Human Rights turn 60

Human right as we know it turned 60 today. Human Rights in practice? Not good at all

It should be said that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a remarkable statement: an attempt to achieve a moral consensus about the demands of human dignity following a world war that obliterated the hopes and lives of millions. The Universal Declaration has been a midwife to dozens of international treaties and covenants. It is cited by scores of domestic constitutions. Human rights organizations around the world look to the document as their Magna Carta.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Mrs. Roosevelt’s fear about the perversion of human rights is on full display
in the international community. More than half of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council, the principal U.N. body charged with promoting human rights, fail to uphold basic democratic freedoms in their own countries. Using the canards of anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism, they block resolutions that might embarrass them on the world stage. Thus, some of the most egregious offenders of human rights–including China, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe–typically evade censure. Last week, for example, the Human Rights Council approved a resolution praising the Kinshasa government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose military stands accused of mass rape and murder.

In other words, in order for the international system to exist and to accommodate gross human rights violators, the principals the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were compromised.