Dr. Terry Savage is an associate professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Department of Conflict Resolution Studies and former Reparations Policy Adviser with the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
By Terry Savage
On Thursday, Dec. 7, the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies, Halmos College, the Alvin Sherman Library and the BEDI Council will host a Universal Declaration of Human Rights 75th Anniversary Symposium from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The symposium will celebrate the UDHR and have presentations and workshops on universal human rights.
But why talk of human rights in a world that daily seems to throw outrageously violent acts in our faces?
As I write, a war is raging on Europe’s eastern flank that not only pits fighters against fighters, but has also brought the widespread bombing of civilian locations. Schools. Children’s playgrounds. Theatres. Hospitals. Blocks of apartments that for thousands of people are home, the place that holds memories—of Christmas dinners, of kids growing up—and photographs of loved ones, trophies from school sports, love letters from a precious one long departed.
How can talk of human rights stand amid such brazen devastation of the very things that make a life precious—a uniquely meaningful story, however modest or humble? Life counts. Each life counts, as any soldier will know who has lifted the helmet off an enemy they have defeated on the battlefield and found tucked in it the photo of a loved one, a family, a life to which they would never return.
The UDHR was born out of precisely such conditions.
For millennia, attempts have been made to regulate war through codes designed to preserve the sanctity of human life. Anyone who says “All is fair in love and war” has never known the shock and loneliness that comes from realizing, whatever their reasons, what they did hurt the one they hold most precious. All is not fair in love, and nor is it in war. When an adversary waves a white flag or holds their hands up in surrender to show they are not a threat, decency demands that we respond humanely.
It was with this understanding that the first Geneva Convention, which focuses on humane treatment of those wounded on the battlefield, was established in 1864, and marks the beginning of International Humanitarian Law, also known as the laws of war, or the laws of armed conflict.
The UDHR went one massive step further. Established in 1948, in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust, it recognized that laws are needed not only during times of war, but also in times of peace to regulate the behavior of governments.
The powers and privileges with which any citizenry entrusts government are vast. We provide officials their salaries through our taxes (and benefits many of us can only dream of) and we give those in office the mandate to make laws on our behalf—and to convict us through due process and punish us when we violate those laws.
What happens when a government uses these powers to abuse its own citizenry? Or, more precisely, to tackle those honest patriots who dare to criticize its policies? Or to target a group, as “undesirables”—people of a particular faith, lifestyle, skin coloring, eye shapes, ethnicity, history, nationality, sexual orientation? The list of scapegoats is limited only by politicians’ imagination. This was what confronted the world that survived the Nazi Holocaust.
Moreover, what had become clear was that when it is a government that turns violent, the violence that unfolds quickly becomes widespread, systemic even, and may become deemed acceptable—even necessary—by those who benefit from it or are too afraid to challenge it. It may even become “banal,” to use Hannah Arendt’s term—normalized and unexceptional, no longer deviant.
Historical examples of this abound, from the ostensibly civilizing rhetoric that enabled colonial occupation of most of Africa, through to the supposedly righteous violence of religious extremists on all sides, through to the jaded, disingenuous Hollywood narratives of violent vengeance. Or to cite Arendt’s work, Eichmann in Jerusalem, about the trial of the notorious Nazi logistician, Adolph Eichmann: “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”
The UDHR was established precisely to limit and regulate the behaviors of governments, everywhere, around each and every individual’s basic right to dignity and to life itself. It harkens back to the notion of the Social Contract, articulated by Genevan philosopher (and a major influence on the French Revolution), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the famous opening line, “Man is born free and everywhere is in chains.”
The UDHR is an aspirational document about getting out of those chains. It sets out a common standard, expected of all governments. The opening line declares “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as the basis of any and all “freedom, justice and peace.” The second line depicts disregard for human rights as the cause of “barbarous acts” that have outraged the conscience of humankind. The third line asserts that, to enable people not to have to turn, “as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression,” human rights need to be given form and protected by law.
The Declaration has inspired much law, in the form of many treaties. These are not imposed by the United Nations. They are proposed, discussed and given form through the workings of the UN General Assembly, a forum in which all countries—or more technically, Member States—have voice and vote. When a Member State voluntarily ratifies a treaty, it takes on an obligation to reform legislation within its borders to conform to that commitment and to make that right real, lived, for all its citizens.
The UDHR is about dignity and each person’s right to maximize their potential to live. It is about deploring as illegal and a crime against our very humanity the kidnapping of children, of a grandma—people who are not fighting and pose no mortal threat—as well as the bombing of civilian locations, wherever they may be. It is about establishing reverence for all that lives—from manatees and mako sharks through to the mother singing to her children as the war raging outside gets closer.
In memory of Kris Vanspauwen.
Dr. Terry Savage is an associate professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Department of Conflict Resolution Studies and former Reparations Policy Adviser with the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Brilliant and moving essay on importance of Human Rights!