Universal Concept of Human Rights - Essay Example

UNIVERSAL CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS by of the of the Introduction After the devastating consequences of the WWII, the United Nations (UN) came into existence On 24 October, 1945 as a intergovernmental global organization with the objective of protecting future generations from the havoc of global and domestic conflicts. The Charter of the UN formed 6 major bodies, including the Security Council, the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, an Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Trusteeship Council, and the Secretariat. The Charter of UN authorized ECOSOC to set up commissions in social and economic fields and for the protection of human rights, leading the formation of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in 1946. The Commission, under the chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was officially adopted by the UN representatives from all over the world on 10 December, 1948. The Declaration emphasized that human rights are universal regardless of person’s nationality, religion, race, cultural, economic, and social background. However, since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the world has significantly changed. The Cold War era, rise of Taliban, radical Islamism, Gaza conflict, the Middle-east War, North Korean dictatorship, recent Ukraine and Syria crisis, Charlie Hebdo attacks, constant tensions in African and south Asian regions, growing global poverty, homelessness, unemployment, violence, crimes, pollution, and the increasing North/South gap in the access to resources and wealth have regularly highlighted the failure of the UN Council and its Commissions in protecting human rights of common people around the world. The end of the Cold war led to the number of desperate attempts to establish “a new world orders.” But, such attempts have caused more social conflicts than solutions. The introduction of advanced technologies, fast transport means, and globalization began to bring people from various ethnic, social, cultural, and religious backgrounds together involuntarily and voluntarily. In the process of adjusting to pluralism, the tensions, conflicts, and confusion between people from different culture have significantly intensified. As Samuel Huntington have states, the clash of civilizations is the most visible and bitter truth of today’s world. The universality of human rights declaration has caused a stir in a political and social field since its proposal in 1947. The ideas of right and wrong, good and evil that exist in one society may not match with the ideas of right and wrong and good and evil in many other societies in the world. Due to the cultural relativism and significant differences between the ideologies and cultural norms of major civilizations around the world, the concept of universality in human rights seems practically impossible in today’s world. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of universal concept of human rights and its possible application on a global platform. On the basis of various researchers, facts, theories, and ongoing global affairs and some examples, the paper will emphasized on the practical flaws and difficulties in implementing the universal concept of human rights regardless of its noble motives. The Universal Concept of Human Rights: Overview By the end of 1948, the UN’s newly established Human Rights Commission had gained the attention of whole world. Under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Commission drafted the document about fundamental human rights which was adopted by the UN on 10 December, 1948 as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed in the General Assembly of the UN with a majority vote of 48 in favor, 8 abstentions, and none against. The adoption of the UDHR is a remarkable global commemoration celebrated each year on 10th of December as ‘International Human Rights Day’ or simply, ‘Human Rights Day’. The UDHR consists of 30 main articles which have been further expanded in various international treaties, national constitutions, local human rights channels, and other laws. The Declaration states that fundamental freedom and basic human rights such as, the right to life, privacy, free speech, equality, security, health, vote, education, and freedom to opt own religion, partner, and profession, are inherent to all human begins, absolute and equally applicable to everyone regardless of their gender, race, nationality, religion, language, social or economical background. It emphasizes that every person is born free and possesses equal rights and dignity. The UDHR is the most universal document of human rights in existence, and according to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is the most translated legal document in the world. Over the years, the UDHR has triggered more than 82 international human rights declarations and treaties, a large number of regional human rights conferences, constitutional policies, and domestic human rights laws, which in combine form an extensive legal system for the protection and promotion of human rights in the world. The UDHR obligated state governments to act in a particular manner or to avoid certain acts in order to protect and promote basic freedom and human rights of people in their countries. However, despite the comprehensiveness of the UDHR, it had soon become a controversial due to some major flaws in its core principle of universality. As some universal human rights articles of the document challenged the religious and culture norms, especially the Islamic ideologies, it was accused to be biased to Western culture and disrespectful to certain religions and communities. Consequently, the UDHR was opposed in many Islamic and radical religious states. Culture diversity and ongoing major conflicts and issues in the world have raised the question over effectiveness of universal concept of human rights. Failure of the Universal Concept of Human Rights Majority of the human rights advocates admit the fact that even after 66 years of its formation, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights yet remain to become reality. The concept has always remained close to the Western culture; consequently, it is widely neglected or abused in most of the developing and poor countries from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. As long as violation of human rights exists in every part of the