After fifty years of independence from British colonial rule, Ghana made history by passing into law a bill aimed at combating domestic violence. This bill was met with vehement opposition by those who claimed that the women's movement it embodied was not in line with Ghanaian culture and that it borrowed uncritically from Western feminism. Using the rights concerns of women and minorities in Ghana as an entry point, the author discusses the interconnected nature of first and second generation rights and cultural relativism in universal rights discourses.