Rights body reviews UN pact on civil rights

Rights body reviews UN pact on civil rights

JAKARTA (JP): The National Human Rights Commission is
currently studying the 1966 International Covenant on Civilian
and Political Rights before calling for ratification by the
government.

"Miriam Budiardjo is studying the covenant," commission member
Nurcholish Madjid said yesterday. "We will then propose it to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs for ratification," he said after
speaking at a discussion on human rights.

Another Commission member who addressed the one-day forum,
B.N. Marbun, said Indonesia's human rights record is often
criticized because it has not yet ratified a number of
international conventions.

"Charges from Indonesian and foreign human rights activists
are raised because Indonesia seems to have shut itself off from
international human rights development due to the several
conventions which we have not ratified," Marbun said.

The discussion entitled "Indonesia and the West: An
International Dialog on Human Rights" was organized by the
Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI), the Goethe
Institut and the World Trade Center.

A participant from Australia asked why Indonesia has not
ratified the 1966 covenant, a revision of the 1948 Declaration of
Human Rights. The covenant dropped a paragraph on the contentious
right of changing religions.

Nurcholish said the covenant is "good" and denied that there
may be concerns that ratification would lead to the impression
that Indonesia is adopting a western framework of human rights.

"We believe that human rights is universal, and there is still
room for interpretation in cultural relativism," he said.

The human rights commission, he said, aims for the
ratification of international conventions "as much as possible".

The Commission, set up in 1993, has a sub-commission to study
international conventions which Indonesia has not ratified.

Marbun and two German scholars said in their papers that human
rights is universal, but implementation needs to take into
account local religious and cultural factors.

One reason why the human rights commission has proved
acceptable to many parties is its "appeal to humanism" in
approaching conflicting parties. "We do not seek scapegoats, but
aim to find a way out and prioritize deliberation towards
consensus," he said.

Winfried Brugger, who teaches philosophy of law at the
University of Heidelberg, said because culture is a person's
second nature, "... cultural relativism ... entails a degree of
truth. There should be room both for a variety of regional human
rights instruments, and for different ways of balancing
individual rights against legitimate interests of the community."

Universalism of human rights can be preserved by referring to
what he called the "five elements of the image of the person".

Juliane Kokott of the University of Dusseldorf said "the
implementation of universal human rights in Islamic or Asian
countries needs to consider the different economic and cultural
conditions".

"That Islamic countries have a comparably low record as to
ratification of universal human rights instruments must not be
attributed exclusively to Islam," Kokott said.

"Rather, poverty and underdevelopment, which prevail in many
Islamic countries, render compliance with human rights
particularly difficult," she said.

Nurcholish said because human rights is rooted in Islam, "it
is a challenge for Moslems to practice their religion; don't let
outsiders think Islam is anti-human rights." (anr)