some meanings of evil within an academic framework that is frequently declared to be highly relativist on moral issues. In the defence of human rights and equality, this reification is significant, but it is not very effective in examining phenomena such as slavery , serfdom in that the experiences of slaveholders or serfs are either overlooked or discounted. Contrastingly, in viewing this phase of reification, slavery is extremely useful because slavery has been described and redefined several times over the years. The aim of this paper is to explain the terms Slavery and Serfdom which are very often used interchangeably, to draw a comparative analysis between the two conditions and the nexus between the two, how both of the conditions have been violative of human rights.

Keywords :- Slavery, Serfdom, Human Rights, Violation