Part 6. Human Rights around the world

No area of the world is immune from practices that diminish human dignity. Even in the United States and France, whose most cherished political documents outlined the theoretical and legal foundations of Human Rights, not everyone enjoys equal access to the fundamental rights of health, safety, education, housing, and employment. The 2006 riots in Paris suburbs with heavy immigrant populations and high unemployment, underscored the ugly reality that even in an advanced European society, not everyone enjoys the same benefits.

In the United States, despite the gains following desegregation, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s, racism and in-equality still persist. African Americans and other minorities feel that they do not have the same access to quality education, housing, health care, and employment opportunities of more privileged groups. Racial violence in 1965 in Watts, a section of Los Angeles, was not an isolated event. Race riots in New York, Philadelphia, and Rochester the previous year indicated that not everyone had realized the American Dream, but the anger that erupted the following August in the Watts riots shocked the nation.  Three years later, following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., blacks rioted in 125 U.S. cities, with the largest uprisings in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and New York City. More recently underprivileged groups rioted in Miami 1980, Cleveland 1991, Los Angeles 1992, Cincinnati 2001, and Seattle 2001.

Americans today suffer profound polarization and cynicism over the war in Iraq. We were shocked over revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and uneasy about the denial of basic rights of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. We feel dismay over the threat to civil liberties in the Patriot Act. We were embarrassed and ashamed when journalists exposed kidnappings of terrorist suspects, who were whisked away on secret, illegal flights on planes chartered by the C.I.A. (extraordinary renditions) and taken to secret, illegal detention centers run by the C.I.A. in Europe and the Middle East. These events have severely tarnished the image of the United States abroad and completely undercut our vaunted claims to moral authority in the war on terrorism and our “leadership of the Free World.”

These troubling developments provide U.S. citizens with an opportunity for self-assessment and reflection as a nation. When we reflect on such aspects of our national life through the wider lens of global human rights, and juxtapose them against a collective self-image nurtured by our hallowed constitutional ideals, only then can we begin to have a realistic picture of our country and what needs to be done to recover those ideals.

World Briefing

Online resources tracking human rights around the world are continually improving. We encourage our trainees to begin by taking a look at Wikipedia’s article on human rights for a quick thumbnail sketch of the ideas on human rights and their incorporation into democratic institutions. The site also gives fairly brief but reliable descriptions of human rights on five continents and Oceana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights).

Although nothing can take the place of direct, on- the-ground investigation and reporting, you will need to prepare for your training expeditions by doing preliminary research on each country and region that you visit.

News and information services will be your front line sources of investigation. In English, the quickest and best starting point is BBC World Service, http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/, which can be accessed through http://news.bbc.co.uk/. Each day at least one of the top international news stories deals with some aspect of human rights. Go a step further and type human rights into the search box and you are likely to get over 500 articles on human rights issues around the globe.

As you read this portion of the training manual, you’d learn a lot by going now to these BBC sites and reading up to date postings on human rights. In addition, the BBC World Service maintains an excellent site, I have a right to…, dedicated to human rights case studies around the world http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/ihavearightto/index.shtml. In addition to case studies, the site includes reports from journalists, educational programs, links to BBC radio programs on human rights, a debate with the U.N. High Commissioner, and a guide to human right treaties and agreements. You may find these case studies particularly helpful in deciding upon your final group project for this course.

You can also type human rights into the search engine of any major news organization to cull the latest stories on issues that pertain to your training and your research. The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html and The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/ are the best U.S. sources, but you will find excellent, up-to-date news and analysis from The Guardian, considered by many to be the world’s best English language newspaper: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian

The Guardian’s Observer used to maintain an extensive Human Rights Index, a website with ghastly tales of human barbarity around the world, charts and tables of human rights abuses, a roll of dishonour for the world’s most egregious offenders, including the list of the top twenty worst offenders from Amnesty International’s reports. Some articles still appear on the site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/rightsindex/0,,201749,00.html

Finally, the best organizations that document human rights problems are London-based Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org/), and Human Rights Watch in New York City (http://www.hrw.org/). Both organizations are respected internationally for their investigative integrity and their websites contain the world’s most current and reliable professional human rights investigation and reporting.

Thinking Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Human Rights, as we have been discussing them and referring to their key documents, refer to a set of norms that lawyers, activists, citizens, NGOs, and other groups can use in response to egregious violations to people’s safety, security, and well-being.  At the same time, we should remember that Human Rights, no matter how “Universal” its primary declaration, is also a matter of debate.

Before you proceed with the rest of your training, please be sure to read Mutua’s critique of normative human rights and An-Na’im’s cross-cultural approach to rights:

Mutua, “The Metaphor of Human Rights”

An-Na’im, “Toward a Cross-Cultural Approach to Defining International Standards of Human Rights”

 

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