Human Rights

Human rights organisations are sometimes challenged: You say plenty about  abuses in other countries, why don’t you condemn human rights abuses in your own country too?

Usually two answers are given : one is that human rights organisations can only deal with other countries’ abuses , otherwise they lose the support,material or other, of their own governments.  Governments can  control criticism of what they themselves do. But human rights organisations say all is not lost because if you struggle for human rights anywhere it has an effect everywhere ,and furthermore, if an organisation is prepared to say in all cases  that “ any government guilty of this abuse, no matter who or where , is to be condemned” this  helps. So, if there are abuses at home then they make sure to condemn these abuses when they happen in other places. Often, they say, this is the only way.

But as well as this,some organisations have said that reporting and condemning abuses in countries other than their own means  people will join in condemnation of them  and  perhaps this may be the only way  to create a public revulsion against  the abuses at  home.

It is all very true. Still, the most dignified aim must surely be to make it possible  for every  person and  organisation to speak freely and publicly about human rights use and abuse at home or abroad.  Otherwise we are conniving at abuse. And furthermore, it is inconsistent of government to insist on bringing to light abuses by it own citizens if it is unwilling to shed the light of day on what it does itself, especially if it is abuse of people it is paid to protect.  

All the time the meaning of human rights is being re-defined . The meaning of homelessness was  re-defined . Homelessness used to mean really not having a place to shelter. The meaning became wider and people could  be reckoned homeless for less than that. Such re-defining  broadens the scope of what we understand by human right and dignity, and present day governments seem intent on making sure the re-defining if benevolent should go no further and should even be reversed.

Sometimes re-defining  is not so benevolent. Definition of what torture means and how governments  sanction it has been re-defined, to the great loss of human dignity and loss of centuries of patient work to abolish it.   

In the past the use of children for work,  amusement or sexual gratification was treated with remarkable indifference, remarkable because nowadays people have swung over to a different concept which seems not to have existed during long periods of our history , that of the rights of children. It took a long  time to  get acceptance of the rights of all men, then the rights of all women, then the rights of all children. It  has all been a long and tortuous struggle which is by no means over and indeed judging by  actions and propaganda by present governments , the struggle is being, if not lost, certainly and deliberately weakened   Re-defining  problems and  solutions can be helpful or hurtful depending upon who is doing it. Governments are extremely bad at it. Citizens will have to define their own dignity by the way they insist on re-defining being benevolent , not vicious. And that is a monumental and increasing problem.

The rights of people imply the duties of people. Balancing   these two is so difficult that it deters a lot of us  from even trying to solve problems of human suffering, or human happiness , we may settle for doing our  own private best in our  own circumstances.But we are all in a severe crisis if death and forceful domination and lessening of dignity are  more honourably treated by governments and public opinion than  life and freedom.