Human Rights

1. Human rights is a central concept in political science, yet it is still poorly understood. It is a
concept very much contested not only between East and West but also between developed and
developing countries. It has received unprecedented attention since the Second World War. Prior to
that, the issue was absent from the political agenda. Almost every country violated human rights: to
name just a few, discrimination on racial grounds was common practice in the United States; the
maintenance of colonies by France and the United Kingdom and the denial of minority rights under
totalitarian dictatorships in Spain and the former Soviet Union. Apart from the recognition of the need to
abolish the slave trade - expressed in the Vienna Congress in 1815 and the conclusion of a treaty to
abolish it at the Brussels Conference in 1890 - and the humanitarian laws expressed in documents such as
the Geneva and the Hague conventions that apply in times of war only, there was no document which
restricted states in their behavior towards their citizens. These treatments - abuse of human rights in this
instance - did fall within the domestic jurisdiction of states and any intervention would have been seen as
interference in the internal affairs of the country.

2. However, this state of affairs changed drastically soon after the Second World War ended, and
the issue of human rights has since become very significant. It takes an event of some kind for a
particular issue to come to the forefront and to raise people's awareness of it, and the Second World War
provided the catalyst for human rights. The unspeakable atrocities committed by the Third Reich against
Jews, communists, and homosexuals, helped by the negative attitudes and appeasement policies adopted
by some allied governments towards Hitler and his expansion policies, led to a new vision that some basic
rights should be respected. Towards the beginning of the War, when action was still possible, the allies
had turned a blind eye to what was happening, and to a certain extent had, indirectly, 'helped' Hitler in his
systematic massacres. The United States, for example, not only denied refuge to some of those who
fled, but did not enter the war until Pearl Harbour was attacked.

3. In the aftermath of the War, and after the Allies dealt with those associated with war crimes
during the Nuremberg trials, human rights became an issue of international concern. It received a further
boost with the establishment of the United Nations who’s Charter, in its preamble, states that 'disregard
and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts'. It 'reaffirm[s] faith in fundamental
human rights' and according to article 1 encouraged 'respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms
for all'. The efforts of the United Nations resulted in the adoption, on 10 December 1948, (celebrated as
international human rights day) of the first international document on this subject, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. It was by no means a binding document, but set a 'common standard of
achievement'. Nonetheless, it represented a great leap forward in the politics of human rights, and a solid
basis upon which further development was carried out.

4. Although the end of the War opened the way to discussions on human rights, it also led to a sharp
ideological division with the raising of the 'iron curtain' which separated communist countries from liberal
democracies; an era known as the 'Cold War'. In addition, the decade which followed saw the emergence
of many 'Third World' countries as a result of the disintegration of traditional empires. As a result, Afro-
Asian countries became the majority in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and put
forward their interests. Thus, the issue of human rights priorities had become the subject of mutual
accusation and was vigorously contested between the East and West and developed and developing
countries alike. The discussions that took place within the Commission, and most importantly the
documents which followed from these discussions, reflected deep divisions between the main actors.
While liberal democracies favoured civil and political rights, communist countries stressed economic and
social rights, and 'Third World' countries were more concerned with issues of self-determination. When it
came to the adoption of binding documents, it was no coincidence that the formerly Western - dominated
Commission found it very difficult to come to a compromise. Most of the 1950s and early 1960s were
spent searching for a formula which would satisfy everybody. Each party was pressing for the inclusion
of a particular set of rights which corresponded to their ideological standpoint. The discussion eventually
ended with the adoption, in 1966, of two separate international covenants: the first on civil and political
rights and the second on economic, social - and cultural rights. These were binding documents and came
into force in 1976 when they were ratified by 35 countries. Together with the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights they make the International Bill of Rights.

