Selective incitement and absent sanctions ensure that human rights remains but hot air in a world of ruthless states, writes Ayman El-Amir* Sixty years after its adoption, the world is still hesitant about the legal force and relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since its approval by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, governments, politicians, jurists, legal experts and laymen continue to debate whether its articles are binding instruments of international law or inspirational standards that nations should aspire to, as some countries argued at the time the declaration was endorsed. Consequently, the evolution of international standards followed the same hesitant approach. Serious respect for and implementation of human rights provisions fell into regression as much as making progress. Sixty years on, the glass is neither half full nor half empty; the question is whether the 21st century will mark more hope than despair in the universal application of human rights. Ambivalence over the status of the declaration was partly addressed by the adoption, ever since, of 60 covenants that amplified its provisions and turned them into binding international treaties. They covered such areas as slavery, forced labour, trafficking in persons, women's rights, rights of the child, civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, discrimination, refugees, terrorism and torture, among other concerns. However, the declaration and the covenants it spawned faced severe limitations in the form of state sovereignty, selective accountability, politicisation and feeble enforcement mechanisms. The barrier of state sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs was overridden in cases of massive and gross violation of human rights, like the state policy of apartheid in the old South Africa and the persecution of the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo by the Serb majority of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. An incipient universal acknowledgment was slowly emerging that governments could not hide behind state sovereignty to commit mass persecution against its population or an ethnic group under its control. However, the principle was selectively applied as Israel's collective punishment of the population in territories under its occupation and the change of the demographic status of these territories -- actions that were considered war crimes committed by the Third Reich during World War II -- went unpunished. Prior to that, the genocide perpetrated by the Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 was a shameful failure of the so-called international community to honour its obligations under an international treaty against the crime of genocide. Ethnic cleansing and genocide of Muslims in Bosnia marked a war crime and act of genocide not promptly addressed, but belatedly redressed by the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia. In Myanmar, a military junta that stands accused of crimes against humanity has enjoyed immunity from international prosecution for the past 46 years. Again, abuse of the principle of state sovereignty bolstered by regional interests stands in the way. The Cold War polarised the integrity and undermined the moral force of the declaration and its relevant covenants. It was used by the Western alliance to chip away at the totalitarian foundation and practices of the Communist Eastern bloc. The tone and policy were set by Sir Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister, in his speech at Westminster College in Missouri in March 1946 where he characterised Central and East European states, lying behind the line from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea, as living behind an "iron curtain" drawn by the former Soviet Union. The former Soviet bloc considered Western attitudes as an attack on the ideological and political foundation of the Warsaw Pact. It responded by counter- attacking the "imperialist", "colonialist" and manipulative policies of the West and its military aggressions. Like the Western alliance, the Eastern bloc claimed commitment to the highest ideals of democracy, freedom and human rights and enshrined the rhetoric of these solemn values in the constitutions of the Communist-oriented member states. The ideals of human rights were selectively used as weapons by each bloc to undermine the other. Ultimately, it was neither the triumph of the values of human rights nor the lack of their exercise by tyrant regimes under the protection of the former Soviet Union that brought down the empire or unlocked the Soviet grip on those states. It was the friction between the dynamics of historical change and the rigid Communist ideology that triggered the implosion of the system. The Soviet empire did not expire before imbuing some of the worst dictatorships in the Third World with a brazen sense of legitimacy of their autocratic rule and their massive suppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Such regimes represent some of the most challenging obstacles to the universal enjoyment of human rights. For the Western alliance, which basically authored the Universal Declaration as a way of redeeming the European wrongs committed in World War II, the principles of the declaration were taken more seriously. Judicial institutions like the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice have given credence to the universal application of the tenets of human rights. However, the United States, which in 1944 prepared the first draft ever of the Universal Declaration and fashioned it after its own Bill of Rights, stands out as the black sheep of the Western alliance. With its habitual aversion to obligations arising from international treaties that are not under its control, successive US administrations politicised, applied selectively and exempted the US from international treaties and protocols when they did not match its narrow political or business interests. This was the case when former president Bill Clinton signed the statutes of the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). He did so on 31 December 2000, the last day open to signatories to attest their signatures to the statutes. He stated his qualification that his administration would neither submit the treaty for ratification by the US Congress, nor would he recommend such action. Five months later, in May 2001, the Bush administration, which took office in January, withdrew the signature and absolved the US of any obligation arising from the treaty. At issue was the fear that accession to the treaty would have placed US nationals, including political and military personnel past and present, within the jurisdiction of the ICC for crimes they may have committed in their official or personal capacities. It would have been within the realm of probability that former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among many others, would have been hauled before the ICC to be tried for crimes against humanity ranging from the secret bombing of Cambodia to the Abu Ghraib torture prison established in Iraq by the US military who invaded the country illegally in 2003. Indeed, President George W Bush himself would be eligible for indictment on charges of crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan if ICC Prosecutor-General Luis Moreno-Ocampo would approach the matter with the same nerve he had when he indicted President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan. The institution of human rights has been a mixed bag, depending on historical circumstances, political developments and even the priorities and whims of political leaders. Different political developments and the diversity of cultures have made universal participation and enactment considerably more difficult. The principles of the Universal Declaration have not been recognised or enforced with sufficient sustainability and determination to turn any autocracy into a democracy. Therefore, for the Universal Declaration and its relevant covenants to be more credible it has to grow some teeth. The enforcement mechanism is the weakest feature of the institution. Because the politicisation of the entire mechanism has rendered it ineffective, a proven violator of human rights can get away with murder through political coalition building in the Human Rights Council or end up with mere feeble moral embarrassment. Libya, which does not exactly have a shining record of human rights, was nominated and almost elected chair of the defunct UN Commission on Human Rights in 2003 if it were not for the moral outrage and protest raised by the Western group of nations led by the US. Likewise, Israel could not have escaped the justice of mandatory sanctions for the crimes against humanity it routinely commits against the Palestinian people if it were not for the protection of the US and Western allies. Moral obligation aside, a credible human rights enforcement mechanism has to be built into international relations. The most effective way is for states to incorporate criteria of respect for human rights in their bilateral relations, cooperation and international assistance programmes. Under a binding international agreement, violators of human rights, whether they inflict such crimes on their own people or others, should face UN Security Council sanctions, international isolation and risk the status of becoming pariah in the community of nations. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
