New UN Commissioner for Human Rights - time is running out

Great Debates
1

Introduction
I heard a programme on BBC World Service today that was deeply troubling. It was an interview with the new UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who recently took over from Mary Robinson. IMO, the latter was a major disaster in this role, and I was hoping to hear something more substantial and pragmatic from the new incumbent, but it failed to materialise in this interview.

Like a good Doper, I searched the last 6 months for a posting that would answer the many questions that come to mind after hearing (or reading) what de Mello had to say, but I found only one that addressed the issue of Human Rights in a general sense, and that one didn’t come anywhere near to closing. Most others talk too specifically about this or that “right”, but my question is much broarder. More of that later. Here are the relevant links …

Link to BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/forum/2523983.stm#1

Link to the “unresolved thread”
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=137859&highlight=human+rights

Specifically, de Mello says …

My problem with this stuff that is not (IMO) answered anywhere in this forum, is that he is eliminating an essential element of the social contract, which Jonathan Chance in that thread called the consent of the governed. The United Nations becomes our “government” in terms of what is, or is not, a right. We can neither elect this government, replace it, nor influence it beyond our 1/191th voting power.

The thrust of my posting here is therefore twofold.

Firstly, do we have a way to determine what is a “human right”.
Second, is the United Nations the best, or even the correct, body for propagating and protecting human rights. (Mr Moderator, if you want to split this into two posts, I’m OK)

I have a few specific instances of the world’s failure to adequately answer question one, and of the UN’s performance in regard to question 2, but I won’t poison the post with my strongly held views just yet. I’m genuinely interested in what the SD community thinks on this subject.
Conclusion
It seems to me that we need to have a very strong idea in our own minds as to what is contained in this concept of “Human Rights”, how these rights are created, maintined and modified, and who ultimately has the power to enforce them. Unless we do this, we face a bleak future indeed.

2

Interesting post.

I don’t see anything particularly wrong with the set of rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In fact, I see the acknowledgement of these as rights as a huge step forward for the human race. The fact that they are not upheld does not totally diminish from the fact that they are at least recognized as something that should be upheld.

There also doesn’t seem to me to be any particular mystery regarding why human rights are so rarely upheld. Namely, the great powers do not abide by international law, and do not uphold the rights they purport to recognize. Clearly, as long as the great powers continue to neglect their treaty obligations, the future is, as you say, quite grim for the vast majority of Mankind.

What can be done? Well, the only real check on the power of the great powers is internal resistance. They have such an overwhelming share of power in the world that other countries do not really have much of an affect on their power. The domestic population, however, is a different question. If the domestic population is sufficiently aware of what is going on, and can organize in sufficient numbers, we can go a long way toward forcing the state to recognize basic human rights. If you can think of another way to do it, I’d like to hear it.

3

Currently, the dicussion over Universal Human Rights are a joke. Unless countries are willing to take stands against other countries on various issues, and put real force behind their words, it’s just plain meaningless.

Fact is, no one big enough to matter cares enough to really go after China for its treatment of prisoners or religious believers or even the rule of law. I mean, no one is even prepared to put any muscle behind ending SLAVERY internationally for goodness sakes.

And the bigger problem, of course, is that the intellectual discussion on human rights is bogged down in an esoteric morass of multiculturalism. It’s hard to tell what’s just apologism for political oppression, and what’s sincerely different visions of human rights.

4

Apos

Thanks, that’s essentially my second question from another perspective. The current MO is that the United Nations should be the ultimate guardian of Human Rights, so the responsibility is lifted off the shoulders of individual nations. (China gets away with it because everyone in the UN is scared to confront it.) But is the UN the right body for this role. It’s an anti-democratic corrupt self-perpetuating bureaucracy that in the last 50 years has done very little to justify its massive cost.

My question number one - how do we determine what are human rights without turning the discussion into either a pedandic, theoretical daydream of what should be in a perfect world, or a diatribe of ethnic or religious beliefs that are not subject to rational analysis?

Please keep the thoughts coming.

5

Pretty simple: nothing much is going to change until a significant body of powerful states with some similar values say “look, we’re going to impose these values on you, like it or not.” And the reality is, the only concievable instance of that will be the West imposing it on the Rest. Which may or may not be a bad thing from my perspective, depending on what and how it’s done. If a clash of civilizations really does begin, then this will accelerate the process at least in the Middle East and Africa. Asia is a whole nother ball of wax. China is a barrier here, not simply because it refuses to take criticism on its own Human Rights record, but because it would go ballastic if we ever set a precedent of interfering with other Asian states overmuch on Human Rights grounds. Plus, there is a powerful Asian consortium of thinkers that assert that Asians are “different” and Asian states need to be able to control them paternalistically, and have more carte blanche ability to maintain control, rather than risking on pluralism. They even sell this doctrine on the idea that there are human rights to subsistence and economic empowerment which trump the rights of people to, say, not be executed in secret for questioning the government.

6

yes, but …

The process NOW is that a simple majority if states belonging to the UN, whether West or Rest, Asian or other, can band together and determine what is a human right. And your band of well-intentioned Wests, because they are a minority of votes, cannot “impose these values” on the Rests.

The 10 largest members of the UN by population account for about 70 per cent of the world’s total humans, but the other 180+ members, representing a distinct minority of humans, can tell the UN what all humans have rights to - or more worryingly, what they don’t have rights to. And the UN has a history of making very bad decisions, as for example Zionism is Racism. For a while there, that was UN policy. That means the UN could have decided that people have no right to follow a particular political or religious creed of their own choice.

I can see it coming in the forseeable future over the issue of circumcision. Right now, there’s a strong move to ban all forms of female circumcision. But that’s discrimination agains males! So ban circumcision altogether!