Pursuing human rights

Pursuing human rights can be: promulgating humanitarian rights based on an understanding of the issues of human and political rights; monitoring and actively discouraging all forms of domination, from within the family and at all levels up to the state; and encouraging people to behave responsibly toward one another.

In this age almost all governments seek at least to be seen to respect human rights and human rights now are seen to apply to all individuals, not just political elites.

Since adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the United nations has helped enact more than 80 comprehensive agreements on political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights. By investigating individual complaints of human rights abuses, the UN Human Rights Commission has focused world attention on cases of torture, disappearance and arbitrary detention and has generated international pressure to be brought on governments to improve their human rights records.

The outcome of the annual sessions of the 2002 United Nations Commission on Human Rights, was considered by many the most contentious since the body began operating in 1947. The USA was absent from the 53-member Commission – for the first time ever. The normal mission of the Commission – to monitor the compliance of governments with the rules of the international human rights system – was altered as a result of a reduced budget and the escalation of the Middle East conflict.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), UN special rapporteurs and independent experts (who serve the Commission as observers and witnesses of human rights violations committed in the UN member countries) accused the Commission of curbing their freedom of expression during the sessions by reducing their formal presentation time to just a few minutes each, raising questions about the true intentions of the Commission with respect to the role of civil society. Some 30 NGOs were eliminated from the speaker lists; the reason given for reduced presentation time was budget cuts.

Another lamented feature of the meetings was the politicisation of some debates and the growing rift between the industrialised North and the developing South, notably in the votes on resolutions on racism and on the right to development. Discussions of the human rights situation in individual countries fuelled a tense atmosphere at the sessions. An initiative by Mexico that called for requiring that member states' anti-terrorism legislation conforms to international humanitarian law was withdrawn at the last minute as a result of pressure from the USA and opposition from the governments of Muslim countries, including Algeria, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which utilise their anti-terrorism laws to suppress dissidents.