IHT p. 10

Teaming Up to Make Human Rights

a Universal Fact

By Ramesh Thakur International Herald Tribune

TOKYO - Fifty years ago, conscious of the atrocities

committed by the Nazis while the world looked silently

away, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration

of Human Rights. It is the embodiment and the

proclamation of the human rights norm.

Covenants in 1966 added force and specificity, affirming

both civil-political and social-economic-cultural rights,

without privileging either set. Together with the

declaration, they mapped out the international human rights

agenda, established the benchmark for state conduct,

inspired provisions in many national laws and international

conventions, and provided a beacon of hope to many whose

rights had been snuffed out by brutal regimes.

A right is a claim, an entitlement that may neither be

conferred nor denied. A human right, owed to every person

simply as a human being, is inherently universal. Held only

by human beings, but equally by all, it does not flow from

any office, rank or relationship.

The idea of universal rights is denied by some who insist

that moral standards are always culture-specific. If value

relativism were to be accepted literally, then no autocrat -

Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot - could be criticized by

outsiders for any action.

Relativism is often the first refuge of repressive

governments. The false dichotomy between development

and human rights is usually a smoke screen for corruption

and cronyism.

Relativism requires an acknowledgment that each culture

has its own moral system. Government behavior is still

open to evaluation by the moral code of its own society.

Internal moral standards can comply with international

conventions. But because moral precepts vary from culture

to culture does not mean that different peoples do not hold

some values in common.

Few if any moral systems proscribe the act of killing

absolutely under all circumstances. At different times, in

different societies, war, capital punishment or abortion may

or may not be morally permissible.

Yet for every society, murder is always wrong. All societies

require retribution to be proportionate to the wrong done.

All prize children, the link between succeeding generations

of human civilization; every culture abhors their abuse.

The doctrine of national security has been especially

corrosive of human rights. It is used frequently by

governments, charged with the responsibility to protect

citizens, to assault them instead. Under military rule, the

instrument of protection from without becomes the means

of attack from within.

An argument sometimes invoked for a policy of ''See

nothing, hear nothing, do nothing'' is that an activist

concern would worsen the plight of victims. Prisoners of

conscience beg to disagree. It is important to them to know

that they have not been forgotten. Lack of open criticism is

grist to the propaganda mill of repressive regimes.

The United Nations - an organization of, by and for

member states - has been impartial and successful in a

standard-setting role; selectively successful in monitoring

abuses, and almost feeble in enforcement. Governments

usually subordinate considerations of UN effectiveness to

the principle of noninterference.

The modesty of UN achievement should not blind us to its

reality. The universal declaration embodies the moral code,

political consensus and legal synthesis of human rights.

The world has grown vastly more complex in the 50 years

since. But the simplicity of the declaration's language belies

the passion of conviction underpinning it. Its elegance has

been the font of inspiration down the decades. Its provisions

comprise the vocabulary of complaint.

Activists and nongovernmental organizations use the

declaration as the concrete point of reference against which

to judge state conduct. The covenants require the

submission of periodic reports by signatory countries, and

so entail the creation of long-term national infrastructures

for the protection and promotion of human rights.United

Nations efforts are greatly helped by nongovernmental

organizations and other elements of civil society. NGOs

work to protect victims and contribute to the development

and promotion of social commitment and to the enactment

of laws reflecting the more enlightened human rights

culture.

Between them, the United Nations and nongovernmental

organizations have achieved many successes. National laws

and international instruments have been improved, many

political prisoners have been freed and some victims of

abuse have been compensated. The United Nations has

helped also by creating the post of high commissioner for

human rights.

The most recent advances on international human rights are

the progressive incorporation of wartime behavior and

policy within the prohibitionary provisions of humanitarian

law. Last year's Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel land

mines subordinated military calculations to humanitarian

concerns about a weapon that cannot distinguish a soldier

from a child. This year the world community established

the first International Criminal Court. The U.S. absence

from both shows the extent to which human rights have

moved ahead of their strongest advocate in the past.

Both examples illustrate the rise of nongovernmental

organizations as actors with real influence on global issues

that arouse public passions. Recognizing this, skillful

governments engage civil society, and work in partnership

with the organizations and the United Nations. The

transition from the barbarism of atrocities to the culture of

human rights requires no less.

The writer, vice rector of the United Nations University in

Tokyo, contributed this personal comment to the

International Herald Tribune.