More at https://www.standup4humanrights.org
“We are in the presence of a crime without a name.” Winston Churchill, 1941
Back to the time in 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first introduced to the world, just 3 years after WWII. So, the Universal Declaration responded to the horrors of WWII by providing a comprehensive and indivisible conception of human rights. But – Who created it? What was written in the content? And Whose Rights included?
The issue of interpretations has just aforementioned above is the reason for the possibility of the universal values whether being universal or underwhelmed. The mission of the document remains the significance of its values or just to resolve the war aftermaths. In other words, whether or not it is a discovery or an intervention of human rights.
In this understanding and why the UDHR caused controversies, it is necessary to examine the result of the ratification. At that time, there were of 58 member states with 50 ratified the UDHR while 8 abstained including the Communist abstentions due to the rights of the individual and the state, the Saudi Arabian abstention due to the issues of equal marriage rights and freedom of religion, and the South African abstention because of Apartheid.
Looking a bit into the detail, for example, The Saudi abstention was based on its claim that the declaration violated Sharia law. In particular, the kingdom objected to Article 18, which states that everyone has the right “to change his religion or belief”; and to Article 16, which states in part that “men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.”
The Yugoslav representative (the country of Yugoslavia) – one of the abstentions, pointed out that the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 (this is the French Declaration of Rights) might have been drawn upon such a basis. At that time it represented a revolt against the feudal slavery of man and was the expression of a new and progressive concept of individual freedom. However, the individualistic doctrine which had liberated man from feudal slavery, at the end of the eighteenth century, had re-introduced that slavery in the course of the social development which had taken place during the second half of the nineteenth century, and in particular during the current century, within the framework of a new social capitalistic order which had brought man into a situation of dependence and economic subjugation. In theory, he was entitled to all kinds of human rights, but in reality, the enjoyment of those rights was not fully granted.
Eventually, his delegation felt that the principles of human rights set out in the declaration lagged behind the social progress achieved in modern times; and that they did not grant full juridical and social protection to man.
Furthermore, it is notwithstanding that the birth of the ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights – this is, of course, applied to the regional context, on 18 November 2012 the ‘Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD). ASEAN has existed since 1967 and as a result allows Southeast Asia to be identified as a ‘region’ comparable with other regions such as Africa, the Americas and Europe which have been seen as such in human rights terms for over 40 years. The existence of the African, American and European human rights institutions makes regional inter-State cooperation appear to be an inherently effective way of establishing and implementing international human rights norms.
Beside recent ASEAN activity amounts either to political rhetoric or has potential to fragment the human rights norms, ASEAN human rights mechanism as Hashimoto has written that: “Regional human rights mechanisms have proved to be more effective and useful in promoting and protecting human rights than the global … mechanisms available at the UN … because they cannot only be complementary to the UN system but can also reflect regional particularities (e.g. the needs, priorities and conditions of the regions). Regional human rights treaties are usually justified as essential elements in any successful international human rights system in a diverse, conflicted world.”
After all, the question should come to our attention is that why are there so many documents of human rights?
Before that, I would like to briefly mention one the idea of The Enlightenment Legacy of Human Rights for this answer. If the civilizations and ethical contributions of China, India, and the Muslim world towered over those of Medieval Europe, it is equally true that the legacy of the European Enlightenment, for our current understanding of human rights, supersedes other influences. And this is as Ishay – author of the book The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to The Globalization Era noted that “the necessary conditions for the Enlightenment, which combined to bring an end to the Middle Ages in Europe, included the scientific revolution, the rise of mercantilism, the launching of maritime explorations of the globe, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the emergence of a middle class. Thus these developments stimulated the expansion of Western power even as they created propitious prospects for the development of modern conceptions of human rights.”
In details, The Declaration of Independence 1776 (The United States) and The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen 1789 (The French Declaration of Rights), The Declaration of the Rights of Woman 1791 (written by Olympe de Gouges), then regional human rights declarations, and the UDHR 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her Promise of Human Rights that once the UN Charter recognized the Declaration, it based on its moral weight rather than the legal one. In critics, one of the moral philosopher – Nietzsche who concluded, “If there is nothing to morality but expressions of will, [then] my morality can only be what my will creates. There can be no place for such fictions as natural [or human] rights. Ishay stated that “while emphasizing a universal moral embrace, all great civilizations have thus tended to rationalize unequal entitlements for the weak or the “inferior.” Yet while such similarities are noteworthy, they should not overshadow one of history’s most consequential realities: it has been the influence of the West, including the influence of the Western concept of universal rights that has prevailed.”
That is about the moral aspect. What about contemporary globalization?
More at https://fra.europa.eu/en/news/2017/religion-and-human-rights-stronger-together
There is clear evidence that globalization coincides with a widening gap between the rich and the poor within societies, and between rich and poor countries, the information age has redefined and created new spatial relationship and opportunities for human rights. With the globalization of the economy and communications and the emergence of developing post-colonial states, new rights have been added to the human rights corpus. These include rights to a healthy environment, to sustainable development, to culture, to immigration, and to political asylum. And we are still not clear about whose rights are rights that right, AND where rights are abused but not abuse.
Therefore, briefly two questions:
- Why is the Declaration still considered as a standardized document about human rights?
- Do the narratives around the values of the UDHR exacerbate the world’s relationship?
References:
Andrew G, 2015, United Nations adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Dec. 10, 1948, https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/united-nations-adopts-universal-declaration-of-human-rights-dec-10-1948-216489
Doyle N. (2014) “The ASEAN Human Rights Declaration And The Implications Of Recent Southeast Asian Initiatives in Human Rights Institution-Building And Standard-Setting,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly. Cambridge University Press, 63(1), pp. 67–101. DOI: 10.1017/S0020589313000390.
Eleanor R, 1948, Promise of Human Rights, https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/articles/promiseofhumanrights.cfm
Hashimoto H, The Prospects for a Regional Human Rights Mechanism in East Asia, Routledge, 2004,
UN Research Guides, Adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://libraryresources.unog.ch/c.php?g=462664&p=3163053
The Digerati Politics 