Two question regarding (UN) human rights:
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Do they contain anything about democracy, political influence, self-determination etc.?
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Do they try to protect people from being coerced into supporting specific political agendas?
Ok thanks.
I guess it’s yes on 1) and no on 2).
The closest I can see anything in there that could be used to protect people from forced political support is Article 20-2 “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.” But that’s very vaguely and broadly formulated. Come to think of it, how does 20-2 square with such thing as the draft, etc.?
It’s yes on (2) as well, defined by ‘genuine’ elections and the secret ballot, as well as elsewhere on the declaration ensuring equal application of all rights irrespective of political affiliation.
And no, compulsory military service is not compatible with the declaration.
With all due respect, GorillaMan, your assertions that conscription isn’t compatible with the declaration isn’t borne out by the real world experience of many countries contunuing to conscript soldiers and somehow not running afoul of the U.N.
So this sounds like just an opinion of yours, unless you can come up with other documentation from the U.N. to the contrary.
IOW, cite?
Just because there’s countries that do it doens’t mean it’s not in contravention to eh declaration. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a few countries that fail to hold deomcratic elections, too.
Oh, and if we’re playing the cite game, UN resolution 1989/59 recognises the right to conscientious objection from compulsory military service.
OK then, that settles it.
Should the United States ever have to reinstitute the draft in an emergency, we’ll be in perfectly square with the UN then, since we have a system in place for dealing with conscientious objectors.
People who don’t object, though, would still have to serve.
It doesn’t matter anyway. The UN Charter and various Declarations are not self-executing treaties, meaning as far as international law is concerned they don’t really exist.
They are agreements to achieve a specific set of ideals, not a promise not implement them immediately.
Some US states have a lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of a felony. Does that square with the “universal and equal suffrage” part of Article 21-3?
Fine. I didn’t comment specifically oin the draft, because I didn’t know if this was actually the case.
I guess most human rights lawyers would argue that is does not.