December is a special month in the history of a world that has witnessed some horrific scenes of blood-letting. It was on December 10, 1948, that United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a bid to make the world both more humane and more peaceful. The Declaration covers the entire canvas of human rights — civil, political, economic, social and cultural — and thus provides a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. It recognised that human rights were inter-dependent, inalienable, inviolable and hence universal.The question of course is how far has the world progressed towards achieving these goals? The general view is that the aspirations outlined in the human rights charter have remained largely unfulfilled, especially those that concern individual liberties and fundamental rights and freedoms — like the right of ordinary people to health, security, education, freedom from violence, and so on, all of which are essential for human life and development.There are two major challenges in terms of achieving human rights that are facing the world community. The first is the serious development deficit. We must remember that real development means human development and not just economic growth. Today 20 per cent of the world’s population lives on 80 per cent of its resources and only 1 per cent of the women in the world own immovable properties.Take India specifically. The Indian Supreme Court has held right to life under Article 21 of our Constitution to mean the right to live with dignity which encompasses the whole gamut of rights including those of food, healthcare, shelter, education, employment, security and safe environment. Yet, in India today, of a hundred children born, 49 will not be fully immunised against vaccine-preventable diseases; 42 will remain underweight and consequently malnourished; 75 will not complete primary school and seven will not make it to their first birthday.The second challenge is the unipolar world we live in. In 1945, when it first came into existence, the UN had only 51 independent nations as member-states. Today, the figure stands at 191. But despite the increased number of member states, the world has never been as unipolar as it is today. Unipolarity is a major threat to the UN system based on international cooperation. The world cannot talk of equality and yet allow a culture of dominance or unilaterality to prevail. We cannot allow a particular nation to use the UN for its own foreign policy ends. The UN, if it has to survive, will have to ensure that multilateralism both survives and grows. If the world body has to use its status toward the peace building processes— which includes conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction — it will first have to defend its multilateralism.It has to be recognised, of course, that terrorism poses a serious threat not just to peace and security, but to democracy, human rights and development. The US, today, finds itself paying for having supported rather than confronted the forces of terrorism. A report in the New York Times of August 11, 1993, had mentioned that “some of the men and much of the inspiration for the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York in February and for a second bombing conspiracy in New York in June came from Peshawar”. Yet the US has conveniently turned a Nelson’s eye on this and gone out of its way to support countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which have become the breeding grounds for terrorism, for what it perceives as its intrinsic policy ends.Just a few years ago, the world at the dawn of the 21st century was full of hope that it was ushering in a century of peace, progress and prosperity for all of mankind. Just five short years later, that hope has been completely belied. Humanity, today, is languishing in a culture of violence and hatred instead of basking in the sunshine of peace, tolerance and harmony. Gandhi’s message of non-violence is more relevant today than ever before: an eye for an eye will render the whole world blind.The writer is a senior advocate and a former MP