world, the universal concept of human rights remains mere a dream. According to the 2009 global report of the Amnesty International, individuals in more than 81 countries are abused or tortured; in over 55 states, people are victims of unfair and biased trails; also, over 78 countries in the world have denied the right of freedom of expression to their citizens. Furthermore, children and women in particular are suffering from the human rights abuse in various ways, the media is oppressed in many states, often protests are crushed brutally and activists are permanently silenced. Out of 30 main articles of the UDHR, 7 articles, namely, article 3, article 4, article 5, article 13, article 18, article 19, and article 21 are widely abused. The culture differences, political and economic failure, radical religious and political ideologies are some of the major causes behind the failure of the UDHR in many parts of the world. Article 3: The Right of Freedom According to the article 3 of the UDHR, “each individual has the right to freedom, security, and life.” However, various reports and research claim that the article is widely abused in poor and developing countries due to the constant armed conflicts and political instability. An estimated 6,500 people were killed in 2007 in armed conflict in Afghanistan-almost half being noncombatant civilian deaths at the hands of insurgents. Hundreds of civilians were also killed in suicide attacks by armed groups. In Brazil in 2007, according to official figures, police killed at least 1,260 individuals, which is the highest total to date. All incidents were officially labeled “acts of resistance” and received little or no investigation. In Uganda, 1,500 people die each week in the internally displaced person camps. According to the World Health Organization, 500,000 have died in these camps. Vietnamese authorities forced at least 75,000 drug addicts and prostitutes into 71 overpopulated “rehab” camps, labeling the detainees at “high risk” of contracting HIV/AIDS but providing no treatment. Article 4: No to Slavery Article 4 of the UDHR emphasizes that “no person should be held in servitude or slavery; any type of slave trade and slavery must be strictly prohibited.” But, the situation in many Asian and African countries is quite depressing. In northern Uganda, the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) guerrillas have kidnapped 20,000 children over the past twenty years and forced them into service as soldiers or sexual slaves for the army. In Guinea-Bissau, children as young as five are trafficked out of the country to work in cotton fields in southern Senegal or as beggars in the capital city. In Ghana, children five to fourteen are tricked with false promises of education and future into dangerous, unpaid jobs in the fishing industry. In Asia, Japan is the major destination country for trafficked women, especially women coming from the Philippines and Thailand. UNICEF has estimated that about 60,000 under-age children are forced into prostitution in the Philippines. The US State Department estimated that around 600,000 to 820,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year, half of whom are minors, including record numbers of women and girls fleeing from Iraq. In nearly all countries, including Canada, the US and the UK, deportation or harassment are the usual governmental responses, with no assistance services for the victims. In the Dominican Republic, the operations of a trafficking ring led to the death by asphyxiation of 25 Haitian migrant workers. In 2007, two civilians and two military officers received lenient prison sentences for their part in the operation. In Somalia in 2007, more than 1,400 displaced Somalis and Ethiopian nationals died at sea in trafficking operations. Article 5: No Abuse The 5th article of the UDHR states that “no individual should be subjected to torture or to inhuman, brutal, or disgraceful treatment or punishment.” The cases of torture, inhuman treatments, and punishment are not only evident in the third world countries but in the developed countries too. In 2008, US authorities continued to hold 270 prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without charge or trial, subjecting them to “water-boarding,” torture that simulated drowning. Former US President George W. Bush authorized the CIA to continue secret detention and interrogation, despite its violation of international law. In the western Sudan, ongoing violence, atrocities and abduction are rampant and outside aid all but cut off. Women in particular are the victims of unrestrained assault, with more than 200 rapes in the vicinity of a displaced persons camp in one five-week period, with no effort by authorities to punish the perpetrators. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, acts of torture and ill treatment are routinely committed by government security services and armed groups, including sustained beatings, stabbings and rapes of those in custody. Detainees are held incommunicado, sometimes in secret detention sites. In 2007, the Republican Guard (presidential guard) and Special Services police division in Kinshasa arbitrarily detained and tortured numerous individuals labeled as critics of the government. Article 13: Freedom to Migrate The 13th article of the UDHR has acknowledged “the right of each person to migrate and reside any part of his country and also, everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own native country, and to return to native state.” In Myanmar, thousands of citizens were detained, including 700 prisoners of conscience, most notably Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. In retaliation for her political activities, she has been imprisoned or under house arrest for twelve of the last eighteen years, and has refused government offers of release that would require her to leave the country. In Algeria, refugees and asylum-seekers were frequent victims of detention, expulsion or ill treatment. Twenty-eight individuals from sub-Saharan African countries with official refugee status from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were deported to Mali after being falsely tried, without legal counsel or interpreters, on charges of entering Algeria illegally. They were dumped near a desert town where a Malian armed group was active, without food, water or medical aid. In Kenya, authorities violated international refugee law when they closed the border to thousands of people