HUMAN RIGHTS: A SAD ANNIVERSARY

By Mario Soares Reprint | | Print |

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LISBON, Dec 1 2004 (IPS) - For us in the 21st century, the fundamental reference for human rights is the Universal Declaration approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, writes Mario Soares, president of Portugal from 1986-1996. In this article, Soares writes,\’\’The world is awash in fundamentalism, by which I mean not only the Islamic variety but others as well: the evangelical fundamentalism of the United States which is on the rise in Africa and Latin America and has immense financial resources; and the orthodox Hebrew fundamentalism whose fundamental priority seems to be liquidation of the Palestinian state.\’\’ In addition to these \’\’religious\’\’ fundamentalisms, we must add market fundamentalism, the engine behind the globalisation without ethics that now dominates the planet and divides it between the rich and the poor, marginalising two-thirds of humanity. Whatever their differences, these fundamentalisms are alike in that they are destroying the world order grounded in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, for better or worse, animates our dream of equality of all people regardless of race, religion, or social conditions.

The entire fabric of current human rights theory derives from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen adopted in 1789 by the Constitutive Assembly formed by the French Revolution, which was inspired by the preamble of the Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776, which reads as follows: ”All men are created equal [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

The most distant antecedents are the Magna Carta (12th century) and the Bill of Rights of the English Revolutions of the 17th century.

However, for us in the 21st century, the fundamental reference for human rights is the Universal Declaration approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. This document, ratified by all member states of the UN was completed with various conventions, like those on political rights, socio-economic rights, and women’s rights.

During the Cold War, human rights were a banner persistently flown by the West to wear away at the Soviet Union. The Soviet bloc stressed the scandalous socio-economic inequality of the capitalist world– while the West emphasised freedom, primarily religious and political freedom. But already back then, the US maintained a clear and reprehensible double-standard when it came to human rights violations, particularly in Latin America, the most startling example being in Pinochet’s Chile.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world witnessed the extraordinary and non-violent collapse of communism — and underwent a 180-degree shift. The universality of human rights was proclaimed and democracy held to be a reality within reach of all peoples, as was perpetual peace, the old dream of Emmanuel Kant. What an illusion! The disintegration of Yugoslavia, ripped apart by ethnic and religious strife, and the Gulf War were the first signals of what awaited us.

Then came September 11, 2001, horror in its purest state, bringing to light the immense danger of Islamic and global terrorism and revealing the vulnerability of the sole superpower. Thus were we plunged into a troubling world in which human rights were consciously devalued and eroded under the pretext of security concerns. There is no doubt that the fight against global terrorism -or war, as Bush imprudently calls it- is an absolute imperative on which all must work firmly together. But this fight must be carried out with intelligence and critical awareness, high-quality information, and an understanding of the conditions and territory in which terrorism occurs.

The incubator of terrorism is underdevelopment, a lack of future, and attacks on the dignity of the Arab-Muslim populations. There can be no doubt that it must be fought with absolute respect for human rights. To do otherwise leaves terrorists and their opponents at the same moral level.

It is precisely in this area that the Bush administration has failed so conspicuously. The world now finds itself at the verge of a religious war, which amounts to a tremendous step backwards for civilisation. And the attempt to marginalise the United Nations was a tragic error that created a rift within the West: Europe could not accept this move, not only for strategic reasons but also because of the humanistic values that are at the very root of the construction of a single Europe. The violation of the rights of ”prisoners of war” in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan was a total breach of the Geneva conventions, including that on torture. It was an unpardonable error.

Today the world is awash in fundamentalism, by which I mean not only the Islamic variety but others as well: the evangelical fundamentalism of the United States which is on the rise in Africa and Latin America and has immense financial resources; and the orthodox Hebrew fundamentalism whose fundamental priority seems to be liquidation of the Palestinian state.

In addition to these fundamentalisms, which for convenience sake we will call religious, we must add the economic variety: market fundamentalism, which is the engine behind the globalisation without ethics that now dominates the planet and divides it between the rich and the poor, marginalising two-thirds of humanity.

Whatever their differences, these fundamentalisms are alike in that they are destroying the world order grounded in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, for better or worse, animate our dream of equality of all people regardless of race, religion, or social conditions. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)