UNs Declaration of Human Rights - Essay Example

UN’s Declaration of Human Rights Gone Awry: Ignoring the Victim and Shielding the Perpetrator With the global onslaught of war, poverty, violence against women and children, AIDS and racial discrimination, protecting human rights seems to be a daunting and elusive task for the United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is the pioneering document of modern human rights doctrine. Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, it was composed by an international committee of experts representing a ecumenical range of ethical traditions. However, human rights advocate point an accusing finger at the UN’s failure since the 1960s to protect human rights victims and worse, even shielded perpetrators for their abuses. During World War II, Western leaders sought to lay an institutional groundwork for a world in which the horrors of general war and massive human rights violations could not happen again – or at least would be much less likely to occur. Early in the war US president Franklin D. Roosevelt articulated a profound Western concern with human rights in his Four Freedoms speech (freedom from fear and from want, freedom of speech and of religion).1 Eleanor Roosevelt became one of the foremost advocates for a vigorous multilateral effort to place human rights principles among the foundation stones of the post-war order. As chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission when it drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), she told the General Assembly that the Declaration was "first and foremost a declaration of the basic principles to serve as a common standard for all nations. It might well become the Magna Carta of all mankind."2 Within the almost 60 years of adopting the UDHR, the UN could not deny their utter failure in protecting human rights victims as facts are clearly presented by the human rights organization, Amnesty International (AI). In AI’s annual report (2001), it described a worldwide phenomenon where the perpetrators of human rights violations are coddled in least 149 countries, which are not only confined to government officials and state agents, but most of these are United Nations members. The perpetrators are often family or community members or employers against whom governments fail to take action. Also, human rights abuses are committed on a daily basis by armed opposition and paramilitary groups.3 In actuality, AI annual report documented extrajudicial executions in 61 countries; judicial executions in 28 countries; prisoners of conscience in at least 63 countries; cases of torture and ill-treatment in 125 countries and human "disappearances" in 30 countries. However, Amnesty International believes that the true figures for all these statistics are much higher. The Amnesty International further informed that even though governments have adopted the rhetoric of human rights via the UN’s UDHR, only few have delivered this into a reality. Amnesty International deemed that there is much that governments can and should do: They can ensure that workers are protected from the worst forms of exploitation; they can combat impunity which is the poison that allows human rights violations to spread, to recur or to re-emerge; they can stop attacking human rights activists; they can, and must, live up to their human rights obligations.4 Reviewing its origins, the UDHR became the basis for several human rights treaties, including two Covenants on Political and Civil Rights as well as Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights. This is probably why international human rights advocacy groups have emerged in the 1960s (Amnesty International) and 1970s (Human Rights Watch) to scrutinize the UDHR as the basis of their activism. In contrast, the international community entirely ignored the convention against genocide until the early 1990s. During this time, numerous instances of genocide passed without international response, including massacres in Burundi in 1972, Pol Pot’s terror in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda from 1974 to 79, or the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1988 (Kuper 1981). Even after the end of the Cold War, the international community reacted only ex-post to the death of thousands in former Yugoslavia (1991-1993) and hundreds of thousands in Rwanda (1994). Instead of effective military interventions to halt the killings, the international community created ad-hoc tribunals. The belated, but successful NATO campaign in the Kosovo in 1999 did not occur under the direction of the UN Security Council and lacked widespread support from the international community.5 Non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International played a crucial role by adopting the UDHR as the sole basis for their activism. Since human rights standards proved to be far from self-enforcing and the United Nations was limited by its respect for state sovereignty, it was the strategic innovation within the non-state sector, which reenergized the global human rights campaign in the 1960s. The founders of Amnesty International were inspired by the idea of human rights and the Universal Declaration, but they were equally disappointed at the failure of the organization in charge of promoting those rights. The AI stands that the UDHR as a solution was a shift away from elite lobbying and standard setting to a more grassroots effort in exposing and challenging human rights violations around the world.6 This choice of strategy further showcased the UDHR and its individualist approach. As non-governmental organizations became prominent evaluators in the human rights arena, their mandates and strategies affected the normative evolution of the norms governing the issues area. Amnesty International developed strategies of human rights promotion, which focused on individual victims of human rights abuses and mobilized individual members in letter-writing campaigns. Images and stories of torture victims proved to be much more powerful instruments of mobilization than emotionless numbers plotting abuse patterns. The UDHR was broad enough to allow Amnesty International to essentially commandeer the document and develop a distinct (and narrow) mandate as well as strategies for day-to-day operations in defence of human rights. When events came in February 4, 1997 as five observers of the UN Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda were killed in an ambush in Rwanda, their tragic deaths focused international attention on an area of UN human rights activities that has been characterized by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as "one of the major innovations in the implementation of the human rights program in recent years."7 Human rights field operations are exemplary institutions indeed. But this is just a small part of UN human rights activities, which have expanded far beyond what even optimistic observers would have predicted twenty years ago. With the diversification of programs, negative criticism of UN’s human rights administration and implementation had intensified. 