fleeing armed conflict in Somalia. Asylum-seekers were illegally detained at the Kenyan border without charge or trial and forcibly returned to Somalia. In northern Uganda, 1.6 million citizens remained in displacement camps. In the Acholi subregion, the area most affected by armed conflict, 63 percent of the 1.1 million people displaced in 2005 were still living in camps in 2007, with only 7,000 returned permanently to their places of origin. Article 18: Freedom of Religion As stated in article 18 of the UDHR, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” In Myanmar, the military junta crushed peaceful demonstrations led by monks, raided and closed monasteries, confiscated and destroyed property, shot, beat and detained protesters, and harassed or held hostage the friends and family members of the protesters. In China, Falun Gong practitioners were singled out for torture and other abuses while in detention. Christians were persecuted for practicing their religion outside state-sanctioned channels. In Kazakhstan, local authorities in a community near Almaty authorized the destruction of twelve homes, all belonging to Hare Krishna members, falsely charging that the land on which the homes were built had been illegally acquired. Only homes belonging to members of the Hare Krishna community were destroyed. Article 19; Freedom of Expression “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” In Sudan, dozens of human rights defenders were arrested and tortured by national intelligence and security forces. In Ethiopia, two prominent human rights defenders were convicted on false charges and sentenced to nearly three years in prison. In Somalia, a prominent human rights defender was murdered. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the government attacks and threatens human rights defenders and restricts freedom of expression and association. In 2007, provisions of the 2004 Press Act were used by the government to censor newspapers and limit freedom of expression. Russia repressed political dissent, pressured or shut down independent media and harassed nongovernmental organizations. Peaceful public demonstrations were dispersed with force, and lawyers, human rights defenders and journalists were threatened and attacked. Since 2000, the murders of seventeen journalists, all critical of government policies and actions, remain unsolved. In Iraq, at least thirty-seven Iraqi employees of media networks were killed in 2008, and a total of 235 since the invasion of March 2003, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous place for journalists. Article 21: Right to Democracy According to the article 21 of the UDHR, “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Also, everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.” In Zimbabwe, hundreds of human rights defenders and members of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were arrested for participating in peaceful gatherings. In Pakistan, thousands of lawyers, journalists, human rights defenders and political activists were arrested for demanding democracy, the rule of law and an independent judiciary. In Cuba, at the end of 2007, sixty two prisoners of conscience remained incarcerated for their nonviolent political views or activities. Culture Relativism The theory of culture relativism came into light in the late 1940s during the wide debate over the validity of the universal concept of the human rights. According to the theory of culture relativism, all principles and values are culture-obligated and that there are not any particular universal standards by which specific culture and its practices can be judged. The concept of culture relativism objects the validity of using any foreign values to evaluate a culture and challenge the non-western cultures on the basis of Western cultural values. In other words, the culture relativism theory rejects the idea of universality in human rights. The concept of culture relativism and its advocates have posed a great threat to the effectiveness of global system and international laws of human rights. Often the universal concept of human rights has been used by the radical religious and political extremists to trigger the anti-western sentiments among the citizens to protect own political and economical interests. The great example of it is the ongoing clashes between the Western world and Islamic radical groups. For the purpose of marinating sovereignty and stability in the Middle-east and other developing states, the Western powers have regularly intervened against regional customs and norms that have violated the international human rights. For instance, Islamic Sharia law has always been controversial and regularly condemned in the western world. Americanization is described as the actions of the US authorities and media to enforce own social, cultural, economical, and political principles on other countries. Possessed with the extreme nationalism, the US policymakers expected the world to follow the American virtues as a set guideline, triggering the strong hatred of Islamic community as radical Islamic groups consider it as a western invasion in their territories and serious threat to their culture and religion. The attempts of westernization led to the 9/11 attacks on the US by the Islamic terrorist organization in protest of the US policies towards the Arab world. Surprisingly, 11 out of 19 terrorists in the operation of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia which was considered to be the most closely allied Gulf country with the United States. Also, there are various culture and religious practices in different societies that violate fundamental human rights. For example, in Togo and Ghana, the cultural practice of Trokosi is a religious servitude that violates the rights of women and children. It is ritual of hooking girls, often from early childhood, as a compensation for crimes committed by the male members of the family. Such girls serve religious priest, work on their fields and often raise their children in a slave like condition. As such girls are suffering from slavery and forced to pay for other’s crime, it took away their freedom of choice and right to freedom. Another such example is the Almajiri practice in Nigeria. It is the practice of donating children as young as 4 years old to the local spiritual leader or the Mallams (Islamic teachers) for the purpose to giving Islamic education. The children are forced to beg for food in the