Culture and protection of human rights

By Frans H. Winarta

JAKARTA (JP): As we approach the 48th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, it is perfectly natural that we spend some time contemplating the significance and implications of this event.

The birth of the declaration marked a time during which all of the nations of the world were still haunted by the trauma of World War II. Together, they declared the rights of human beings which had been trampled by the cruel and devastating war. The declaration took place in San Francisco on Dec. 1, 1948.

Human civilization was on the brink of collapse as one of the results of that raging world war. The cities of Berlin and Tokyo were battered almost beyond repair, while many other cities in western Europe and Japan suffered considerably. By far the most unfortunate of those cities were Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were razed to the ground by atomic bombs. One of the more lasting consequences of that war is that the victims of the atomic bombs are still falling today.

Each year, the horrifying experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still commemorated by the Japanese and other nations worldwide. Had the Allies chosen to target the city of Kyoto, the outcome would have been very different. Kyoto has long been the center of Japanese culture.

In that light, it was fortunate that the Allies' generals were still able to think rationally enough that they did not go so far as to destroy the city of Rome, one of the centers of European culture, as they charged Mussolini's troops.

The result of the horror witnessed in World War II and the prospect of future wars obviously prompted the people who gathered in San Francisco in 1948 to declare the Universal Human Rights, following a series of meetings among members of the United Nations. The main objective of the declaration was to alleviate the possibility of exploitation and destruction of humans by fellow humans. It was also designed to protect world civilization from the impact of ruinous wars.

With the help of the UN General Assembly, the nations of the world unanimously agreed to respect, honor and observe human rights, while preventing any form of discrimination based on race, color, sex, language, religion, political views, national origins, or social class. They also vowed that no discrimination based on property, birth, or other types of positions, should ever be allowed as general standards for measuring success. This should be true for all people and all nations.

The human rights were declared in order to prevent another world war with the capability of completely crushing human civilization. Prior to that moment, individual rights used to be sacrificed for the sake of collective interests, while collective and individual interests are supposed to be well-balanced in order to create a harmonious society. The moment one party gains some leverage against the other is the moment when imbalance will reign in a society.

Think about how Hitler's Nazi ideologies brought the German people into a situation in which the state enjoyed such a strong position that their freedom was constricted and they became so deeply influenced by the ideology of collectivism that they were willing to embrace even the craziest ideas of der Fuehrer himself. These ideas ranged from the ethnic cleansing of Jews to the idea of Deutschland uber alles as the manifestation of the superiority of the Aryan race (white skin and blue eyes) over the people of color.

As a nation, we also went through a most difficult and painful time during the Japanese occupation, from 1942 to 1945. Stories of the sufferings of the romusha forced laborers and the comfort women will always be part of Indonesia's history.

After the Universal Declaration, human rights were reconfirmed through a series of international conventions, the first of which was the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its Protocol. This covenant was declared by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 15, 1955, and went into effect on Jan. 3, 1976. The second international agreement on human rights was the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights and its Protocol, which went into effect on March 13, 1976. Both of these covenants, along with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, are known as the "International Bill of Human Rights".

The most important right guaranteed by both of these covenants, that is not included in the Universal Declaration, is the right to determine one's own destiny. These three important UN documents are all recognized by experts of international law as International Customary Law up to now.

Human rights are not human culture, therefore we cannot claim them to be culture specific. Human rights inherently belong to every individual, irrespective of his or her origin, cultural background, race, religion, political belief, or ideology. Furthermore, once human rights are completely honored, human civilization will be protected and respected as a matter of course.

In addition to proclaiming the universal characteristics of human rights to every nation of the world, the Universal Declara tion on Human Rights of Dec. 10, 1948, was also a reaction to the devastating impacts of World War II on human individual rights and human civilization. The declaration was meant as a prevention of the outbreak of World War III, the aftermath of which would be beyond anybody's imagination.

The writer is a Jakarta human rights lawyer, secretary of the Legal Aid Institute Foundation and director of the International Relations Division of the Indonesian Advocates Association.