Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 60th anniversary
December 11th, 2008 by Kim | Published in Activism, History, Law, Philosophy, Sociology | 25 Comments
Amnesty International has released a video – You Are Powerful – to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UDHR. They’re encouraging its widest possible distribution. Kate Allen explains at Comment is Free.
The level of controversy that still surrounds not just the UDHR (and right wingers just love to cast stones at the UN) but also the universality and indeed nature of human rights shows that they are inherently political and not grounded in any natural, philosophical or theological foundation. The key thing is that they have to be fought for, and their universality comes from the recognition afforded to others. Some times that recognition is granted by the state, and embodied in law. Australia now has a government which appreciates the need for a framework of human rights jurisprudence which goes beyond rights granted or afforded by particular legislation or in the common law. So Professor Frank Brennan SJ has been commissioned to report to the Rudd government by July 2009. You can read about it here at Andrew Bartlett’s place.
There’s no doubt that part of the reason for the defeat of the Howard government was the desire for human rights to be better respected. But that fight isn’t over now that Labor in power. While the conditions for the recognition of rights are now more favourable, they will always be forged in struggle.
And the UN President at the time was ….
Dr H V (Bert) Evatt of Australia! I was finishing my second year of primary school when this Declaration was ratified and remember the celebration, the national pride that this small nation had, thanks to Curtin and Evatt, played such a huge part in such an achievement.
DHR was, from the beginning of talks leading to the UNO’s foundation, one of Evatt’s “Things”, and he lobbied constantly for it.
The most spiteful and mendacious of Santamaria’s megalomaniacal, misinformation campaigns, with Menzies connivance for purely political reasons, was the destruction of the towering reputation of a truly great Australian. Israelis and Indonesians honour him as the UN President who pushed through the creation of their states. Today, most of the world honours him.
Yet our TV stations that mentiones the DHR, failed to mention Evatt; indeed, used Elanor Roosevelt footage instead of our home-grown hero.
60 years on, we remain the nation without[our own Bill of rights.
DeeCee–I can see how Evatt was an important statesman during the ’40s, but just how pivotal was he in pushing through the UNDHR? (Serious question–I know little about his term as UN General Assembly president.)
And did either Santa or Menzies ever have any opinions regarding the relationship between Evatt and the UNDHR?
But seriously, I think Andrew, Frank Brennan et al shouldn’t let the allure of using the UNDHR to create a Bill of Rights in this country get in the way of the main game–applying these principles to less abstract policy areas. Now.
Refugees, landmines, cluster bombs, fair trade–Rudd, Smith, Fitzgibbon can and should do things in these areas without having to try and convince the electorate to pass a constitutional amendment.
Don’t wish for things that will never turn up in your Christmas stockings, folks.
Evatt was pivotal, Nickws. Among his achievements was the creational of the State of Israel (not necessarily a plus, but I don’t want to get into a Israel/Palestine debate). He was notable for various other major UN advances, which I’m sure you’d find in any good bio of Evatt. Perhaps ADB.
To my mind, though, his greatest achievement was domestic. He fought the Communist Party Dissolution referendum, campaigning against the banning of the CPA, despite the fact he was a strong anti-Communist, on the grounds that he believed all political parties had a right to exist, and because he was against political persecution.And he convinced the Australian people to vote against the banning of the CPA by a narrow majority. Thus he enshrined the right of freedom of political expression in the Australian psyche.
His political destruction by Menzies and co., was aided by the Great Labor Split, the rats in the DLP, and by Evatt’s own mental instability. It seems pretty clear in retrospect that by the time of the Split (about 5 years after the referendum) Evatt was suffering from the early stages of the advanced paranoia that became obvious in the latter stages of his life. I don’t have sufficient medical knowledge to give a more precise diagnosis than that.
I’m not sure that answers the question, Paul, of whether Evatt was pivotal in formulating the UDHR, which is what at issue – as opposed to his other achievements which I think are relatively well known.
Na, don’t spose it does. But I aint got any books on Evatt here to look up. :)
Evatt would not have been the UNO’s third president unless his contribution to the UN across a whole raft of charters was exceptional, even when compared to that of the Big 5 nations’ reprsentatives!
What role did Australia & Evatt Play in the DHR? As I don’t want to disinter the texts & xeroxed docos from their current home in the cupboard under the stairs, I googled “HV Evatt UN Declaration of Human Rights”.