street and are taught the Koran, an Islamic holy book. The practice is also a type of slavery as it takes away their childhood and dignity of the human being. The culture denomination and women subordination are always seen as the major issues in rejection of the UDHR in Muslim and Eastern societies. On this basis, Saudi Arabia withdrew from the UDHR because quality in gender and marriage was considered as against the Islamic values. Similar ideologies are held among the most of African male-dominating societies. Certainly, all the culture and religious practices mentioned above cannot be justified for the rejection of universal human rights. The violation of fundamental human rights behind the cover of culture relativism ideology of any state should always be condemned. But, the issue is that whenever there is a connection of religion or culture, it is always associated closely with the sentiments and beliefs of communities and the improper or unsystematic intervention in their practices for the protection of human rights can backfire and cause massive conflicts in the society. Such experience was faced by the French government when it decided to ban burqa, a traditional outer garment for Muslim women to cover their bodies in public, in 2010 for protecting French ideology of individualism and women dignity under the UDHR. But, the ban was interpreted as the discrimination against particular community and oppression of the right to practice own religion, raising massive anger among the Muslim communities in France and around the world. The French policy triggered mass protests throughout the country, disturbing the stability and peace in the society. The culture diversity is the major barrier for the universal concept of human rights and as long as the communities are influenced by the radical religious and cultural ideologies and practices in the world, it would always remain impossible to implement universal standards of human rights in the world. Abuse of Power: Human Rights Politics Human rights are often misused for the political, economical, or personal interest. The abuse of power and misuse of humanitarian interventions are becoming the subjects of worldwide debate as such practices have intensified doubts over the effectiveness of universal human rights. The ongoing conflicts in the Pro-western and pro-Slavic groups in Ukraine and Latvia over separation have clearly showed that current global conflicts are highly influenced by culture and ethnic factors. It is difficult to separate the regions by ignoring culture factor. In order to constrain the growing influence of pro-western government and its ideologies, Putin administration ordered military intervention in Ukraine and captured Crimea, which is important for Russia due to its crucial geographic location in the Black Sea peninsula, under the name of humanitarian interventions to protect the human rights of Russian minorities in the region. The crises in these countries and Russian propaganda of western oppression of local people and their rights have further intensified hatred about western culture among local people. Besides the Ukraine Crisis, the excuse of human rights violations was also used in the past by Russia during the Georgian War of 2008 to satisfy its political motives. Russia and the Western world, both are competing against one another on a global platform to expand own domination and diminish other’s influence. In the modern global politics, each global power tries to defeat one another by every possible means and human rights and related issues are often used as the effective political weapons. As the European Union (EU) and the US have started to advocate human rights of LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgender), Russian President Vladimir Putin has adopted alternative ideology to upset populist movements throughout Eastern Europe. By claiming the movements for LGBT human rights as the Western aggression and threat to the “traditional values” of the people in the Eastern Europe, Putin has managed to spark anger among the locals against the Western powers and expand Russia’s influence in its neighboring countries. The success of such strategies of global leaders to satisfy their interests is another major setback to the universal concept of human rights. On 7 January 2015, 2 Islamic terrorist attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly French magazine, for mocking Prophet Mohammad in its last edition. The attack caused a great stir on a global level, and global leaders condemned the tragic incident by calling it an attack on the freedom of speech. Plenty of people began to join the rallies and raise a pen in tribute to victims, and as a symbol of right to free speech. Charlie Hebdo has a long history of making fun of politicians and other religions, especially Islam, through sarcastic cartoons. Certainly, such attacks cannot be justified, but there need to be a boundary line. While enjoying the right of speech and freedom of expression, one has to make sure it doesn’t hurt the sentiments of other religions and communities. The misuse of power or reluctant approach towards non-western cultures and their beliefs have further increased the gap between the western and non-western world. In a way, due to the inability of the UDHR to merge non-western values and culture, excessive influence of western ideologies in the promotion of human rights, and the politics of human rights, the UDHR has failed to establish as the universal concept. Conclusion Cultural violations of human rights often do not lead to gross or mass violations of human rights such as genocide and mass murders. In a volatile area and one needs to tread cautiously but there needs to be a compromise, one that will ensure removing the children from the streets, having the get both the forms of educationIt can be tackled with gradual and cautious measures. It will in no way detract from the cultural heritage of the people when completely abolished. In such circumstances that community needs to be educated to use the court system and get justice for whatever offence or the adequate compensation. The State also needs to take legislative measures of prohibiting such practices. Considering the massive culture diversity, ongoing conflicts, and clash of various civilizations, the universal concept of human rights is far from reality and it doesn’t seem to develop in reality at least in the nearest future. Reference List (Continue) Read More