The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted and proclaimed by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948, and that is why December 10th is celebrated as International Human Rights Day. It is celebrated by both peoples’ movements and governments of most repressive regimes.

This fact should make us stop and reflect: what is the meaning of human rights? The human rights movement in India (and abroad) has within it many streams, and it is important to remember that there are serious ideological differences within the movement which are sometimes misunderstood as personal differences between individual activists. This misunderstanding has led to the depoliticizing of struggles and movements by undermining their capacity to raise basic questions about the root causes of human rights violations.

The Early Years

The controversies within the human rights community began with the Declaration itself. The Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, Saudi Arabia, and apartheid South Africa did not vote for the Declaration. Saudi Arabia had objections to clauses recognizing men and women as equals in marriage, while South Africa objected to all races being treated as equals.

The socialist bloc objected to the Declaration on the ground that it gave primacy to individual civil and political rights over collective economic, social, and cultural rights. It was this debate between the capitalist states and the Eastern Bloc that prevented the Declaration from being converted into an enforceable law. It was in 1966 that the controversy was finally resolved, with the UN drafting two different covenants: the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. But it was not enforceable until ten years later, when the covenants got the required number of ratifications. The USA did not ratify the covenants until the 1990s.

Thus, a large part of the debates within human rights took place between those who see individual rights (first generation) as primary and those who think economic-social-cultural rights (second generation) are more important. This was the division between the West and East throughout the Cold War era. However, after the Cold War, the West started emphasizing the importance of economic, social, and cultural rights because these are the responsibility of individual states. At a time when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were imposing structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and social welfare measures were rolled back, the emphasis on economic, social, and cultural rights was a means to undermine the sovereignty of Third World states.

When the UDHR was passed in the General Assembly, there were only 58 independent countries, but by the 1970s, countries in Africa and Asia won their freedom from colonialism and their voices could be heard in the UN. They soon found that their hard-won political freedom was meaningless, since they did not have control over their natural resources. It was on their demand that the UN passed Resolution No. 1803 — “Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources” — recognizing the right of states to their natural resources. It was from this resolution that the right to self-determination emerged in international human rights law.

The right to self-determination and the right to development emerged as basic rights recognized by the UN in the 1980s. These were rights which emerged from struggles of national liberation against colonialism and imperialism, and were called third-generation human rights.

Aiming at Universal Freedom

Human rights began with the French Revolution recognizing human rights only for propertied men, but by the 1980s, international human rights law recognized the right of every man, woman, and child to inalienable, universal, and individual human rights. International human rights law recognized the rights of all men, irrespective of the colour of their skin; the rights of all women; the rights of slaves and those under foreign occupation; the rights of those who were in prisons and detention camps; and more recently, the rights of the elderly, the disabled, and migrant workers.

Human rights discourse was truly the only universal language for the world’s oppressed, and with all its imperfections, it served the cause of the liberation of humanity. The human rights movement’s greatest contribution was to develop our understanding that the cause of human rights violations was the nature of the State and its repression. It exposed the fact that human rights violations could not be explained by reference only to individual acts, errant officers, or non-enforcement of the law.

The human rights community exposed the nature of the State and how violence and inequality were institutionalized, leading to human rights violations. The campaign against torture all over the world culminated in the passing of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1984.

In India, the human rights movement exposed the way the police carried out fake encounters, killed people in custody, and raped women in police lock-ups; the torture by Indian security forces, including the Indian Army; and how police and politicians had a nexus with landlords and contractors. Abroad, human rights activists exposed the use of death squads in Latin America and how they were financed by the CIA; the torture of Irish republicans by British security forces; and the overrepresentation of Black people on death row in the USA.

The human rights movement documented the way violence and brute force were used by the State against its own people, as well as through covert actions by imperialists. In India, we were able to file public interest litigation petitions focusing on these issues, and at the international level, countries like Nicaragua—suffering under a crippling blockade by the US—went to the International Court of Justice and exposed how the CIA was responsible for wide-scale human rights violations of the Nicaraguan people.

A Tool of Imperialism

It was the very success of the human rights movement that led to its appropriation as a tool of imperialism. To begin with, the USA adopted human rights to interfere in the internal affairs of Third World countries by making them a tool of its foreign policy. Today, so-called peacekeeping missions and humanitarian interventions are extensions of this policy. Now, human rights discourse is used to justify wars and regime changes in which collateral damage can mean the starvation of one million people.

Human rights are no longer a tool in the hands of those fighting against colonialism, racism, or discrimination. They have become an instrument to destroy cultures and civilizations, colonize countries, and justify wars. How did this happen?

It did not happen overnight. It was a long, insidious process that was difficult to expose because it was carried out largely by those who seemed to have an impeccable record in human rights work.

We could trace this process to the time when a debate was suddenly raised that the human rights movement was only condemning state violence, but not violence by non-state actors. Equating the State with non-state organizations was spurious because many of these so-called non-state organizations were actually sponsored secretly by the State.

Then, millions of dollars were poured into promoting the ideal of non-violent conflict resolution. Thousands of NGOs sprang up, funded by states responsible for war and torture, and began racing for projects to reform the police, teach human rights to security forces, run training programmes for human rights defenders, and offer courses on human rights in universities. All of this helped manufacture consent against “violent” forms of resistance, thereby delegitimizing armed resistance.

