이 글은 2014년에 진행되었던 서울시민 인권헌장 제정과정의 시민참여 사례를 ‘참여민주주의’와 ‘인권의 정치’로 평가하고 그 의미를 파악하고자 한다. 여기에서 인권의 정치란 인권이 정치적인 수단으로 이용되는 것이 아닌, 그것 자체가 목적이 되는 이그나티에프(Ignatieff, 2001)의 ‘원칙있는 인권정치’와 폴 그리디(Gready, 2003)의 ‘역동적･포괄적 인권정치’로 정의한다. 시민들은 상향식 의견수렴에 대한 소박한 관심에서 인권헌장 제정과정에 참여하여 인권의 정치를 구현하는 시민대표로서의 역량을 키워갔다. 그러나 서울시는 시민위원들의 역량을 따라가지 못하면서 ‘원칙없는 인권정치’로 시민들의 권리를 침해하고 참여를 도구화한 결과를 가져오고 말았다.

This article aims to examine the case of the participation of Seoul-citizens in human rights charter-making process 2014 and evaluate it in light of the concepts of ‘participatory democracy’ and ‘human rights politics’. It defines the concept of ‘politics of human rights’ not as a political tool or instrument, but an end in itself, which is originated from the ‘principles of human rights politics’ by Michael Ignatieff (Ignatieff, 2001) and ‘dynamic and comprehensive politics of human rights’ by Paul Gready (Paul Gready, 2003). Many Seoul- citizens started to be interested in a bottom-up decision making process regarding Seoul human rights charter and finally became competent to be representatives upon realizing the true meaning of ‘politics of human rights’. However, the Seoul city government ended up with violating the citizens rights and made their participation in the process useless by dismissing the Seoul human rights charter proposal in the end. This paper argues that the Seoul city government’s denial of the Seoul human rights charter showed that the ‘politics of human rights’ in Seoul doesn’t possess any principles in terms of dealing with the issue of human rights charter. Besides, it also points out that the citizens’democratic and active participation in the charter making process was treated just as a mere political tool or instrument.