8 Previously, Jack Donnelly saw the UN human rights program as a strong promotional one, but with "weak monitoring procedures." Agreeing with him is Philip Allott who concluded that in regards with the UN human rights activities, that "the deterrent effect of bureaucratized human rights is negligible."9 If one takes a global view and considers that the UN human rights program is currently expected to provide about twice as many mandated activities as it did ten years ago, and that it is continuously asked to do so "within existing resources", the UN’s should be given high marks for what it has delivered since the inception of the UDHR. However, if one looks at each program in isolation and evaluates its effectiveness, the conclusion may be that there is not only much room for improvement, but that some programs are administrated pursuant to standards that have outlived their utility. With much oversimplification, existing UN mechanisms in the human rights area are implemented by two types of bodies: (1) the "Charter-based" bodies, in particular the UN Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, and (2) the so-called "treaty-based bodies," which are established by treaty and composed of independent experts. Both types of bodies have developed numerous mechanisms designed to strengthen human rights protection: investigative mechanisms (the "special procedures") and collective complaints mechanisms (the so-called 1503 procedure) by the Charter-based bodies, periodic state reporting and individual complaints procedures by the treaty bodies. Before assessing their effectiveness, one must remember that in an environment where consensus remains the mainstay of decision-making procedures, it is often the lowest common denominator that prevails.10 The majority of UN members accept the UDHR covenants and conventions as an essential legal code. Many countries have used the Declaration as a model for their own constitutions. Dozens of legally binding international treaties are based on the principles in the UDHR. In addition, the document has been cited as justification for numerous United Nations actions, including acts of the Security Council. Upon review of the course of events in the pursuit of the UN to protect peoples rights, it really failed big time. Tens of thousands of people are tortured, illegally imprisoned, and murdered by their governments every year. Millions of children work in sweatshop factories while others toil in the sex trade. Hundreds of millions of adults are denied the right to vote in open elections. The status of women in dozens of countries is little better than slavery, and sometimes is actual slavery. This is far a greater challenge on the United Nations that such widespread human rights violations take place. When they do, complaints are supposed to be dealt with by the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). Ironically, the UNCHR has been deemed to be of undue credibility. The commission has 53 member states, elected to serve two-year terms by the Economic and Social Council. But, among its members in 2005 are China, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe. These five nations are frequently cited by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as some of the worlds worst human rights abusers. As if adding insult to an injury, an outrageous blunder occurred in 2003 when Libya took over the chair of the Human Rights Commission. To think that their countrys leader, Colonel Muammar Gadhafi, has ruled the country with an iron fist since seizing control in a coup in 1969. 11 Aside from that, another blunder came. For the first time, members of the Economic and Social Council even had gall to remove the United States from the Human Rights Commission in 2002. Although the US have human rights violations of its own as it used its seat to block the criticism of Israel and to refuse support for affordable AIDS drugs in countries devastated by the disease, but to be told by the likes of Syria, Congo, and Libya that you dont belong on a body that oversees human rights is very ironic, since these countries commit far larger human rights violations than the US. In analysis, these nations want to be on the commission so they can shut down investigations that might be embarrassing to them. But, in doing so, they embarrass the entire United Nations. With this, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the commission at its annual meeting in Geneva in April 2005: "We have reached a point at which the commissions declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system." The findings of mentioned above may also give reason to reassess the current policy of the United Nations of promoting universal ratification of the major human rights treaties.12 Although universal ratification of a treaty can make a strong statement to the international community that the activity covered by the treaty is unacceptable, pressure to ratify, if not followed by strong enforcement and monitoring of treaty commitments, may be counterproductive. Indeed, it may be worthwhile to develop, consider, and debate more radical approaches to improving human rights through the use of new types of treaty membership policies.13 If countries gain some expressive benefit from ratifying human rights treaties, perhaps this benefit ought to be less easily obtained. Countries might, for example, be required to demonstrate compliance with certain human rights standards before being allowed to join a human rights treaty.14 This would ensure that only those countries that deserved an expressive benefit from treaty membership would obtain it. Or membership in a treaty regime could be tiered, with a probationary period during the early years of membership followed by a comprehensive assessment of country practices for promotion to full membership. Or treaties could include provisions for removing countries that are habitually found in violation of the terms of the treaty from membership in the treaty regime. Reforms aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of treaties through stronger monitoring provisions or tighter membership policies must of course be made with great caution. To the extent that such changes would increase the costs associated with joining treaties, it is possible that states will respond by simply opting out of the international human rights treaty system altogether. Regardless of whether or not stronger monitoring and tighter membership policies in the UN are put in place, reforms aimed at enhancing countries capability to comply with human rights treaties ought to be considered as well. The UN and regional organizations could play an important role in furthering treaty compliance and effectiveness if they not only better monitored treaties, but also provided countries with assistance in improving their human rights practices in order to meet treaty requirements. This assistance could include guidance in drafting effective legislation to protect rights and in crafting strategies for overcoming the institutional inertia that lies at the heart of intransigence in countries human rights practices. The UN could only learn from its mistakes in the past. It is about time the calls for formulating stronger and more specific rules in dealing with the issue of human rights be heeded. Human rights violations are happening every second at different corners of the world. It is only but the appropriate that the United Nations should fervently seek for the victim’s protection and not let the perpetrators of these crimes go unpunished. Read More