No right to celebrate
Dara Mac Neil is not looking forward to a year of hypocrisy over
human rights
Expect to hear an inordinate amount of drivel about human rights
in 1998.
Around the globe, governments busy themselves in preparation for
the year of `celebration' that will mark the 50th anniversary of
the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And among
their number are some of the worst, most systematic violators of
that Declaration.
Colombia and Algeria provide two telling examples.
In the month of November alone, for example, over 60 unarmed
citizens were massacred in Colombia. Unlike the bloody 1980s,
when official security forces murdered with impunity throughout
Latin America, this newer generation of state terrorists has
learned a degree of sophistication.
Murders and massacres officially attributable to the Colombian
security forces have declined in recent years. Simultaneously,
those carried out by supposedly `independent' right-wing death
squads have risen. Human Rights Watch recently confirmed that the
security establishment continues to ``organise, encourage and
mobilise'' the death squads.
Taking its lead from the US (which still supplies military aid)
the international community still adheres to the US State
Department designation of Colombia as a country which ``has a
democratic form of government and does not exhibit a consistent
pattern of gross violations of internationally recognised human
rights.'' Western multinationals such as BP have invested heavily
in Colombia.
A similar pattern emerges in Algeria, where a state-run campaign
of murder has dramatically intensified over the last 12 months.
Since 1990, close to 60,000 people have died. The Algerians,
however, have gone one better than their Colombian counterparts.
Here, the pretence is that the modern, westernised, secular state
is locked in a war to the death with the fanatical Islamic
zealots that make up the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
The conflict began when the government annulled elections it was
losing, in 1992.
On paper, it looks good. Any government battling a fundamentalist
Islamic insurgency is guaranteed, at the very least, that the
West will look the other way while it gets on with the nasty but
very necessary business of winning the war.
But however efficient the Algerian state - in reality, the
military establishment - has been up to this point, some notable
cracks have begun to appear in their cover story.
First, there is the testimony of army deserters, who have related
how the army regularly carried out multiple atrocities while
disguised as members of the GIA. Exiled Algerian diplomats claim
that at least 80% of the GIA is ``run'' by Algerian military
intelligence.
Their evidence is supported by a number of other factors.
Remarkably, many of the civilian massacres attributed to Islamic
zealots have taken place close to army installations, many indeed
in the most heavily-militarised area of Algeria, just south of
the capital, where support for the FIS is strong.
It is also worth noting that the Algerian regime has rejected
several offers of peace talks made by the Islamic Salvation
Front. Perhaps most remarkable of all is that, in a country where
almost 60,000 have died in the last seven years and is itself
supposedly on the verge of collapse, lucrative oil and gas
installations have been untouched.
Surely, if the armed Islamic opposition wanted to topple the
regime it would target that industry from which Algeria derives
the bulk of its income?
As in Colombia, Western multinationals have invested hugely in
Algeria - BP and French company Total, in particular. The
Algerian government too has learned that state violence pays.
Human rights violations also headed the agenda in the Middle
East. Here, of course, it was Iraq's failure to comply with a UN
resolution that caused excitement, and almost led to a military
attack on the country.
By way of contrast, Israel's complete disregard for a succession
of UN resolutions on its illegal occupation of Palestinian
territory has failed to elicit even the diplomatic equivalent of
a reprimand. Thus encouraged, Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu has
spent his year intensifying his assault of the human rights of
Palestinians.
Elsewhere, the US continues its blockade of Cuba - in violation
of all human rights' conventions and the Geneva Convention.
Indeed, the practice of including food and medicine in the
blockade - a stricture not even applied to Iraq - has been
condemned by the US Chamber of Commerce and, most recently, the
Washington Post. An invitation to our very own Mary Robinson - as
High Commissioner for Human Rights - to condemn this use of food
and medicine as a political weapon, was ignored by Robinson.
Never short of a condemnation when it comes to great powers like
the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Mrs Robinson
refused to attack US policy on Cuba, even when the US Chamber of
Commerce had the courage to do so.
This is not entirely unexpected, given how the West has skewed
the human rights `agenda' for the last 50 years. Thus, it has
become accepted that human rights are exclusively `political
rights' - the right to free speech etc - as opposed to the right
to food, healthcare, work and shelter. Human rights are now
limited to a few (a minority) of the rights laid out in the 1948
Declaration.
Thus, those articles of the 1948 Declaration that promote social
and economic rights are ignored for the very simple reason that,
were they to be as rigorously supported as the articles dealing
with political rights, virtually every rich western power would
find itself in the dock, charged with gross violations of the
rights of its citizenry.
As it is, human rights have become a stick with which to beat
nations that offend powerful western interests. Thus, human
rights `violations' only ever occur in countries such as Libya,
Iraq, Iran or Cuba. Yet, how many millions of people worldwide
are consistently denied the right to food, education, clothing,
shelter, healthcare, the right to a decent life?
Perhaps in 1998, the UN might decide on the full enforcement of
just two articles from the 1948 Declaration.
Article 23 might be a good starting point: ``Everyone has the
right to work, to just and favourable conditions of work, and to
protection against unemployment, with remuneration ensuring for
himself and his (her) family an existence worthy of human
dignity, supplemented if necessary by other means of social
protection.''
It also states that ``everyone has the right to form and join
trade unions, for protection of his (her) interests.''
Also worth mention is Article 25: ``Everyone has the right to a
standard of living adequate for the health and well being of
himself (herself) and his family, including food, clothing,
housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the
right to secure that in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood.''
It'd be a good start.
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