[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index
][Thread Index
]
NEWS - World leaders gather to char
- Subject: NEWS - World leaders gather to char
- From: Rangoonp@xxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 18:59:00
Subject: NEWS - World leaders gather to chart future of human rights
World leaders gather to chart future of human rights
Conference marks 50th year of U.N. declaration
December 6, 1998
Web posted at: 4:53 p.m. EST (2153 GMT)
In this story:
-'A Magna Carta for mankind'
-World's most ignored document
-Little to celebrate
-Pinochet arrest 'an anniversary present'
-'First we must have economic change'
-'A distant ideal'
PARIS (CNN) -- Global fundamental rights come under
scrutiny this week at an international gathering in Paris to
mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Joining U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan
and High Commissioner for
Human Rights Mary Robinson
will be activists from around
the world, including Nobel
Peace Prize winners and
grass-roots campaigners.
They will spend four days
reviewing the past and
considering the prospects for
justice in an increasingly
multicultural world brimming
with tension and confusion.
French President Jacques
Chirac will open the
ceremonies on Monday with a
colloquium on human rights in
the 21st century.
On Thursday, the anniversary
day itself, participants will
gather in the Chaillot Palace --
better known as the Trocadero
museum across the Seine
River from the Eiffel Tower --
to commemorate the original
signing of the declaration
there.
"All human beings are born
free and equal in dignity and
rights," announced the
declaration, adopted on
December 10, 1948.
Enlightened philosophers,
priests and politicians had
shared this view for ages, but it
was not until this century
brought two world wars and
the Holocaust that leaders
came together to declare
certain basic rights inalienable.
'A Magna Carta for mankind'
Guided by such personalities as Mahatma Gandhi and
Eleanor Roosevelt, the United Nations approved the text
stating that every human had the right to life, liberty,
justice
and property in what Roosevelt called "a Magna Carta for
mankind."
The declaration, much of which
has been translated into national
laws around the world, shuns
discrimination, slavery, torture,
arbitrary arrest or exile.
That solemn declaration signed in
Paris in 1948 did not immediately
make human rights a focal point of
world politics. Dictatorships
persisted, some into the present
decade, and full justice was
sometimes elusive even in
democratic societies.
World's most ignored
document
The declaration has become both
the most quoted and most ignored
international document of modern
times.
Since its inauguration, millions of
people have been denied their
most basic right -- that of life -- as a
result of massacres such as those
in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia.
In many other countries,
inhabitants can only dream of basic
civil liberties.
And the world is far from fulfilling
the declaration's pronouncements
on economic rights. "Everyone has
the right to a standard of living
adequate for the health and
well-being of himself and his
family," states Article 25.
According to U.N. figures, 1.5
billion people must get by on less
than $1 a day. In South Asia, half
of all children under the age of 5 are malnourished. Only a
third of the people in sub-Saharan Africa are likely to live
past 40.
Little to celebrate
"I do not see this as an occasion for celebration," Robinson
said of the 50th anniversary.
"Count up the results of 50 years of human rights
mechanisms, 30 years of multibillion-dollar development
programs and endless high-level rhetoric, and the global
impact is quite underwhelming," Robinson said. "This is a
failure of implementation on a scale which shames us all."
But, as participants at this
week's ceremonies will
emphasize, the patient lobbying
of rights groups such as
Amnesty International,
landmark agreements such as
the Helsinki Final Act and the
recurrent outbreaks of "people's
power" around the world have
made human rights an
accepted part of politics.
Many activists say that despite blatant violations of the
declaration's principles, it still carries weight and
influence.
"Even if it's not implemented, it's THE point of reference
for
governments and people around the world," said Isabelle
Scherer of Amnesty International.
It also has paved the way for what progress has been made
in human rights.
Pinochet arrest 'an anniversary present'
Advocates cited Britain's arrest and possible extradition of
former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain on
charges of genocide and torture as evidence of a changing
international mood.
"Pinochet's arrest makes a very nice 50th anniversary
present," said Kenneth Roth, president of the U.S.-based
Human Rights Watch.
"Twenty years ago, dictators, when deposed, could look
forward to a happy, comfortable retirement. International
human rights law has caught up with them," said Peter
Thomas Burns, chairman of the U.N. committee on torture.
U.N. organizations set up to monitor compliance with the
declaration and related treaties meet frequently in Geneva.
Although the bodies have little power other than to cajole
or
rebuke, rights advocates say their pressure makes a
difference.
Many Asian nations have long argued that human rights are
a purely internal matter, but there are signs of changing
attitudes. Both Indonesia and the Philippines criticized
Malaysia's government this year over the detention of a
former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim.
'First we must have economic change'
Yet, while China recently signed a U.N. treaty on civil and
political rights and maintains it respects the Universal
Declaration, it still punishes anyone who doesn't follow the
official line.
Many Chinese echo the government's position that national
prosperity takes precedence over individual rights.
"First, we must have economic change. As the economy has
developed over the past 20 years, people have more rights,"
a Chinese businessman told a reporter.
"Twenty years ago, I could not be standing here talking to
you," he added, but his reluctance to have his name
published pointed to the distance China still needs to go to
achieve basic human rights.
'A distant ideal'
Although U.N. documents have increasingly focused on
women's rights, they have made little impact on the plight
of
millions of women in developing countries.
In Kenya, for instance, growing economic hardship is blamed
for a marked increase in physical abuse of women. Women's
groups there plan to mark the declaration's anniversary by
putting husbands of battered women "on trial" to highlight
the
problem.
Alexander Podrabinek, 46, who spent five years in Siberian
exile during communist rule in the Soviet Union, said the
declaration was long a touchstone for dissidents. He
recalled
how the KGB routinely confiscated copies of the document
as "anti-Soviet literature."
Conditions are better now in Russia, but widespread
violations of human rights persist, he said, citing
religious
discrimination and appalling conditions in prisons.
"The broad public is largely unaware of the declaration," he
added. "But it remains some kind of a distant ideal."