Human Rights Day: To celebrate the efforts made and to plan for the ways ahead
Rene Wadlow

It is appropriate that on 10 December, Human Rights Day, we should meet to focus on our values and to ask ourselves what constitutes our basic identity within the world society.

 

Human rights are a reflection of universal values as expressed in philosophies and religions.  Human rights are also a reflection of history.  The United Nations was born from the ashes of the Second World War that had destroyed many in both  Asia  and  Europe .  The War had ended with the destruction of  Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki , and since then nuclear weapons have cast a shadow upon our civilizations.

 

Concern for human rights was expressed during the writing of the UN Charter in  San Francisco , and a Commission on Human Rights was a central structure of the organization.  In 1946, the Commission began its discussions of human rights with the memories of World War II still fresh in the minds of the members of the Commission.  By  10 December 1948 , the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly, meeting that year in  Paris  — the UN did not have a permanent headquarters at the time.

 

Some of the tensions that we would later call the Cold War (1945-1990) were evident in the discussions of the articles of the Universal Declaration.  The first 21 of the 30 articles posed few intellectual problems. These are basically the civil and political rights which grew from the American and French Revolutions. The subsequent fight against slavery and the slave trade in the mid 1800s made it normal that slavery and the slave trade should be prohibited. The long struggle for the equality of women had by 1948 been recognized in theory, if not in practice.  Thus the Universal Declaration stresses the equality of women, non-discrimination against women, and the free and full consent of women in marriage and in the dissolution of marriage.

 

The equal role of women was highlighted by the active participation of Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt as chairperson of the Commission and Madame Pandit as the very active representative of  India .

 

 It is with Article 22 with the right to social security and the “economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality” that new ground was being cultivated.  Article 22 through 27 set out the economic, social and cultural rights which were later articulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which came into force in 1976.  The economic and social rights are highlighted in the final operative article of the Universal Declaration: Article 28 “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.” We are still in the process of building such a social and international order, and the creation of a peaceful and just international order is a prime goal of the Association of World Citizens.

 

Economic, social and cultural rights had been a central theme of the 1936 Constitution of the  Soviet Union , often called the “Stalin Constitution”.  Thus it was the representatives of the  Soviet Union  who stressed economic and social rights.  However, the Soviet representatives were not particularly active intellectually in the drafting of the Universal Declaration. It was the representative of  India , Madame Pandit, sister of Prime Minister Nehru and an intellectual in her own right who was the champion of economic, social and cultural rights.

 

At the same time that the Universal Declaration was being written at the United Nations,  India  was in the process of drafting its own Constitution for its forthcoming independence.  For complicated reasons of world power politics, India was a member of the League of Nations and thus a founding member of the UN although not yet independent from England.  Indian intellectuals were drafting a national constitution and faced the same issues as at the UN: how to link the “traditional” liberties of speech, association, press, fair trial which were part of English common law with the economic and social aims of  India , a country with many poor and marginalized people.

 

Thus, at the United Nations, it was the Indian representatives who championed the delineation of rights between economic and social and civil and political — a linkage closely mirrored in the Indian Constitution which came into force in January 1950.

 

 While the civil and political rights largely call on the State to refrain from action: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile” (Article 9), economic and social rights call upon the State to act, to facilitate well being and to be a primary actor especially for the welfare of the most vulnerable. “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 and social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” (Article 25).

 

The need for positive action by the State brings up the crucial political issues of government revenue, taxation, debt and budget priorities— all seen against the background of a rapidly changing and uneven world economic situation. 

 

Currently, both in the  United States  and in the European Union questions of budget priorities, taxation, governmental debt, the cost of the civil service, the role of national welfare services and aid to developing countries are hotly debated topics.  When is taxation an encouragement to production and economic expansion, at what level are tax rates counter-productive, inciting wealthy individuals to put their money in safe havens in foreign countries?  What sort of cultural or religious activities and organizations should be encouraged by the tax code? What is the relation between tax policies and economic, social and cultural rights?