1. We discussed the role of the UN today. What are your thoughts on the purpose of the UN? Is it a fairly established institution?
2. We discussed about equality of human beings, discrimination, slavery, and torture. What are your reflective thoughts on this discussion?
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Today we learned about "scientific" justification for violation of human rights based on race. Vagisha told us how in school she was taught about how all humans belong to three races which were determined by genetics. As I was listening, I was thinking about how ridiculous it all sounded and that I couldn't imagine ever believing in any ideas like that. Of course different races are equal, and there are, of course, more than three. And it would be crazy to think that any race of people was less than human. That's when I realized that I was still thinking of people in terms of race.
I don't ever remember being taught that different people around the world are members of different races. I don't think that ever came up in formal education -- we only learned about ethnicities. But somewhere along the line, I learned to take it for granted that different people belong to different races. And if race, by definition, is hereditary, how else would it be determined if not by genes? Until today, I assumed that people all over the world belong to different races. Equal, yes, but different all the same. Apparently, this isn’t true.
It’s disturbing that I was under a false impression all of my life that I never thought of as anything less than fact. It’s even more disturbing that this false impression has been used as a basis for racism and inhuman policies for centuries. I keep wondering if my parents also believe in race. I think so. Again, they’re not racist but they still differentiate between races. I know my grandparents sometimes let slip slightly racist comments without thinking them to be racist or prejudiced at all. Was I an example of the new racist? Someone who merely believed in race, an artificial construction used to separate people? Then again, is the very term “racist” inaccurate if there is no such thing as race? Maybe people are only “ethnist?”
I know I’ll be calling my parents about this tonight. I can’t help but feel indignant that I somehow incorporated these false ideas in my life. Vagisha was taught ideas of race by school teachers, people who she is supposed to trust for her education. What is my excuse?
The United Nations was designed to facilitate international dialogs between governments and chiefly at the time, to prevent war. It is not a fairly established institution because organization is based upon a 1 vote per government system and not a system like the US House of Representatives where states are given more representatives based upon size, which could be applied to the UN based upon influence/global footprint.
The equality of human beings, discrimination, slavery and torture are all important topics which should be covered in international dialogs and should have strong cross border enforcement. It is important that all governments who agree to these declarations must follow them, and not just sign them to look good or gain more acceptance.
All humans are born equal. But not all humans are equal. That is an important statement, because by the very fact that people are diverse with different circumstances and lifestyles ensures that they are unequal. That is not to say that humans deserve unequal rights. On the contrary, humans must guarantee rights for themselves, because, after all, rights are created and coined by humans. So many atrocities are committed on this planet, which all violate human rights.
Slavery violates more human rights than I can even think of. I can barely imagine the conditions that these people are forced to live in. Some slaves are victims of fraud and are still subject to hard, cruel labor. Studies and organizations have tried to highlight the crimes of slavery. And slavery is not what it was two hundred years ago. Slavery is at times more subtle but much more widespread. There are now more slaves on this planet than at any other time. Slavery holds people against their will and violates the right to live, freedom of speech, freedom to travel, and countless others. Governments and individuals must collaborate to not only emancipate, but to empower and enrich people's lives.
We discussed the role of the UN today. What are your thoughts on the purpose of the UN? Is it a fairly established institution?
i think that no matter how effective or not effective the un is its intention is the key factor. being a relatively recent addition to the international community there is no doubt that there are problems and will be problems for a long time- as with all state and non state actors. the intention and purpose is to prevent human rights atrocities and global conflicts- something that i think is difficult to argue against. while people debate and criticize the effectiveness of the un i think that it is far more important and valuable to be debating on how we can improve this system and prevent the horrible events which are bound to occur. i think that it is yet to become an established institution but i stand by the idea that with time and progress this is a possibility.
what i found most interesting in our discussion of the un today was proportional representation and the five members of the security council which are permanent. i wondered what would happen if the five permanent members were removed and replaced with entirely different countries how the balance of power would change and what position the united states would be in specifically. the fact that these countries are still the permanent members and still the most powerful countries in the world also puts into question the influence of the un. if they are still in power now is it related to this position in the un?
