No33 January 1999.1
Fifty years of Human Rights
10th December was the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. Yet there is no note of celebration perceptible in comments like: "There is never anything but bad news... Violence is everywhere...Darkness wherever we look...It is the Great Depression again...Where are we going?" We hear such remarks every day.
Why is it that we are always running down humanity in general and our leaders in particular? Is it in the hope of exorcising our own evil spirits? Or is it the influence of the media? Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that many people seem to think that the world is going to the dogs. Our grandparents thought the same. Their favourite targets then were the parish priest and local politicians.
Has there then been no progress in the fifty years since the UN Declaration?
Let us think of Canada first. We are told that there has never been so much poverty. We are bombarded with reports about poor children and with demands that the government do something about them. Twenty-four per cent of young people under twenty-four years of age are living in poverty. The situation is even worse among the native people, the handicapped, recent immigrants. On 7 December the Canadian Council for Social Development stated: "Single-parent families are in a particularly difficult situation and many of them receive social assistance." Even the UN itself has joined in the chorus. The Report of its Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Affairs (UNESCO) criticised six Canadian Provinces, blaming them for the growing impoverishment of the citizens of one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Too often the authorities are more interested in reducing the budget deficit than in reducing poverty. Quebec is criticised for linking social security benefits to the obligation to look for work. There is clear discrimination against two groups of people: those under twenty-four and those on social security.
If we turn now to the wider world, we can recognize with gratitude that there have been no World Wars for fifty years, but there have still been hundreds of local wars which have killed and injured more people than the two World Wars of this century combined. Only the battlefield has changed. War has been exported to the Third World. This brings large profits to the countries of the West, while they remain themselves unharmed. What is the arms trade worth to our rich countries? Meanwhile parasitic multinational countries, the fruit of our capitalist ideas, grow fat on Asian, African and South American corpses and raise our standards of living.
We may think of Kivu, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Under the pretext of defending their frontiers, foreign forces from Rwanda and Burundi are occupying adjacent territory, thus dragging the local population into the ethnic conflict and depriving them of their fundamental right of self-determination. The consequent rise of local armed resistance groups means the usual torment for the poor people. The expansionist programmes of these occupying forces are in flagrant violation of the Charters of both the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity. If nothing is done to arrest these developments, Africa will remain for a long time in a state of chronic instability and armed conflict. The Great Lakes Region in particular will remain a running sore in the very heart of Africa.
There is no denying the darkness. Are we to conclude that the fifty candles of the United Nations Charter have been extinguished? Or have they ever been lit?
"If nothing is done..." But is it really the case that nothing has been done in the last fifty years?
It is true that countries which are signatories to the Charter are every day violating the "Rights" listed in the Declaration. Summary executions, illegal imprisonment, torture, limitations on freedom of speech, association and religion: such things are commonplace. We should not however think only of the breaches of the Charter. There have been gains since 1948. Gan