Altering the Political Calculations of Abuse

How does one celebrate the 50th anniversary Thursday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a decade marked by genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda? Progress can be applauded in much of Latin America, the former Soviet bloc, southern Africa and in parts of Asia. But what about the terrible abuses that persist?

Governments will always be tempted to violate rights if they feel it will help them secure or maintain power. The challenge is to encourage them to resist that temptation. What can be acclaimed is the emergence of a powerful movement to make that resistance far more likely.

So much has changed that it is difficult to read the universal declaration and recall the limited meaning that most people once gave it. For years, many governments claimed that they alone were the judges of their compliance. Dictatorial governments rejected criticism of their human rights records as “interference” in their “internal affairs.” Pressure from other governments to end abuse was rare.

Today, human rights are well established as the legitimate concern of all. Many governments make respect for rights an important factor in their relationships with one another. Even China, long a holdout, has accepted the legitimacy of international scrutiny by signing major rights treaties. The universal declaration also has come to protect a broader range of people. For many years, it was applied primarily for the benefit of political dissidents and opponents. It was invoked to protect the Soviet intellectual battling a communist regime, the Latin American or Asian opposition figure struggling against a dictatorship or the anti-apartheid activist. Today, it is understood also to benefit women facing discrimination and violence, refugees, civilians caught in conflict, children, common prisoners, gay men and lesbians, religious minorities and workers. This has given new vibrancy to the human rights cause and enhanced the protection for us all.

Behind these developments has been a veritable explosion in the size and strength of the human rights movement. The first human rights organizations might be found in the campaigns to abolish slavery, to grant women the right to vote and to alleviate suffering of war. After World War II, some groups lobbied to include human rights language in the U.N. Charter and to adopt the universal declaration. But there was little in the way of a formal movement.

The Helsinki accords of 1975, in affirming “the right of the individual to know and act upon his rights,” helped to launch the human rights movement in the Soviet bloc. Also in the 1970s, human rights groups emerged in Asia and Latin America to challenge abuses by authoritarian governments. Today, human rights organizations are established in all but the most repressive countries.

Naturally, many governments dislike efforts to expose their abuses and generate public condemnation. Twelve human rights defenders were killed for their work over the past year. Yet the growing number of defenders has generated often intense pressure to respect human rights and helped to underscore the genuine universality of the declaration. One of the most promising recent developments is the emergence of an international system of justice to prosecute the most heinous human rights criminals. This new system can be seen in the war crimes tribunals created for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and the treaty adopted this summer to establish an International Criminal Court. The arrest this fall of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet has boosted these nascent efforts at justice. Justice cannot bring back to life the victims of genocide, but it can pay them respect and help deter other despots.

Can these promising developments end human rights abuse? Of course not. But by increasing the cost of human rights violations, they can alter the political calculations that lead to abuse. That is something to celebrate.