I, personally, feel that even if the UN isnt completley effective, it sets a prescedence that the world needs. With all the right goals in mind, I think that the UN tries its best to protect the rights of the people. Unfortunatley, our world today makes it almost impossible for an organization to really make a difference, even if it is recognized by nations of the world.
it was established at the end of WWII, making the super powers the victors, and strongest world influences at the time. Today I really enjoyed discussing the possibility of changing the way the security council, and general assembly is run. I agree with the point of one vote per nation, believing that everyone has an equal opportunity to have their rights violated, giving everyone an equal say in how the procedures and de facto "laws" of the UN are carried out. each nation can, to the same extent, commit attrocities against their people, or need to employ the UNs help in a certain circumstance, and this calls for the need of equal say no matter the population. The idea of getting rid of the 5 permanent members is a pretty good idea in my own opinion. I think that erasing the 5 super powers and their ability to vetoe will force everyone to get more involved, and get an equal chance to raise certain agendas that might not appeal to the 5 countries, which have their own positions as leading nations to uphold.
I wanted to kind of comment on the capital punishment topic we covered in class. I feel that once you violate someone's rights, you lose any protection they grant you. almost like an eye for an eye.
I thought that today's discussion regarding the UN was incredibly stimulating. I had previously believed that the UN was one of the fairest organizations, but the way that it is set up makes it seem so unfair, especially regarding the selection of members on the security council. Today's discussion of the UN also helped lead into our discussion NGO's and different international organizations. During our evening session we read an article about the emerging power of NGO's and how they were going to shape the future of not only human rights, but also crime and international business. After we read, we debated whether or not we thought NGO's were helpful on the world stage. At the end, I came to the conclusion that as long NGO's didn't become to powerful and create too many different personal interests.
Yes, I believe that the UN is relatively fairly established, especially when the standard of “fairness” in the modern world is taken into consideration. While there are a multitude of improvements that could be enacted, the current UN is effective, mostly in its role as an international forum but in other roles as well.
The issue of representation was raised in class today, and that topic caught my interest. Mark proposed that a system of proportional representation, based on population or other variables, would make the UN a more effective body. I have to disagree with that. I think the system of equal representation is a positive aspect of the UN. It gives every country, no matter how small, a voice. Countries that are influential, whether it is due to population or economic success, have enough clout in every other international proceeding to justify a system of equal representation within a forum like the United Nations. Though somewhat insignificant compared to ensuring that every country has a voice, another argument against the system of proportional representation is that it would cause problems in seating or proportioning. What I mean is, populations change, often growing. Members would have to be added to certain countries to make it proportional. But, if members were added over and over, the UN would have to expand its facilities to accommodate them. This is a problem faced by the U.S. House of Representatives, and one that particular body chose to solve by simply reorganizing the number of representatives from each state based on a regularly taken census. But this causes further problems of improportional representation, and just perpetuates the problem. This could easily happen should the UN have “proportional” representation.
There was something else on the topic of the UN that caught my interest. On page 62 of the "Power Shift" article, it's stated that proposals have been put forth for an assembly within the UN that represents people rather than nations. This is sort of intriguing; while I believe it's a good idea, it would undoubtably cause much conflict. What if ethnicities conflict, or age-old disputes come up? How would people of very mixed ethnicities be represented? I'd love to discuss it more, maybe in class.
The UN is a multinational organization or forum which puts pressure on countries in order to influence them to enforce HR or correct a wrong dealing with HR. Their purpose is a positive one that is usually effective in administering change where there is a need for it. I believe the UN is a fairly established institution becasue 191 countries are invovled; this leads me to believe that all these countries joined because they respect and recognize this organization as one that is greatly influential. When comparing articles I read one written in 1958 which discussed the UDHR (adopted by the UN) and the problems surrounding it. Many of the issues had been previously mentioned in class, such as the vagueness of the declaration. It seemed that at the time there wasn't much respect for it, which could have been connected to the UN leading one to bleieve that the UN may not have been as respected at that time.
Our discussion on the equality of human beings revolved around the issue of justifying racial disrimination. Race theory is an idea that I came across in my History classroom where a Holocaust class is also taught. The poster on the wall provided one with the skin color scale and tools used to catergorize people during the Nazi Germany Holocaust. I have never been taught anything formally on the subject, so it was very interesting to hear about the Caucusoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid categories Vagisha was taught. The dicussion continued to include Affirmative Action which I am somewhat framiliar with from the Philosophy class I took last year at CTY. The idea, I believe, is a good one. However, my mom told me that when she was in high school they still reserved spots in high schools for Black Americans. She knew two girls who were accepted because of this policy. Unfortunately they had to drop out of college a yearin because they were unable to keep up. Here we see a potential flaw. I think is is comepletely possible to continue this practice in the workplace and elsewhere and have it be successful.
Today was very informative and intersting!