The argument against supporting armed resistance was not the same as the argument offered by those who held a principled political position against armed resistance, such as Gandhians or conscientious objectors who preferred going to jail over fighting an unjust war in Vietnam. Those were distinct political positions. However, the NGOs involved in promoting non-violent conflict resolution adopt a blanket, non-political stance against “violence”.

Second, human rights organizations became bureaucratized, with full-time professionals earning fat salaries for designing projects and doing research.

Third, a large section of middle-class activists was co-opted into the NGO world, where degrees in human rights substitute for experience, and individuals are turned into icons cut off from reality.

All of this had the effect of depoliticizing human rights. Human rights activists traveled from one end of the globalized world to another, becoming more accountable to their foreign funders than to the victims of human rights violations. Human rights conferences take place in the sanitized world of five-star hotels instead of dusty villages; human rights activists became full-time paid researchers who no longer feared the discomfort of police raids or arrests.

Under these circumstances, it is quite possible for a person to call themselves a human rights activist even though they are funded by states responsible for gross human rights violations in Iraq or Palestine. It is even possible to be a human rights activist without facing the discomfort of having your phone tapped, your mail intercepted, or being followed by shadows. This is a new breed of human rights activists who visit the sites of human rights violations in much the same way politicians do.

Fragmentation of the Movement

Real human rights activists still face the terrifying reality of state violence; they face bombs thrown into their homes, midnight knocks, and arrests. But the human rights movement is sadly fragmented and marginalized. It is totally incapable of taking up the new challenges posed by the growing authoritarianism of the State and an unequal world order in a unipolar world.

Most activists are involved in issue-based struggles without a larger perspective or vision for society. They spend more time preaching non-violence to those resisting oppression than effectively challenging the State’s increasing repression of peoples’ rights. It was this very logic that prevented Amnesty International from adopting Nelson Mandela as a prisoner of conscience throughout his 27 years in jail.

And today, we see that all manner of state violence is justified against “terrorists”, denying them even their right to a fair trial and protection against torture. In the name of fighting the violence of the “terrorist”, the violence of the State is promoted through the mass media. Bollywood is guilty of making violence and torture seem like nationalist acts, Dhokha being a notable exception. Human rights standards are now being lowered, and gains made by the human rights movement are wiped out in India and internationally. The human rights movement itself is fragmented and marginalized, incapable of responding to the challenges thrown by growing totalitarianism around the world.

If this sounds too abstract, let me end with an illustration. In the case of Binayak Sen’s arrest and continued detention, we have Gandhians who have shown their solidarity with Binayak by visiting him and even going on a fast as an act of solidarity with him and the cause of the people of Chhattisgarh and their struggle against destructive, anti-people policies. Meanwhile, the NGO world has tried to portray the struggle of the people as merely a fight between the government-sponsored Salwa Judum and the Maoists or Naxalites. The fact is that whether one agrees with the Maoists and their methods or not, we must recognize that the struggle of the vast majority of tribal peoples is against the rapacious policy of the Government in promoting mining and other development projects that have led to devastation and displacement instead of prosperity for the inhabitants of the area.

From a human rights perspective, Binayak Sen was involved in promoting the right to health and other socio-economic rights for the poorest citizens of our country, who are being mercilessly exploited not only by the State, but also by transnational corporations with an eye on diamond mines. The corporations and the State are hand in glove in depriving people of their right to development and self-determination.

Unfortunately, in a depoliticized world, we find ourselves debating the question of “violence” by resistance groups instead of the violence perpetrated by the State and corporations. Strangely, these issues have not been raised by those deeply committed to non-violent modes of struggle, such as the Gandhians or Christian groups who have come forward to support Binayak Sen, a product of the premier Christian Medical College, Vellore. The issue of violence in the abstract is taken up by funded NGOs who are more interested in combating resistance and supporting global capital than fighting for the human rights of their fellow citizens.

In 2008, we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, the Declaration serves as a milestone in the global pursuit of human dignity and freedom.

The immediate backdrop of the proclamation was the horrendous crimes committed by the Nazi regime against the Jewish community. Yet, the adoption of the UDHR was not without significant controversy. The Soviet Union and the Socialist bloc objected to the primacy given to individual civil and political rights over collective economic, social, and cultural rights. The apartheid regime in South Africa rejected the Declaration because it treated all races as equal. Meanwhile, religiously conservative states, such as Saudi Arabia, raised theological objections to certain clauses, particularly those recognizing equal rights for men and women.

Over time, these foundational divides evolved. The reservations of the Socialist bloc were eventually addressed through the drafting of two subsequent UN Covenants on human rights. In South Africa, the apartheid regime collapsed. However, opposition from certain Islamic states to the universal application of the UDHR continues to persist.

India played a crucial, progressive role in shaping the Declaration. India voted in favor of Resolution 217 when the UN General Assembly adopted the UDHR on December 10, 1948. Indian representatives—including Hansa Mehta, M. R. Masani, and Lakshmi Menon—helped forge the final text. In particular, Hansa Mehta championed gender equality by successfully insisting that Article 1 declare “all human beings are born free and equal,” replacing the original phrasing “all men are born free and equal,” thereby ensuring the Declaration’s language was truly universal from its inception.

— CHARVAKA DESK