Unfortunately, social minorities, as vulnerable sections of the population, often face the greatest barriers when struggling to uphold their rights through judicial mechanisms. In this essay I shall first clarify what the right to justice incorporates and what the concept of ‘social minorities’ embodies in actuality.

This article aims to understand the concept of social minority, as it is utterly important to delve into the historical and legal aspects before explaining the notion. Human rights are most likely to be infringed by states even though they are protected by both national and international legal norms. The power is vested into people to change the tide of the battle and ensure equal rights for all minorities.

‘Justice’ has always been a sacred word for humankind. Within the philosophical system called Platonism, it has been argued that Justice is a virtue (Plato, p. 24). Many centuries later, Rawls, among other leading thinkers of the legal world, was regarding justice as ‘the first virtue of social institutions’ (Rawls, 1971, p. 3). Be that as it may, in today’s world there is still much controversy going on about the access to justice.

This article will examine the history of human rights, and then will focus on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a practice that continues to occur around the world, in the context of the conflicting doctrines of cultural relativism and universality. The paper will then question the true nature of human rights in the light of such violations: do they exist all around the world, or are they simply a Western product?