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Human Rights is [still] a Novelty




Personally, I find that the motivation for the United Nations to convene and ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights only after the genocide led by Hitler astounding. It took a grand exposition of a grand injustice for several nations to come together and determine a practical clause to prohibit such an atrocity from ever recurring (though, I'm sure that many of us are familiar that words will not foil a determined leader astray from his/her own agenda. Words are contestable. This is why we have lawyers.. to manipulate those words to one's own advantage. Furthermore, many similar, horrifying acts have inevitably made their way into history). I can only speculate why this particular incident caused a reconciliation and a response from Western sovereign states which were not and still are not necessarily innocent in terms of their involvement with genocides that have happened since then. However, to scale, an estimate of 5, 100,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust and it caused involvement on many different levels from various countries for fear of them being dominated by the Third Reich. Thus, after World War II ended, an agreement had to be made to further prevent such crimes against the human race from ever recurring. However, the irony is that the advent of the United Nations and the initiative to shame nations into not engaging in such crimes have hardly affected reality.


Class Focus: The Mobilization of Shame and Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Father Drinan states that after the fall of the Soviet Empire, the United Nations' Human Rights Commission began to focus on more globally prevalent issues, trying to avert their eyes from the paranoia surrounding communism, and he states that this is due to the rise in NGOs and their powerful influence upon the human rights agenda (Drinan, 16). However, I believe that an entity as large as the UN cannot have final say in a constantly developing and ever-changing world, like Drinan also explains: " But the sprawling and frequently changing international human rights scene is not amenable to neat juridical boundaries " (18). The more a state changes, the more unknowing the U.N. might be in response to its future. For example, the early warnings of Rwanda were not heeded because the conflict was perceived to be a civil war and even Boutros-Ghali had admitted that he refused to authorize a search for weapons shipped specifically to Hutus in Rwanda, despite several efforts imploring UN interference by international advocates for peacekeeping (Stanton).
There are positive developments: "Nations like South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil have created truth and reconciliation commissions" and this is the intention and purpose of Amnesty International– to mobilize the shameful history (32). The case of the disappeared in Argentina and Chile are particularly interesting given that is known that the U.S. was highly responsible in placing Pinochet into power and supporting his bloody, military regime.

( You may read about the methods of redressing the Coup D'Etat in Chile from the following article:)


Such is why I appreciate Drinan's sometimes cynical statements, in observation that the United States continuously neglects the visions of the UN, including the failure to approve the International Criminal Court and refusal to sign many agreements: "Is the United States an actor in an ongoing Greek tragedy of monumental proportions?" (56). It is a no-brainer that the United States is hypocritical in this instance. It wants to condemn torture while supporting military efforts of seeking answers through torture: Remember Guantanamo Bay? Now, the British government seeks to monetarily compensate those who were wrongfully detained and who accused British security forces in collaboration with their torture.

Unfortunately, it takes away the credibility of holding human rights as a serious matter for discussion when we do not hold the U.S. accountable for its involvement, even despite its agreement to the Helsinki Accords (Drinan, 72):

The fact that nations do not openly criticize the United States for its involvement in the human rights conditions of other nations is a silent concession that the United States is deemed the world's principal leader in advancing human rights (Drinan, 63).

I will close this segment with a clip from Family Guy which was remembered when I read how the U.S. in 1976 had polarized the potential for friendship with other nations dependent upon their involvement with the Soviet Union and used as the basis for not agreeing to ratify major human rights treaties.



 References
Mayerfeld, Jamie. Who Shall Be Judge?: The United States, the International Criminal Court, and the Global Enforcement of Human Rights Human Rights Quarterly, Volume 25, Number 1, February 2003, pp. 93-129 (Article)
Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened (BBC NEWS/Africa)

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