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Human rights are not self-evident in many countries, as they were developed in a genealogy of Western Enlightenment philosophy against the background of Christian ethics, based on the dignity of the human person. The principal objections to human rights are thus their association with Western colonialism characterised by a hegemonic paternalism vis-à-vis other cultures. If human rights are to be accepted worldwide, they must be justified anew from the perspective of all of the cultures and visions of the world. To this end, ’open global dialogues’ are proposed with the goal of reaching a global consensus in which the equal moral status of the persons concerned is already considered in the ethical justification. In order to institutionalise universal human rights, a new sustainable global social contrast is proposed, which makes them the undisputed constitutional basis of the world order.