Human rights and the UN

Last Monday evening, the United Nations did something that it does very well – an anniversary celebration. It had been just 30 years since the 60 members, as there were then, of the United Nations adopted in Paris, and without a dissenting vote, a so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And last Monday, in the main auditorium of the UN and under television lights which make any public meeting appear to be taking place in the middle of the Arizona Desert, the Secretary-General handed out eight prizes – four to individuals, four to organisations – which in the judgement of the UN's commission on human rights have seemed to champion human rights in various countries around the world. And after that there was a piano recital by the tiny Alicia de Larrocha who, if she's not the greatest living pianist, and there are those who think she is, is certainly the most exquisite striker of the keyboard, alternating between the touch of a diamond cutter and a snowflake. And before the prize giving, the preamble to the declaration – a long statement of what human rights are all about – was read aloud by Miss Lauren Bacall, no less. 

It is a formidable and high-toned bit of prose. Somebody sooner of later is going to call it, in the current jargon, a 'resonant' statement. I never quite know what that means but it certainly resounds with declarations about the inherent dignity of the individual, the equal and inalliable rights of all members of the human family. It says it's essential to protect these rights by the rule of law so as to avoid rebellion and tyranny. It commits all the members to recognise equal rights between men and women, to raise standards of living and to allow freedom of speech and belief. It deplores, anywhere on earth, abuses of human rights which have resulted in barbarous acts unspecified, but which, it assures, have outraged the conscience of mankind. 

In short, it proclaims as a moral fact what, in fact, is not being completely practised anywhere on earth and in many countries is not even accepted as an obligation by the government. 

Now, although this Declaration of Human Rights reads, after 30 years, more like a long and well-meaning exercise in wishful thinking, it took the original commission two years to agree on the wording because of a fundamental conflict between two blocs that sat down to write it, between the western bloc of self-governing democracies and what you might roughly call the 'eastern' bloc, the growing eastern bloc of communist governments. This two-year battle was not much written up at the time. Of course I don't mean the Cold War battle between the West and the Russians, which was hotting up considerably in 1948. But this intra-mural battle between the two sets of scribblers trying to define human rights and saying which rights mattered most. 

Since the West had a long tradition of free speech, free press, free assembly, those were the rights it played up as vital. And, since several of the most powerful Western countries still had empires and colonies where most of the people lived on or below the poverty line, the West tended to play down the view that a living wage and a good meal were essential human rights. 

On the other side, the communist nations whose grip on their peoples depended on setting a party line and enforcing obedience to it, played down as essential rights freedom of speech, the press and assembly. 

The way this battle was solved was to put everything into the Declaration of Human Rights and just hope that each side would, in time, stop being beastly in its particular fashion. 

So, 30 years later, it is still possible for the West to point to principles of the declaration which totalitarian governments, both left and right, are flagrantly violating and it's possible for the Russians and Chinese, to go no further, to point to other principles in the declaration and say that 'we flagrantly ignore defining a job and freedom from poverty as basic human rights.' 

There is one international organisation – only one, so far as I know – which accepts the whole declaration as the proper prescription for a civilised state and then goes around the world looking for violators, and finds them everywhere. It is Amnesty International, which has been called the watchdog of human rights with no holds barred, no country or political system excused. Last year it received the Nobel Peace Prize and last Monday it was one of the eight recipients of human rights prizes at the ceremony of the United Nations. 

It's a very tough outfit, by which I mean courageous, careful, uncommitted to any ideology but that of the declaration, and as scrupulously unbiased as it is possible for a group of humans to be. 

