Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 10. december 2012 / Time Line December 10, 2012
Version 3.59. December 2012, 11. December 2012
12/10/2012
FNs
menneskerettighedsdag.
12/12/2012
Human Rights
By John Scales Avery
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations
adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 48 nations voted
for adoption, while 8 nations abstained from voting. Not a single
state voted against the Declaration. In addition, the General
Assembly decided to continue work on the problem of implementing
human rights. The preamble of the Declaration stated that it was
intended “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples
and nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of
society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive
by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and
freedoms.”
Articles 1 and 2 of the Declaration state that “all human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights”, and
that everyone is entitled to the rights and freedoms mentioned in
the Declaration without distinctions of any kind. Neither race
color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion,
national or social origin, property or social origin must make a
difference.
The Declaration states that everyone has a right to life, liberty
and security of person and property. Slavery and the slave trade
are prohibited, as well as torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading
punishments. All people must be equal before the law, and no person
must be subject to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. In
criminal proceedings an accused person must be presumed innocent
until proven guilty by an impartial public hearing where all
necessary provisions have been made for the defense of the
accused.
No one shall be subjected to interference with his privacy, family,
home or correspondence. Attacks on an individual’s honor are
also forbidden. Everyone has the right of freedom of movement and
residence within the borders of a state, the right to leave any
country, including his own, as well as the right to return to his
own country. Every person has the right to a nationality and cannot
be arbitrarily deprived of his or her nationality.
All people of full age have a right to marry and to establish a
family. Men and women have equal rights within a marriage and at
its dissolution, if this takes place. Marriage must require the
full consent of both parties.
The Declaration also guarantees freedom of religion, of conscience,
and of opinion and expression, as well as freedom of peaceful
assembly and association. Everyone is entitled to participate in
his or her own government, either directly or through
democratically chosen representatives. Governments must be based on
the will of the people, expressed in periodic and genuine elections
with universal and equal suffrage. Voting must be secret.
Everyone has the right to the economic, social and cultural
conditions needed for dignity and free development of personality.
The right to work is affirmed. The job shall be of a person’s
own choosing, with favorable conditions of work, and remuneration
consistent with human dignity, supplemented if necessary with
social support. All workers have the right to form and to join
trade unions.
Article 25 of the Declaration states that everyone has the right to
an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing, housing
and medical care, together with social services. All people have
the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood or old age. Expectant mothers are promised
special care and assistance, and children, whether born in or out
of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. Everyone has
the right to education, which shall be free in the elementary
stages. Higher education shall be accessible to all on the basis of
merit. Education must be directed towards the full development of
the human personality and to strengthening respect for human rights
and fundamental freedoms. Education must promote understanding,
tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial and religious
groups, and it must further the activities of the United Nations
for the maintenance of peace.
A supplementary document, the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on the
12th of December, 1989. Furthermore, in July 2010, the General
Assembly passed a resolution affirming that everyone has the right
to clean drinking water and proper sanitation.
Many provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for
example Article 25, might be accused of being wishful thinking. In
fact, Jean Kirkpatrick, former US Ambassador to the UN, called the
Declaration “a letter to Santa Claus”. Nevertheless,
like the Millennium Development Goals, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights has great value in defining the norms towards which
the world ought to be striving.
It is easy to find many examples of gross violations of basic human
rights that have taken place in recent years. Apart from human
rights violations connected with interventions of powerful
industrial states in the internal affairs of third world countries,
there are many cases where governmental forces in the less
developed countries have violated the human rights of their own
citizens. Often minority groups have been killed or driven off
their land by those who coveted the land, as was the case in
Guatemala in 1979, when 1.5 million poor Indian farmers were forced
to abandon their villages and farms and to flee to the mountains of
Mexico in order to escape murderous attacks by government soldiers.
The blockade of Gaza and the use of drones to kill individuals
illegally must also be regarded as gross human rights violations,
and there are many recent examples of genocide.
Wars in general, and in particular, the use of nuclear weapons,
must be regarded as gross violations of human rights. The most
basic human right is the right to life; but this is right routinely
violated in wars. Most of the victims of recent wars have been
civilians, very often children and women. The use of nuclear
weapons must be regarded as a form of genocide, since they kill
people indiscriminately, babies, children, young adults in their
prime, and old people, without any regard for guilt or
innocence.
Furthermore, recent research shows that a war fought with nuclear
weapons would be an ecological disaster. Smoke from burning cities
would rise to the stratosphere, where it would spread globally and
remain for a period of 10 years, blocking sunlight, destroying the
the ozone layer, and blocking the hydrological cycle. An all-out
war with thermonuclear weapons would essentially destroy all
agriculture for such a long period that most humans would die from
starvation. The damage to the biosphere would also be enormous. We
may ask: by what right do the nuclear nations threaten the world
with a disaster of these proportions? Would not a war fought with
nuclear weapons be the greatest imaginable violation of human
rights? We should remember that both war in general and the use of
nuclear weapons in particular violate democratic principles: The
vast majority of ordinary citizens prefer peace to war, and the
vast majority also long for a world without nuclear weapons.
We know that war is madness, but it persists. We know that it
threatens the future survival of our species, but it persists,
entrenched in the attitudes of mainstream newspaper editors,
television producers and filmmakers, entrenched in the methods by
which politicians finance their campaigns, and entrenched in the
financial power of arms manufacturers, entrenched also in the
ponderous and costly hardware of war, the fleets of bombers,
warships, tanks, nuclear missiles and so on. It is plain that if
the almost unbelievable sums now wasted on armaments were used
constructively, most of the pressing problems facing the world
today could be solved; but today the world spends more that 20
times as much on armaments as it does on development.
Today’s world is one in which roughly 10 million children die
every year from diseases related to poverty. Besides this enormous
waste of young lives through malnutrition and preventable disease,
there is a huge waste of opportunities through inadequate
education. The rate of illiteracy in the 25 least developed
countries is 80%, and the total number of illiterates in the world
is estimated to be 800 million. Meanwhile every 60 seconds the
world spends roughly 3 million dollars on armaments. The millions
who are starving have a right to food. The millions of illiterates
have a right to education. By preferring armaments to development,
we deny them these rights.
It is time for civil society to make its voice heard. Politicians
are easily influenced by lobbies and by money, but in the last
analysis they have to listen to the voice of the people. We have
seen this recently in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. We
should try to learn from the courage of the people of these
countries who have defied guns and tanks to demand their human
rights. No single person can achieve the changes that we need, but
together we can do it: together we can build the world that we
choose.
No one living today asked to be born in a time of crisis, but the
global crisis of the 21st century has given each of us an enormous
responsibility: We cannot merely leave things up to the
politicians, as we have been doing. The future is in our own hands:
the hands of the people, the hands of civil society. This is not a
time for building private utopias or cultivating our own gardens.
Today everyone has two jobs: Of course we have to earn a living,
but in addition, all of us have the duty to work actively, to the
best of our abilities, to save humanity’s future and the
biosphere.
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