“See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation, and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.”
— Jerry Seinfeld
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (DHR) turns 60 this year. As such, the DHR — once described by former U.S. president Ronald Reagan as “a global testament of humanity” — is perhaps nearing an age when retirement is not only possible but, given the circumstances, inevitable.
Without doubt, the DHR stands as one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Over the past six decades, this brief document has helped spread the philosophy and language of rights across the globe, has been the basis for new legislation and new constitutions and holds the record of being the world’s most translated publication.
Fashioned in the aftermath of the Second World War, in which more than 72 million people had lost their lives, the DHR was unambiguous and unapologetic in its language. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” the Declaration begins, before going on to list 30 specific rights and freedoms. Among these is a prohibition of all forms of slavery; an absolute denial of torture; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; and even the right to “rest and leisure” with a “reasonable limitation of working hours.” It ends with a warning that defies anyone to twist its intended scope: “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights or freedoms set forth herein” (emphasis added).
It could not be clearer: the DHR applied to everybody, not just a select few. As such, it marked a substantial advance on earlier such declarations. The American Declaration of Independence (1776) had stated that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal [and]… are endowed with certain inalienable rights,” among which were “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This was hardly an exhaustive catalogue of rights nor, as it turned out, did it apply to all members of the new republic. Slaves, ex-slaves, women, native peoples and poor folk were all deliberately excluded.
Similarly, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) may have restated that “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights” and that such rights included “liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression,” but it, too, excluded much of the nation’s population and, during the “Great Terror” under Robespierre, would fail to safeguard the 40,000 or so citizens who were sent to the guillotine.
“Constitutions do not create our rights,” argues Michael Ignatieff, deputy leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, in The Rights Revolution (2000). “They recognize and codify the ones we already have, and provide means for their protection.” That might be so, but where do these rights actually come from? Ignatieff says there are two sources. “We already possess our rights… either because our ancestors secured them: or because they are inherent in the very idea of being human.”
In Rights from Wrongs (2004), American law professor Alan Dershowitz pushes the origin of rights a bit further, arguing that “natural law grounds the content of rights in external sources such as God, nature, reason, or some other notion of objective reality.” The problem is working out just what that content should be. On the other hand, for people who believe that “human beings design — invent — rights to prevent the recurrence of wrongs, there is a special obligation to advocate and encourage others to accept the centrality of rights in democratic societies.”
Part of the problem, of course, is that the range of human rights is not fixed by any one given generation’s definition but instead evolve over time. Since 1948, there have been many additions to the DHR. Whether human rights exist objectively and it is our task to discover what they are, or whether we collectively determine what constitutes a basic human right, this is only a first step. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, we may know how to define human rights, we just don’t know how to enforce them. And that’s really the most important part.
For six decades, the United Nations has struggled, in the words of the DHR, “to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures… to secure their universal recognition and observance.” And without doubt, significant gains have been made along the way. Still, the list of nations that continue to abuse basic rights remains stubbornly high. Launched in2001, the Bush administration “war on terror” signalled a dramatic reversal in both the way basic human rights are defined and to whom they apply.
As a result, in 2004, a report by Amnesty International noted that “Violence by armed groups and increasing violations by governments have combined to produce the most sustained attack on human rights… in 50 years.” What was more, the report continued, “Governments are losing their moral compass, sacrificing the global values of human rights in a blind pursuit of security.”
Without the full support of the United States, can the DHR survive in the 21st century? In a world in which democratic nations not only condone but morally justify the practice of torture, does the 1948 Declaration still have meaning?
It comes back to Ignatieff’s point. Neither constitutions nor governments create basic human rights, they “merely” recognize and enforce them. And what if they don’t? In 1940, socialist and sci-fi writer H.G. Wells published The Rights of Man; or, What Are We Fighting For? in which he anticipated the demands of the DHR. “These are the rights of all human beings,” he concluded, “Demand that your rulers and politicians sign and observe this declaration. If they refuse, they can have no place in the new free world that dawns upon mankind.”
It is time to reiterate this demand.
David Bright has published widely on Canadian social, labour and criminal history. He teaches history and politics at Niagara College, Ontario.
