The Subject of Human Rights as Treated in Blood Diamond - Movie Review Example

It is through the application of this theory in the concrete conditions of the people of Sierra Leone that it would be proven that the idealist concept of human rights is insufficient in resolving the social issues of the country. The film Blood Diamond highlights the domestic conflict that occurred in Sierra Leone. The country is deeply divided by a civil war between rebel groups that fight an unstable national government with an army which includes a sizable number of children that have been kidnapped and forcibly conscripted.

In the film, the political causes of the conflict were not discussed much. What are presented quite well though were the effects of the civil war on the non-combatants and the children. It is apparent that the rebel groups do not seem to distinguish the civilians from the fighters, which, as insinuated, actually refer to the fact that the civil war in Sierra Leone was genocidal. There are basically two points in the war that is the film’s setting that that creates a very profound impact on the audience, especially for those who are educated on the subject of human rights.

First of all, the rebel group headed by Captain Poison does not mind about any human rights of civilians for as long as it is able to achieve its goal which is to free the country of a regime that it considers as oppressive. Secondly, the Revolutionary United Front, which is the rebel group that is fighting the Sierra Leonean government, is portrayed as insurgent force that employs child soldiers who were actually made up of children abducted in the course of the genocidal war. The UDHR stands on the premise that all men are born equal.

It is with this concept that the definitions of human rights are created and agreed upon by the signatory countries. However, it is also clear that this concept could hardly be justified or proven correct in the case of the human rights violations committed in Sierra Leone. In the movie Blood Diamond, it was obvious that men are not born with equal privileges and this could be ascertained in the field of politics and economics. Of the main characters in the film, Solomon Vandy represents those who were not born in a family or social group that possesses political and economic clout.

It is under this circumstance that he, his family and tribe were subjected to different forms ofhuman rights violations. Vandy personifies the sufferings of the Mende tribe, which was victimized by the RUF. His family was massacred and his son was taken away from him turned into a child soldier by the rebels. Even as Vandy manages to isolate himself and his family from social issues and the war, he cannot avoid witnessing the inequalities among peoples. When he tells his son Dia to study hard and that “English boys don’t go to school every day,” he articulates that the black African must go to school in order to succeed in life while the white European does not have to do so.

Vandy’s articulation essentially challenges the premise of the UDHR that all men are born equal. In this respect, the fundamental principle of the universality of human rights cam be argued against by people like Vandy, whose concept of the absence of rights is related with the reality that there is no equality in their society. Article III of the