Human Rights and Wrongs Today
PROPONENTS of human rights recently accomplished a feat. First, they united more than 1,000 organizations in 60 countries in a movement called the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Then, they pushed through an international treaty banning these weapons. After that, the ICBL and its tireless director, American activist Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1997.
Such achievements, though, come with a sobering footnote. As the Human Rights Watch World Report 1998 notes, the universality of human rights is still “under sustained attack.” And not only are so-called tin-pot dictatorships to blame. “The major powers,” says the report, “showed a marked tendency to ignore human rights when they proved inconvenient to economic or strategic interests—an affliction common to both Europe and the United States.”
For millions of people around the world, human rights violations are impossible to ignore. Their daily plight is still marred by discrimination, poverty, starvation, persecution, rape, child abuse, slavery, and violent death. For these victims the promising conditions spelled out in the towering stack of human rights treaties are a thousand miles away from the world they know. In fact, for most of mankind, even the basic rights listed in the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remain an unfulfilled promise. To illustrate, consider briefly how some of the lofty rights mentioned in the Declaration work out in everyday life.
Equality for All?
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.—Article 1.
An earlier draft of the Universal Declaration’s Article 1 stated: “All men are . . . equal.” To ensure, however, that this statement would not be understood to mean that women are excluded, the female members on the drafting commission insisted that the language be changed. They prevailed, and “all men . . . are equal” became “all human beings are . . . equal.” (Italics ours.) But did changing the language of this article change the position of women?
On December 10, 1997, Human Rights Day, First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, told the UN that the world continues to “treat women as less than complete citizens.” She gave some examples: Of the world’s poor, 70 percent are women. Two thirds of the world’s 130 million children unable to attend school are girls. Two thirds of the world’s 96 million illiterates are women. Women also suffer greatly from domestic and sexual violence, which remains, added Mrs. Clinton, “one of the most under-reported and widespread human rights violations in the world.”
Some females fall prey to violence even before they are born. Particularly in some Asian countries, some mothers abort their unborn daughters because they prefer sons to daughters. In certain places the preference for sons has made genetic testing for sex selection a booming business. One gender-detection clinic advertised its services by suggesting that it was better to spend $38 now on terminating a female fetus than to spend $3,800 later on paying for her dowry. Such advertisements work. A study conducted in one large Asian hospital found that 95.5 percent of the fetuses identified as female were aborted. Son preference is present in other parts of the world as well. When a former U.S. boxing champion was asked how many children he had fathered, he answered: “One boy and seven mistakes.” The UN publication Women and Violence notes that “changing people’s attitude and mentality towards women will take a long time—at least a generation, many believe, and perhaps longer.”
Children Without Childhoods
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.—Article 4.
On paper, slavery is dead. Governments have signed numerous treaties that make slavery illegal. However, according to Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society, known as the world’s oldest human rights organization, “there are more slaves today than ever before.” Modern-day slavery includes a variety of human rights violations. Forced child labor is said to be one form of contemporary slavery.
Derivan, a South American boy, is one sad example. ‘His small hands are raw from handling the coarse leaves of sisal, a plant fiber used to make mattresses. His job is to pick up the leaves in a storeroom and carry them to a processing machine some 300 feet [90 m] away. By the end of each 12-hour workday, he has moved a ton of leaves. Derivan began working when he was five. Today he is 11 years old.’—World Press Review.
The International Labour Office estimates that a quarter of a billion children between the ages of 5 and 14 are child laborers today—an army of small workers nearly as big as the combined populations of Brazil and Mexico! Many of these children without childhoods toil in mines, dragging containers filled with coal; trudge through mud to harvest crops; or crouch at looms to make rugs. Even toddlers—three-, four-, and five-year-olds—are yoked together in teams to plow, seed, and glean fields from dawn to dusk. “Children,” says a landowner in an Asian country, “are cheaper to run than tractors and smarter than oxen.”
Choosing and Changing One’s Religion
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion. —Article 18.
On October 16, 1997, the UN General Assembly received an “interim report on the elimination of all forms of religious intolerance.” The report, prepared by the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, Abdelfattah Amor, lists continuing violations of Article 18. Speaking about a wide array of countries, the report quotes numerous cases of ‘harassment, threats, mistreatment, arrests, detentions, disappearances, and murders.’
Similarly, the 1997 Human Rights Reports, compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, points out that even countries with a long tradition of democracy “have sought to restrict freedoms for a disparate group of minority faiths, lumping them all together as ‘cults.’” Such trends are cause for concern. Willy Fautré, president of the Brussels-based organization Human Rights Without Frontiers, notes: “Religious liberty is one of the best indications of the general state of human freedom in any given society.”
Sore Back but Empty Purse
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity.—Article 23.
Sugarcane cutters in the Caribbean may earn three dollars a day, but the cost of rent and tools saddles them with an immediate debt to the plantation owners. In addition, they are not paid in cash but in vouchers. And since the plantation’s company store is the only store the cutters can reach, they are forced to buy their cooking oil, rice, and beans there. However, as a service charge for accepting the workers’ vouchers, the store deducts 10 to 20 percent of a voucher’s value. Bill O’Neill, deputy director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said in a UN radio broadcast: “At the end of the season, they have nothing to show for weeks, months of back-breaking labour. They don’t have a penny saved up, and they’ve barely been able to get through that season.”
Medical Care for All?
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.—Article 25.
‘Ricardo and Justina are poor Latin American farmers living some 50 miles [80 km] from the nearest city. When Gemma, their baby girl, fell ill, they took her to a nearby private health clinic, but the staff turned them away because it was obvious that Ricardo could not pay the fees. The next day, Justina borrowed money from neighbors to pay for public transportation and made the long trip to the city. When Justina and the baby finally reached the city’s small government hospital, Justina was told that there were no beds available and that she should come back the next morning. As she had no relatives in the city and no money to rent a room, she spent the night on a table in the public market. Justina held the baby close to give her comfort and some protection, but to no avail. That night little Gemma died.’—Human Rights and Social Work.
Around the world, 1 out of 4 people scrapes by on one dollar (U.S.) a day. They face the same deadly dilemma as Ricardo and Justina: Private health care is available but not affordable, while public health care is affordable but not available. Tragically, although the world’s more than one billion poor have received ‘the right to medical care,’ the benefits of medical care are still beyond their reach.
The dreadful catalog of human rights abuses knows no end. Situations like those reported above can be multiplied hundreds of millions of times. Despite the mammoth efforts of human rights organizations and despite the dedication of thousands of activists who literally risk their lives to improve the lot of men, women, and children worldwide, human rights for all remains just a dream. Will it ever be a reality? It most certainly will, but several changes have to occur first. The following article will consider two of them.
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Courtesy MgM Stiftung Menschen gegen Minen (www.mgm.org)
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UN PHOTO 148051/J. P. Laffont—SYGMA
WHO photo/PAHO by J. Vizcarra