Nevertheless, in a session of the General Assembly last Monday morning, the Soviet delegate was on his feet protesting the award of a human rights prize to Amnesty International. 'Amnesty International', he said, in a charge that is exactly the contrary of the truth, 'is a lackey of the West devoted to finding abuses of human rights mainly in the Soviet Union.' He was promptly challenged to say if that was so, why Amnesty International had reported abuses of human rights in no less than 116 countries and 15 violations inside the United States? Mr Troianovski did not blanch. 'Oh that,' he said, 'that was a clever cover-up. Just a method of pretending to be balanced.' There was not much point in arguing with Mr Troianovski. The Soviet press is going to report his protest and his description of Amnesty International as a running dog of the West and he'd be a bold Russian journalist who wrote up the point about the 116 countries, though no doubt the Russians will read that 'even Amnesty International, Western-dominated though it be, couldn't manage to hide 15 gross violations of human rights in the oppressive, capitalist superpower, the United States of America.' 

I'm afraid the chances for our side – I'm, after all, talking out of the West – I'm afraid our chances of convincing the rest of the world that we are sincerely devoted to freedom of speech and a free press and the right to dissent are slipping away from us. The United Nations now has 150 member nations and no more than 20 of them can claim to be democratic countries. In the world's press and the world's radio stations, the vast majority of whom are controlled by the government in being, the only human rights that will be made to matter are freedom from hunger and unemployment. 

Just lately, an American journalist had a long interview with Fidel Castro and asked him what he thought of President Carter's human rights policy. Castro replied, he replied in a quiet tirade of several thousand words as he always does but I'll pick out the telling sentence or sentences. He replied, 'Well, no-one can be against the concept of human rights. Carter gives me the impression of being a sincere man but I'm not sure he fully comprehends the most important problem with respect to human rights which is the state of misery, hunger, malnutrition and disease that millions of people suffer in the under-developed world. And what is to blame for this situation?' – I'm still quoting Castro – 'Capitalism, which has brought on addiction, gambling, prostitution, racial discrimination, extermination of the Indian. These are the most repugnant examples of the violation of human rights.' 

When this message is preached to the people by the rulers of, say, a hundred countries, it seems unlikely to me that those peoples will work themselves up into intense admiration of our passion for free speech and the right of dissent. To very poor people, to people with empty bellies, I imagine that the lengths to which Americans go to assert their rights must seem bewildering in the extreme. 

Look for a moment at the docket which the US Supreme Court has just acted on before it went off for its Christmas holiday. A criminal suspect was given a printed form entitled 'Your Rights.' He said he knew what they were but he wouldn't sign the paper. He then made incriminating statements but a state court ruled that these statements did not incriminate him. The Supreme Court will rule on appeal of the prosecution. A man and a woman who worked in a public library were fired when they began living together to raise their illegitimate child. They have appealed to their right to privacy. 

The Court has agreed to decide whether a member of Congress can be prosecuted for taking bribes in exchange for sponsoring or voting for a bill. The congressmen say this violates a constitutional provision that members of Congress may not be questioned regarding any speech or debate in either house. In other words, does congressional immunity protect a man for fulfilling inside the house the bargain for which he was bribed outside it? 

To some non-Americans, these examples of claimed human rights must seem bizarre, even frivolous, but however eccentric they appear on the outside they all touch on the Constitution's fundamental guarantee, and which the Supreme Court is there to safeguard the protection of the individual against somebody, some state, some institution, even the government itself, who would invade his liberties. 

Now President Carter must have these things in mind when he persists in his human rights policy but mainly he's concerned to make the United States the most conspicuous protestor against regimes that imprison or torture or otherwise punish people for their political opinions. And here, lately, he's found himself gored by the horns of a dilemma. People say if he picks on a cruel dictatorship in Brazil, why not Korea? Why does he bemoan the government of Argentina and not the Philippines? And, most pointedly in the past few weeks, why does he support the Shah of Iran if the Shah's secret police still torture people? 

Well, the brutal fact is that Iran supplies about ten per cent of all American oil, that a leftist regime could leave Iran ringed round with Soviet-dominated countries and the lid could start to close on the West's industrial fuel supply. And with that appalling prospect in view, even the most high-minded president might have to decide that compassion begins at home.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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