The diplomatic scam called human rights

The hypocrisy of international diplomacy on human rights makes headlines again this week. Juwono Sudarsono, vice governor of the National Resilience Institute, takes a closer look at this issue.

JAKARTA (JP): The Danish government's move to table human rights issues in the People's Republic of China at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva is the latest entry in the debate on whether profits have priority over human rights.

France, Germany and Spain have withdrawn their sponsorship of calling China to task and the United States is piggybacking on the Danish resolution. Because human rights is a nebulous concept, its use as a political weapon in diplomacy and international business has led to it being applied more often by developed nations facing growing economic competition from emerging markets.

In Western industrialized countries, intricate and well- financed human rights networks have been developed, giving rise to a thriving conscience industry binding the interests of thousands of politicians, lobbyist, academics, civic groups and media celebrities. Though they deny it, there are clear links between human rights activists and businesses affected by growing international competition.

In this light, the principles and practices of human rights need to be affirmed in a more balanced and proportionate manner. First and foremost, in conceptual terms the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights calls for the advancement of all rights -- civil, political, economic, social and cultural.

After the adoption of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966, roughly over 80 percent of advanced industrialized countries focused their concern on civil and political issues in communist and developing countries.

In 1986, the United Nations General Assembly broadened the conceptual definition of human rights to encompass "the right to development" in which all states are ensured "access to basic resources, education, health services, food, housing, employment and the fair distribution of income".

It was no coincidence that advanced industrialized countries' focus on civil and political rights issues in East Asia grew with the increasing competitiveness of those new industrializing economies. Even after the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna affirmed that "all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated," advanced industrialized countries incessantly focused attention on civil and political issues in developing countries.

No nation, not even the most industrially advanced, can achieve a perfect score in broadly defined human rights.

But the hypocrisy of governments and rights advocates in industrialized countries is particularly stark in their arrogant assumption that civil and political rights in their countries are irreproachable and must become the benchmarks by which developing countries are judged.

Politicians and rights advocates in advanced industrialized countries disingenuously claim that economic, social and cultural rights are "unjustifiable," not subject to verifications through a country's legal system.

It is worth remembering that the International Commission of Jurists' Bangalore Declaration of Oct. 25, 1995, reminds human rights commissions and advocacy groups all over the world that economic, social and cultural dimensions of human rights are "just as urgent and vital as civil and political rights".

There must be less vehement insistence on immediate rectification of civil and political rights flaws and more humility based on the reality that there can often be only gradual and deliberate ways to progress with a balanced view encompassing all categories of human rights, especially in developing nations.

The tendency of media in advanced industrialized countries to adhere to the credo that "if it bleeds, it leads" makes it hard to have a comprehensive and balanced viewpoint. It is always tempting to present in a news feature ten paragraphs on issues of civil and political liberties in a country of 1.2 billion people such as China, particularly if they obscure the one or two lines of grudging acknowledgment of China's economic success and its need to maintain social and cultural cohesion.

Can it be purely coincidental that the attention of governments, parliaments, the press and non-governmental organizations and other self-styled concerned citizens of the industrialized world are focused on human rights issues in economies that are increasingly becoming more competitive in international trade and business?

Would the United States place that much attention on civil and political rights issues in China if trade surplus figures were more favorable to them than the Chinese? Would there have been much concern about civil and political rights in Indonesia if the manufacturing industries in Indonesia had not eroded the competitiveness of comparable goods made in the advanced industrialized countries?

Have not the United States and Europe been more selective and coy about their human rights concerns in the strategically oil- rich states in the Middle East, particularly if these countries purchase surplus NATO arms, fighter planes, tanks and order European Airbuses and American Boeings?

Human rights in international diplomacy should be affirmed for what it really is: A big scam that seems destined to last as long as nations compete for economic advantage through political subterfuge on behalf of noble ideals.