Post 4: Is the UNDHR really a 'universal declaration'?
Universalism vs. Relativism
BBC News Special Report: Sierra Leone Civil War
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1999/01/99/sierra_leone/251251.stm
*NOTE
The Argentine 'Dirty War' was called a genocide by a court of law during the 2006 trial of Miguel Etchecolatz, a former senior official of the BA provisional police. However, by then, it was to late for intervention (23 years too late).
13 comments:
When an organization or the UN decides to intervene in a situation, they should not first resort to military solutions. The organization should include the native people in their decision and make them part of the solution, instead of the problem. So much more could be done if victims and NGOs worked together to create a cohesive program to address problems within the region or country.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is universal in theory, but many countries who have signed it, which is all of them with the exception of the US and Somalia commit atrocities and violate human rights frequently. The UDHR is a document meant to be a universal document, hence the first word in the name, but it is felt that it is too overarching and that many of the regulations that it calls for could not be instated overnight or if at all.
The United Nations is consistent with its policies on genocide. It names it one too late. The 'Never Again' slogan after the Holocaust was meant to prevent further genocides or at least halt them once they've started. And yet off the top of my head I can think of at least six since then. In each one, the genocide is either never classified as a genocide or declared one too late to do anything about it -- even if it has been an obvious genocide when it was going on.
I doubt this is accidental. Both the United Nations and member countries are understandably reluctant to interfere in violent situations, but once said situations are classified as genocides, they are obligated to. Instead, decisions are put off and yet another tragedy occurs. And another 'Never Again' is promised.
In theory, the UDHR is meant to transcend the cultural, ethnic, and ideological gap between people to adress the rights of merely a human beings. It therefore seems to approach the situation from a univeralist perspective; however, the actuality of the situation is that societies operate in their own unique fashions and therefore require unique plans to achieve human rights. I believe that the UDHR has very capably set forth goals that each nation should aim for to ensure human liberty, yet it cannot effectively create a set of standards or pratices that are applicable to the many nations adressed.
relativism or universalism. the debate today i felt was an eye-opening discussion. but i what i enjoyed more was our discussion on human rights, and if it is in fact, gender nuetral. i feel that womens rights is universal, as well as children rights too. i found it really upsetting to learn about the blind women, getting raped and going to jail for it. at this point, i really am wondering if there is any chance the world will be right. most likley not because my idea of right, which may be shared with those in the classroom today, differs a lot from others across the globe. and for the first time, today i actually grasped the notion of how impossible it is, wether for UN, NGOs or individuals to better the world because what we view as obvious violations of HRs is completley second nature to those who may be commiting them.
Today's main activity was a debate over child labor. The two opposing sides debated on how to settle the problem of child labor: Relativism vs Universalism. I argued the universalism side and most of what we used was empirical evidence about the development of the brain and body and how it was harmful to children. I was very pleased with todays debate because it turned into a very interesting and thought-provoking discussion and I'm looking forward to tomorrow's discussion of Sierra Leone.
i felt that the discussion today on the public vs private sphere of human rights was very interesting. when some people would immeadiatly jump to sharia law for an example of a clear discrepancy in this charting examples of discrepancies can be found in the u.s. who are we to decide which is which? in pakistan things like the situation with safia bibi occurr- a young girl is jailed for being raped. and in the u.s. abortion and gay rights are debated and often denied to individuals. which is worse? i think that while its hard to decide which issues go in which column i personally believe that while in my mind private matters should never be put into the hands of public officials theres no way that those with power will be able to separate their values and beliefs from public policy.
The UNDHR is simply called a universal declaration. Because it applies to every country in the UN, it cannot be treated as one. I believe a completely universal law is impossible in our diverse world although it may sound good. In reality the UNDHR is actualy treated on relative terms of nations. Nations often interpret the articles of the UNDHR according to their bliefs, standards, cultures, or religion. Likewise the UNDHR is written in very loose, unspecific terms that can easily be interpreted in unique ways. Perhaps the UN predicted that a truely universal UNDHR would not be successful and impossible to enforce, therefore they created this loose UNDHR. The notion of calling it "universal" may be to for several reasons. For example, it can be an illustration of which direction the UN would choose to lead the wrold and human rights. Perhaps, the UN is giving hints that they do indeed believe that these are the fundamental types of human rights that would benefit the entire world in their view. So calling a declaration on human rights "universal" can be a UN trademark when in reality the UNDHR is realtive.
