Sometime in the 1990s, I visited the United Nations in New York City. In the then-empty Security Council meeting room, I saw the famous United Nations Security Council mural with its Italian Renaissance-like appropriation of Christian imagery. Adding a rising white Phoenix tempers the salvation message by making it relatable to universal audiences.
But this month, we remember how seventy-five years ago, after the devastation of World War II, the UN General Assembly put forward the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for signatures by the UN’s member countries.
What is in this document?
Some stipulations seem agreeable to many: freedom from slavery, torture, degrading punishment, arbitrary arrest, exile, and “arbitrary interference with…privacy, family, home or correspondence.” Some other line items are the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly, [and] the right to participate in government (either ‘directly or through freely chosen representatives’).”
The Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence agree with this list.
But what about the line “attacks upon…honour and reputation”? Couldn’t these easily be appropriated by those in Muslim or Hindu cultures, where citizens are inordinately concerned with honor?
The document also lists:
* The right of equal access to public service.
* The right to choose how and where to work.
* The right to equal pay for equal work.
* The right to unionize.
* The right to fair pay that ensures an existence worthy of human dignity.
* The right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including food, clothing, housing, medical care, and necessary social services.
* The right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond [one’s] control.
You can see that these rules veer into what can only be termed “socialist.” Who determines what equal access, fair and equal pay, an adequate living standard, and the right to security in those events? What are necessary social services?
Included: the right to a type of free education that develops “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” that shall “promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”
The interpretation of this second list of stipulations is highly subjective, and the UN has no power to enforce them. We’ve all seen the UN’s activities for maintaining peace, namely ineptitude and ineffectiveness. If the UN can’t maintain peace, how could the UDHR be enforced?
Since 1948, more than eighty international treaties and declarations– along with regional human rights conventions, domestic human rights bills, and constitutional provisions–have made up legally binding systems with the same type of protection of human rights as the UDHR. At some level, all UN member states have ratified at least one of these treaties (four out of five have ratified four or more).
But I’m not asking for its ineptitude to change. I am thankful for it; the UDHR remains a top-down agreement without teeth. The “rules-based order” was supposed to restrain its intended signatories from human rights abuses. Victims were to be given a set of principles to condemn their mistreatment. The post-WWII desire was to create a new world order where countries could work together for shared values and concerns.
Unfortunately, conflict around the world has only increased to many small wars. The UN sits entirely in uselessness on expensive Manhattan real estate.