Human Rights Issues in Tourism Development - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 378

13 Human Rights Issues in

Tourism Development

Edward Nkyi and Atsuko Hashimoto

Introduction

As a human activity, tourism is intimately intertwined with human
rights. The tourism industry exists because of the existence of 'human
beings'. Every year, more than a billion of the world's population travel either
within or across countries for purposes of relaxation, sight-seeing, fun,
adventure and more. As the industry continues to grow year after year, sev-
eral human rights issues have emerged in the tourism and development dis-
course involving tourists, the industry and destination countries. However,
much of what has been written has focused more on the impacts of tourism,
with few studies specifically addressing human rights issues that affect tour-
ism development. This chapter is written to help address this lack of litera-
ture, the purpose being to discuss human rights issues in tourism and how
they affect tourism development.
Against this backdrop, this chapter will first explore the concept of
human rights from different angles: origin and evolution of concepts, con-
temporary definitions and examples, and the often-contested discourse of
universalism versus relativism of human rights. The chapter then will
focus on human rights issues in tourism development from various per-
spectives concerning host populations, before moving on to the concerns
of human rights issues with respect to tourists and also the role of multi-
national corporations, which has been attracting significant attention in
the last decade or so. The chapter will conclude with some examples of
human rights violations in tourism development which are not impossible
to control or alleviate, in the hope that further discussions will be gener-
ated as to how human rights issues can be addressed and promoted in
tourism development.

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