Sixty years into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and while much progress has been made in the field of human rights around the world, there are still many instances of violations of these rights in most parts of the world.
The unsatisfactory progress of human rights around the world has different causes. One of them is that some believe that human rights principles are based on Western standards and particularly European ones, and are not compatible with their national or religious culture. A group of un-democratic Islamic governments believe this. On the other hand, Islamic intellectuals have proven through religious logic that Islam is not at odds to human rights. These new Islamic thinkers, who are growing in number and who exist in growing numbers in every Islamic country and whose voice is heard loud and clear in these countries, have risen against dictatorships who use religion to justify their actions and impose tyranny on people.
What calls for pondering is that it is not just undemocratic Islamic countries that resort to cultural relativism to deny human rights, but governments that deny the existence of God and whose values are based on communist principles also refrain from accepting and implementing human rights standards through similar arguments. These countries claim that human rights have been defined on the basis of recognized values of a specific capitalist country and are thus not in harmony with socialist or communist values and because of this these countries permit themselves to violate human rights and crackdown on any opposing voice. For example, the use of computers is still not allowed in some of these countries, or some short-wave radios are not available to the public as an effort to prevent citizens from hearing non-official or non-government views.
The claims of these governments over cultural relativism are not proper either. Socialism is certainly not against the freedom of speech. A communist is not necessarily a dictator. It is dictators who interpret communism as such. So it appears that both belief in God and disbelief in God are both used as an excuse to suppress the rights of people.
Another impediment to the development of human rights during the last 60 years has been the weak performance of the United Nations, and particularly the Security Council. When the UN Charter was being written it was optimistically believed that most, if not all governments, represented their populace and were approved by them and so these governments would in fact pursue violations of human rights and enforce the rules.
But the reality is that in many cases, governments are not real representatives of their populace and cannot implement decisions that are demanded by the people of the world. In other words, how can you expect countries that regularly and repeatedly violate human rights to condemn other countries for their violations? The balance has been lost in the scale of human rights. To resolve this problem rather than depending solely on government, NGO cooperation and participation should be sought. I am of course talking about real NGOS that are created by people and managed by people and not those operated by governments. When complaints over the human rights violations of a country are investigated and debated at the United Nations, NGOs can participate in the discussions, present explanations and if necessary even participate in voting. We must now trust the public and have a United Nations with real representatives of people, i.e. people organizations.
Another cause for the non-progress of human rights is its utilitarian use. Some governments misuse the concepts of human rights and democracy and use them to promote their own political goals. In this regard, one can cite the political performance of the US government, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
Similarly, fighting terrorism and the maintenance of national security have in recent years become excuses for systematically violating human rights. Some governments curtail individual freedoms and increase their own authority on the pretext of national security. So we must find ways to expand “individual security” rather than “national security.” We must deny all governments from using this dangerous tool, particularly those governments that are not representative of their people and who use national security as a pretext to expand suppression and crackdown of people. We must once again remember the message in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that peace and security can only attained through the respect of human rights.
And finally, another important shortcoming in observing human rights is that until now the focus of the United Nations and international organizations has been to promote civil and political rights, and less on economic rights. A reason for the spread of poverty around the world is the result of this inattention. In this regard I propose that a new convention titled “The International Convention to Fight Poverty” be drafted and presented to the UN General Assembly for passage. The most important issue that must be considered in this convention is to encourage governments to reduce their military budgets. Creative policies must be designed so that financial resources of every country are spent on improving the lot of the people and not on the purchase and stockpiling of weapons. For example, it can be required that any country that adheres to this convention must reduce its military budget to a level that is lower than the country’s education and health budgets. It can be required that a country whose military budget exceeds that of its education and health budgets, would be denied international credit or loans. For example the World Bank would not be allowed to extend any loans to such a country. Also, the convention may provide that if a state cannot pay its foreign debts, a large part or all of its debt would be forgiven if the country dismantled its military and used only its police force to establish law and order. This way, small and poor countries would be encouraged to buy less armaments which would help in reducing regional and civil wars.
I know that such ideas may sound like dreams in a world that is full of unrest and the arms race is at a dangerous level. But I believe that today our challenge at the United Nations is to think in dreams and act realistically.
