Abstract. The article shows that human rights protection axiology in the contemporary world is based primarily on the perception of non-participatory (elitist) democracy. That perception presumes that the state bodies make the most important public decisions without active citizens’ participation. Therefore, the policy of interests, which is based on the decisions of majority and on the expression of intentions of the main political activity’s actors, becomes the value dominance in human rights protection. The dominant strategy of the elective state bodies is the constitutionalization of human rights’ norms aimed on their judicial protection. At the same time, citizens perceive human rights as established and bestowed by the state powers. The author argues that the disadvantage of such strategy is the permanent threat of human rights’ restriction coming from the state. In his opinion, it is necessary to prevent that threat not through making the particular institutional improvements, but through appropriating values of deliberative democracy. The author of article provides comparative analysis of the elitist and deliberative democracy values. The article demonstrates that the shift towards an emphasis upon communicative discourse in human rights’ axiology contributes to the development of the new strategy in human rights protection. Such strategy is based on the accommodation and articulation of the interests of public, which perceives human rights as a public good. Based on such assumption, the author describes different forms of manifestation of the deliberative democracy in human rights’ axiology. He underlines the value of citizens’ control and other forms of citizen participation for human rights protection. The author concludes about prospective viability of the participatory model of human rights protection in the contemporary world.
Keywords: human rights, human rights protection, axiology of human rights protection, non-participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, the dominant values of nonparticipatory democracy, the dominant values of deliberative democracy.