Human rights Day: 70 years on, activists, movements face an uphill battle

Seventy years ago, the then 58 members of the United Nations adopted its first two fundamental frameworks at the General Assembly in Paris.

According to Amnesty International, human rights continue to deteriorate. CIVICUS – an umbrella body for a global alliance of civil society organisations – observes that the civil society space is shrinking. Human rights activists and social justice movements face an uphill battle.

Seventy years ago, the then 58 members of the United Nations (UN) adopted its first two fundamental frameworks at the General Assembly in Paris:

the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December.

Nowadays, this achievement is recognised as Human Rights Day. In a few countries, among them South Africa, Namibia and Cambodia, it’s celebrated at some point during the year as a public holiday.

Often, the Universal Declaration is criticised as an attempt to establish Western values to maintain a global dominance. Its eight main drafters came from Australia, Chile, China, France, Lebanon, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the US. Article 1 starts with the words:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and human rights.

Critics have questioned the relevance of these frameworks. But as I argue in a forthcoming book, the Universal Declaration in combination with the Charter of the United Nations served as a relevant compass in the campaigns for decolonisation during the 1950s. But, as a detailed historical study by Roland Burke documents, once in power anti-colonial movements often turned their backs on the very same rights they used for the mobilisation and recognition of their struggle.

So where is the world 70 years on?

The second Secretary-General of the UN Dag Hammarskjöld popularised the saying:

the UN was not created to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.

Sadly for many people life on earth has remained close to hell. But their numbers would not be less without the UN frameworks. Numerous human rights principles adopted during the last 70 years might not have the effects we would like to see. But they have not been in vain.

Setbacks

The anchoring of genocide and crimes against humanity as part of international law after the Nuremberg trials has been brilliantly documented by historian and author Phillippe Sands. But institutionalised prosecution only followed the adoption of the Rome Statute in 1998 and the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002. Even so, most war crimes remained outside of the Court’s jurisdiction because big powers such as China, Russia and the US, as well as a host of other states, refused to ratify it.

Business Standard