Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This day is also marked annually as Human Rights Day. Additionally, today is the traditional date for the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize, which this year was awarded to former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, largely in recognition for his role in negotiating the end of armed conflict in Kosovo.
Like the United Nations itself, the UDHR was born amid the ashes of a World War which took tens of millions of lives not just in combat but also through unspeakable acts of inhumanity – systematic state-controlled genocide of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other ethnic groups, mass political imprisonments by Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and even the United States, atrocities beyond count and description from one corner of the globe to another. It left the ruling class shaken and disturbed and willing to draft and adopt a declaration that addressed the centuries of abuse towards the bulk of humanity by their rulers. As the 1950s witnessed the disassembly of the 19th Century imperial order once and for all, the UDHR would become a foundation for new constitutions and guarantees of human rights in many of the new countries that were established.
But, like the UN itself, as time wore on, “human rights” became a cudgel for political pressure, a cover for avoiding meaningful social reform in both inudstrialized and developing countries alike, and finally a toxic piece of propaganda turned against itself as a justification for a return to government-sanctioned torture, the resurgence of genocide rebranded as “ethnic cleansing”, and the abandonment of any pretense of spreading the goals of human dignity and equality. Today, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exists more as the hollow cry of our grandparents’ ghosts than of any genuine mark of humanity. History has proven that even the most honorable intentions of the greatest leaders are readily and easily tossed aside like garbage when the exigiencies of political expediency demand it. And history has shown that even our nation, to whom the rest of the world could always look for the inspiration to make the tenets of the UDHR come true, would eventually succumb and choose to violate our own foundational beliefs.
The 20th Century was the single most violent, atrocious, inhumane period of human history, and midway through it the recognition of our own depravity became too much to bear to the extent that we would create this declaration of highest and most basic principles. Now, another half century past, we have made our real intentions painfully, violently, hopelessly clear for all time. We found the path and chose to turn the other way. Our heirs will judge us accordingly.