In theory, the UNDHR is a universal declaration. After all, its title is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, as we found in class today, UNDHR makes a few assumptions. Namely, that the nations it pertains to are individualistic, trusting in their governments and fellow nations, committed to human life, and democratic. As we know, not all nations can be described by the above statements.
Hence, how can the UNDHR apply to a non-democratic nation which does not uphold the human rights / liberties its government does not even decree? Though the UNDHR means to unite all nations under law that is essentially a compilation of global norms, its enforcement is up to the member nations who implement it in their countries according to their own mores.
The UDHR was intended to be a universal declaration (hence the use of the word "Universal" in the title) in a sense, but then when it is closely examined, as we did, one finds that the articles are rather vague, allowing for some interpretation. For example: the first part of Article 25 is that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself" In different countries a governemtn, or the enforcers of the UDHR could have different defintions of "well-being" and "adequate" is clearly ambiguous. The document makes many assumptions, as we discussed today; it depends on countries operating under a democratic form of government where there are civil liberties and fair elections. This is not the case in all countries. The UDHR applies to everyone, but in some countries, such as where women's rights are nearly nonexistent, a government would not uphold this assumption made in the UDHR. So, although it was intended to be universal, too many assumptions are made to make this possible.
The UDHR cannot really be in force as a universal declaration because so many assumptions are made. Also, it is hard to enforce a global policy as there are no 'international police/ peace keeping' forces. It is an attempt at a universal declaration, which is all that countries are able to do. They can pass declarations and try to enforce laws and harness the small amount of power these do have to make the differences they can to ensure that the world is a better place.
Every country will take each law and enforce it differently, as long as they enforce it to an extent the world will be moving toward a better future. Although there are the countries that ratify agreements but then do not act on them, there are those that do. The latter should put more pressure on the countries to enforce these laws,which could be more effective.
We cannot change a country's decision, or people's beliefs and traditions, but if there is enough pressure, then the countries would not want to harm their reputation in the international community and therefore might fix some of the issues that shock the western world. This could be measures such as addressing womens rights and the conditions of children's work places.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights is relatively universal. No doubt that sounds like a complete contradiction (and it probably is), but it my mind, nothing so far has ever been completely relative or completely universal, and probably never will be. I do think that the UNDHR makes a good attempt; however, I don’t know if there is such a thing as an absolute truth, especially in subject of human rights. Thus, perhaps there will never be a completely universal documentation or standpoint on human rights.
There was something I wondered about today. Imagine that, say, a group of Asian or Middle Eastern nations had risen to power and affluence before the United States and Europe did. Consequently, if they had assumed the position we have now, they would have also assumed the role of telling us what we’re doing wrong. Everything would be flipped. The U.S. might be told that its culture is vulgar and immoral, and that it must change. How dare we risk the purity and safety of our women by allowing them to cavort around, unsupervised and improperly clothed? Have we no values?
What I mean is, everything is relative (to a point). Honestly, who are we to be imposing our morals and values on other cultures? They could have been in our position, if chance had had that, and we would have been in theirs. Would you like your culture being assaulted?
I’m not completely sure where I’m going with this. I guess, I considered the other side, and now I wonder how it would feel for us to be in their shoes. It’d be good for everyone to consider that as well?
After all these days of classes, I've found the UDHR and the UN being very western-based. Benefical projects to the community have been putforth, but do these few specific projects that we hear of outweigh the money spent on weakly or even impossible to be performed projects? The mistakes made during humanitariun interventions? The inefficiency of the councils that result in more devastating circumstances? Maybe they do, maybe the don't.
Who are we to say that UDHR should be enforced in every country? To us, everything sounds moral. But really, what if we are wrong? We only think that we're right right now because we are in the country that is one of the most developed. But maybe, those things are just needed as a process for the countries to develop. We can help, but how much? If we intervene too much, are we just making things worse? People definitely need to figure out a more efficient way of solving all the problems in the world; however i do think that persuading some of the richest people in our world to just give a small percentage of their money to the developing countries will solve a LOT of problem.
Also I thought our discussion on women's rights was very enlightening. Maybe because my mom is a very tough woman; it always seemed to me that women in this world ARE getting equal rights. Today's class, however, proved me wrong. And i never really realized how weird it is to just see a co-ed classroom and just see human, instead of seeing them in different genders. Hm, girls and guys, are definitely still different though. :P
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