An initial reading of the state of the world in recent years in human rights terms does not immediately generate positivity.
In the very year marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR), it seems that everywhere, human rights are under attack.
Such attacks are nothing new. The very idea of universal human rights and of structures, procedures and institutions for their delivery is anathema to many - not just to dictators or demagogues.
In the 75 years since its formulation, the UNDHR (and all the architecture and argument that surrounds it) has proven to be not just an inspiration for many, many millions but also an effective set of tools to thwart the agendas of those who abuse power.
Despite the ongoing attempts to belittle or dismiss human rights, literally everywhere across the world the language and ethos of ‘rights’ is now embedded in the human DNA.
Human rights are not simplistically about one event, place, group, or context. Human rights are more accurately understood as a process, a journey, a vision and, above all, a struggle. There is no end point, no specific one result, no one agenda to be realised.
In no small measure, this is due to the many struggles that the Declaration has inspired and energised at so many levels. Human Rights are no longer the preserve of states, courts, international institutions but have permeated across to workplaces, local communities, families and also to the individual.
As has been noted by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, even as the 30 Articles of the Declaration are ignored or flouted (in many cases by the very governments that signed up to them), they continue to provide a ‘worldwide amplification system for the still, small voice’.
Despite over one-quarter of the world’s people living in places affected by protracted conflict, despite there being more than 100 million forcibly displaced, despite an estimated 750 million living in extreme poverty and some 850 million living with sustained hunger, the human rights agenda continues to offer the only universal platform for just and sustainable human development.
Despite military dictatorships, repression of dissent, authoritarianism, religious and cultural fundamentalism, bigotry, and prejudice, the ‘right’ to assert ‘rights’ remains undefeated. Despite the extensive abuse of rights in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Hungary, India and even in the United States (to name but a few), rights remain a priority. Despite Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Orban or Kim Jong-un (again, to name but a few), rights remain undiminished.
The journey that is human rights has been characterised by impressive progress and by significant setbacks. Conflicts, coups, torture, ‘disappearances’, violence (including domestic and sexual violence) have helped propel the rights agenda forward. As have Constitutions, the labour movement, women’s rights campaigns, anti-poverty organisations and disability groups.
International growth of differing dimensions (and not just economics), education (especially that of young women), environmental and gender awareness and advocacy have also contributed important building blocks. But above all, the human rights journey has highlighted the power that individuals and social movements can and do wield in the struggle between conscience and reason over established power and interest.
The struggle for rights has always been controversial and contested. There have always been interests and agendas that oppose the realisation of rights. One need only reflect on the civil rights movement in so many countries, on Apartheid, on the era of the ‘Generals’ in Latin America or on the suffragette movement.
Today the campaigns around Black Lives Matter, school strikes regarding climate change or Indigenous Rights issues in the Amazon or in Australia illustrate the controversies of ongoing debates and campaigns. One need only reference specific cases such as Nassima al-Sada in Saudi Arabia or Wang Quanzhang in China or our own Daphne Caruana Galizia to highlight the hard won nature of human rights.
Aside altogether from those who are implacably opposed to the idea of a human rights culture and disposition, debate continues. Should the state or society have primary responsibility for rights; should primacy be given to individual or collective rights; can there be a ‘universal’ conception of rights, are some rights more important than others? How can rights be ‘enforced’ across diverse cultures?
Are rights a symbol of ‘western’ values, imperialism, interventionism, or ‘privilege’? Who gets to define human rights, where do they begin and where do they end? How should we understand gender, environmental or even animal rights?
And that old hoary chestnut – with all this talk of rights, what about responsibilities?
In response to such questions and debates, activists have highlighted the international practice of incorporating human rights into constitutions in all regions, not simply in the West. Countries and cultures as diverse as India, China, Cuba, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Ghana have done so.
The concept and fundamental values of human rights culture and practice are widespread across the world in legal structures and institutions, in civil society movements and behaviours, in literature, the arts and in independent media.
Many argue that the supposed dichotomy between individual and collective rights is a false one – civil and political rights are intended to reflect the former while social and economic rights the latter. They also point out that human rights responsibilities are fundamental to the Declaration and are specifically highlighted in it, most graphically in Article 29.
The core point of the human rights project is precisely its universality – a dogged insistence that people everywhere and ‘without distinction of any kind’ have the same basic rights and freedoms. The concept of human rights means nothing if it does not apply to everyone equally.
Rights do not stand or fall on the basis of individual situations, perspectives, or contexts. Integrity, dignity, and universality remain the bedrock of human rights despite their being routinely trampled underfoot by many who claim a ‘rights’ mantle.
This past year of 2023 has made it abundantly obvious that we are not now simply campaigning for a better world but ultimately for one that can be sustained. One where life for all can begin to approximate the vision of the Universal Declaration.
Realising or obstructing that vision is not down to governments, the UN, diplomats, or political leaders. While they obviously have a pivotal role to play, it is by no means the most important. Rights have always been hard won and are so easily lost, not necessarily through force or the failures and hypocrisies of leaders.
All too often they are weakened or lost through public apathy or neglect. Too often we stand aside while the rights of others are abused or undermined, naively believing it has no immediate relevance. Human rights abuses happen elsewhere or to others (or to those who do not ‘deserve’ them).
This then begs the question where do human rights begin? A question answered by Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the key framers of the Declaration. For her, human rights quintessentially begin in ‘small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world’. Such places are the world of the individual, the neighbourhood, the school or college, the factory, farm, or office. These are places where each of us seek equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity, all without discrimination.
For Roosevelt, unless rights mean something there, they have little meaning anywhere. And therefore, without applied interest and action by citizens to uphold such rights close to home, we will all look in vain for them in the wider world.
Unlike 2023, 2024 should be a year in which we tenaciously remind ourselves of the core pillars of human rights – dignity, integrity, and universality.