The UN right now definitely seems legit in their motivation and what they are doing. They're promoting Human Rights and trying to regulate our world in a more peaceful way. It is possible, however, that a corrupted person gets into the UN, who acquires the ability to perform effective propaganda, and eventually corrupt the entire UN. This scenario may not happen in reality at all, but if UN does get corrupted one day (by whatever reason) it will be catastrophic (with so much money and power they have, over legitimizing non-state actors, and such).
Also, while we were reading the article, I keep having a notion that the most powerful NGO will one day become another government, but one that rules the entire world (which may be corruptive). Yes, they are free from government ruling now; they have good motives; they help people. NGOs today do more beneficial things to our society than they do bad things; however, history has proved that governments (democratic, or communist) come naturally in a community. NGOs are now formed because of globalization; international people with similar interests have gotten together. Once globalization reaches a level of sophistication, though, when citizens of the world become more organized, I expect another government to be formed, one that forms from a over-powerful NGO--just like how a government is form in a country after groups of people with different ideals fight each other. I like how NGO' power is balanced by the governments' power now.
Theoretically the UN was established to deal with international affairs and promote human rights. It was created with its quote "never again" after WW2. The UN vowed to protect human rights and put pressure on governemts that violate human rights. However, the UN has been rendered inaffective several times due to its broad terminology on human rigths. For example, genocides in Rwanda and recently in Darfur have been ignored by the UN because of precious time wasted determining if these atrocities are indeed genocide. Perhaps there is too much hesitation in the UN today. As for being fair, it is impossible for any institution to be fair, especially when it is an allocation on the world's countries. Power is obviously leaned towarded to militarily poweful countries after WW2. It is impossible to create a perfect UN in such a diverse world.
The discussion on equaity, discrimination, slavery, and torture left a million things unsaid. Discrimination is one of the powerful catalysts that leads to human rights violations obviously. Of course, discrimination is inherent and perhaps can never be abolished from the human mind. Therefore, niether will slavery because discrimination is slavery of the mind and also making slavery quite abstract in modern terms. Slavery has its more visible forms of women and child labor as well as sexual slavery. However, almost as destructive to a society revolving around equal human rights, is the saturation of the mind of a human. So long as discrimination exsists, so will its potent growth into what we may call human rights violations.
Well, the UN was established after the failure of the League of Nations. So there must have been methods before which failed and are now corrected for the UN to work as it does.
It is a good institution but the policy of 5 permanent members on the security council can be questionable. Why are there only 5? As there are certainly many other countries which might be good as permanent members. Or the policy of having permanent members could be abolished completely then all the countries might have more fair of a chance to get their opinions heard, and their problems dealt with in a more rapid manner.
There is more support in the UN today than there was with the League of Nations, because with the League some of the permanent and leading members were somewhat self-interested and were not fully supportive.
However, today with the UN there are a variety of problems trying to be addressed, and member states are cooperating to an extent. There is hesitation with the terminology, as human rights can be interpreted differently as can laws.
The ideas that are now being put forward are more broad than they used to be in comparison to the 1950's according to the articles that we compared today. This could be to try and get more countries to agree with them because there are more ways to interpret them which might appeal more to other countries. Which could be for better or for worse as even if they are implementing what is suggested, are they implementing it in the way the UN would like? or that other countries would agree with? Maybe it is just better that countries are trying to cooperate and come to agreements even if what they implement does not work to the full extent to that which the other countries wish.
I think that it is incredibly difficult to address the issues of discrimination, slavery, and torture. The primary problem with attempting to fix these problems is simply conflicting perspective. The nation's who agree sign the U.N. declaration of human rights may put it down on paper but not actually have any interest in upholding those principles. As an example, the United States government has nuanced the meaning of terms such as "torture" to fit its agenda. This undermines the purpose of such a document. Because of the differences in culture and perspective, the UN is forced to establish human rights in broad terms, and thus is ineffective in dealing with this issue. I think that the declaration is a start to the process of combatting these problems but is unable to do so because of the vast differences in the ideologies of various nations,
As an international entity, the UN is awash in a multitude of agendas which can make administering to human rights cumbersome. I am sure that by reading the selected articles for the comparison activity today, we found several instances in which self-interest, or national sovereignty, superseded a dedication to human rights. At least for the time being, NGOs have been effective in protecting the human rights causes that they feel strongly abount.
The UN as an overarching body has been established to prevent such occurrences. As an organization the UN has considerable presence, but where does its real power lie? The UN can only advise its member nations and mainly operates through “soft law” but does it require more direct means of human rights implementation?
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