5. While these divisions existed, human rights were systematically violated by every bloc alike.
While the majority of 'third world' countries were living under military dictatorships, the United States
was extremely active not only in supporting oppressive regimes throughout the world just because they
claimed to be anti-Communist, but was involved in overthrowing democratically-elected governments:
Guatemala in 1954 and most importantly the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in
Chile in 1973, provide the most uncontested examples. The United States has also been active in its
mistreatment of dissidents: the treatment of communists during the 1950s. The human rights record of
the former communist countries was anything but exemplary. The former Soviet Union, for instance, did
not hesitate to intervene militarily to crush reformers in Hungary in 1956 and in the former
Czechoslovakia in 1968. It should, however, be borne in mind that since the mid1980s, date of the
election of Gorbachev to the post of General-Secretary of the Communist Party of the former Soviet
Union, there has been a relaxation in the attitudes of both the Eastern and Western blocs. With the
collapse of communism and the end of the 'Cold War', the issue is no longer the subject of mutual
accusation, and instead a spirit of co-operation has emerged.

6. Since the 1950s the issue of human rights has been consolidated in the political agenda, and a
great number of individuals and institutions have been concerned with it. Organizations which are
concerned with human rights, such as Amnesty International, Freedom House, and Article 19 have been
mushrooming, though still overwhelmingly concentrated in the West. In 1973, the American Congress
recommended that the human rights record of the receiving countries should be taken into account when
economic and military aid are delivered. Two years later, in 1975, at least on the surface, this link
became mandatory. Different political leaders, for instance Jimmy Carter in the United States, have
championed human rights, and made them the basis upon which foreign policy should be determined.
Other governments, such as the Netherlands and Norway, have followed suit in adopting policies of
linking aid to human rights.

7. Research on human rights falls within two camps: the first holds the view that an attempt to
measure human rights can be very problematic since there are no valid grounds for measurement, and
points to the problems associated with any exercise of this kind. The UN Human Rights Committee, for
instance, established under Article 28 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
abstains from any measurement of this kind and does not produce any ranking of countries in terms of
their human rights performance. This neutral stance was criticized and led to calls for more 'objective'
measures of assessing human rights practices. Such measures, it has been suggested, may be achieved
through 'quantification' of the phenomenon. The call for quantification is championed not only by
students and organizations in the field, such as the late Charles Humana and the independent New York-
based Organization Freedom House, but also by some Western governments whose foreign policies,
especially those of economic and military aids, are at least, on the surface, related to respect for human
rights. The US State Department, for instance, has been producing regular assessments of international
human rights in the form of the Country Report on Human Rights, published since 1976. The
quantification, and therefore the ranking of countries in terms of their human rights performance,
becomes a very significant exercise in so far as it influences policy makers at a time when governments
have increasingly been using respect for human rights as a condition for their aid policies.
Reading Comprehension
Discuss and answer the following questions with your teacher and classmates.

1. Restate in your own words some of the human rights violations mentioned in the first paragraph.
2. What initiated human rights policy?
3. Compare and contrast the issue of human rights before and after the Second World War.
4. Why did the writer put some phrases in inverted commas in paragraph 3? Rewrite those phrases in
your own words.
5. Analyze the writer's display of a 'sharp ideological division' among different countries regarding the
issue of human rights mentioned in paragraph 4. Evaluate these divisions and apply them to today's
liberal, communist and Third World countries' ideologies.
6. Read the topic sentence of paragraph 5 and state how the writer managed to support it in the
development of his paragraph.
8. How did the issue of human rights become part of the political agenda?

Vocabulary Exercise
Match the words on the left column with their synonyms in the right column.
Identify the word form of the words in the left column. The first one is done for
you.

1. -------- contested (v: verb) a. approval

2. _____ unprecedented b. refrain
3. _____ violated c. fall
4. _____ abolish d. supported
5. _____ drastically e. refused
6. _____ atrocities f. mediated
7. _____ appeasement g. essential, obligatory
8. _____ massacres h. debated
9. _____ denied i. reciprocal, shared, joint
10. _____ option j. removing from power, deposing
11. _____ mutual k. breached
12. ------- compromise l. governments, leaderships
13. _____ regimes m. terminate
14. -------- overthrowingn. position, attitude
15. _____ intervene o. brutalities
16. _____ collapse p. mass killing
17. _____ mandatory q. unusual
18. --------_abstains r. severely
19. _____ stance s. agreement
20. _____ championed t. relieving