Evatt Foundation’s ‘Celebrating what it is to be human and free’ is partisan, but factually correct:
Australia and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights
A Wiki entry on Evatt
Now they’re just the first few google entries. The actual documents, from the first meetings to form what would become the UNO (pre-San Francisco & Dumbarton Oakes) ff are in the Public Domain. And this doesn’t even begin to cover Australia’s (& Evatt’s) seminal work on ILO and the rights of small nations – some of which is covered in the 2nd book of Paul Hasluck’s history for the Australian War Memorial series on WW II “The Government and the People 1942-45″ – and this stops before Evatt’s post-war work. Casey covers some of it in his autobiographies & other works, although his position during & after Feb-March 1942′s “Battle of the Cables” pretty much excluded him from Curtin & Evatt’s confidence. It is extensively discssed in histories of the Foundtion & early years of the UN, as well as biographies of Evatt … and Oz newspapers!
I might have been only a kid when all this happened, but, as a literate kid from a very political family, I did read newspapers. Besides, Australia’s role, especially Evatt’s presidency, was “on everyone’s lips”.
So yes, Nickws, the work done by Australia – one of the 8 drafters (& I think it headed at least a sub committee, tho I think it went beyone that – on the DHR from the earliest meeting to its passage under his presidency (I have read, ages ago when I researched the topic, about his relationship with Elanor R) was at least crucial. On the rghts of its most determined efforts – the rights of people to create their own states & rights of small nations (and the recognition of Israel & Indonesia) it was original and pivotal, as was its work on the ILO.
Evatt’s contributions, especially in advancing Australia’s international status & membership of peak international decision-making bodies dwarfed Menzies; probably why Pig Iron Bob had to beat up so many Commie plots & scares to beat him.
Ironically, Bert and Bob – who were of an age & background, had very similar interests, legal careers & status for their excellent scholarship – would both suffer debilitating mental illness in their later years, though you have to dig deeply to find Menzies’.
There’s no doubt that part of the reason for the defeat of the Howard government was the desire for human rights to be better respected.
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None at all?
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I didn’t support the Iraq War but there were considerable and hoonourable arguments in favour of it. Chris Hitchens’ book The Long Short War has quite a few of them. One such regards the failure of the UN to deal with Saddam Hussein’s persistent disregard both for human rights and international law and the UN’s inabilty to bring him to heel.
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Now I don’t think for one minute that Dubya and co were interested in the rights of Iraqis but when Hitchens argues that the only way to deal with a state like Iraq and its transgressions is thru military action I find it hard to come up with a rebuttal. After all what use is a declaration of human rights, or an international social contract like the UN if they turn out to be paper tigers and murderously inclined states like Ba’athist regime persist?
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I finally disagreed with pro-war leftists like Nick Cohen and Chris Hitchens because, altho’ the removal of Hussein was undoubtedly a good thing, it seems to me that the US essentially trashed international law in invading the country. Now any state and its dog can be equally cavalier.
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But if the UN hasn’t the bottle to enforce its own ‘laws’ what good are they? It’s an interesting question. One that the peace movement – which seems to largely consist of people who won’t think past knee-jerk ‘war is bad’ symbolism – doesn’t have an answer for. Neither do I. Does anyone?
DeeCee, I wasn’t expressing skepticism about Evatt’s contribution – just wanting to know what it was! It’s obviously not widely known!
Adrien, the post was careful, in my reading of it, to say “part”. I don’t think there’s any denying that human rights issues – related to refugees in particular – did play a part in Howard’s defeat. There was no suggestion of the spurious “human rights” case for bombing Iraq – which only a few febrile Antipodean “Decent Leftists” and our friends the Maoists made outside the Howardians and the commentariat – being a factor. Presumably anyone who genuinely believed Howard advanced the cause of human rights by joining Bush’s wars voted for the Liberals.
Paul, Dee Cee, thanks for the overview. I have to plead guilty to wanting DeeCee to justify his pro-Evatt views (views I emphasise with when it comes to liberal internationalism.) Normally I’m the first to just give myself a quick briefing on what the scholars have to say, but this time I thought I’d be narky and get someone to volunteer.
Adrien–There’ll be plenty of opportunities for Rudd and Fitzgibbon to consider these principles (UNDHR) in regards to Australia drawing down its forces in Iraq/building a new relationship with Maliki’s regime for the post-occupation era. The refugee issue alone guarantees it. But the whole notion of today’s ALP government reviving a debate about ‘humanitarian wars’ strikes me as the worst possible use of the 60th anniversary. There’s something in that line of reasoning that just screams out for drawing an analogy to Stalin’s one-death-being-a-tragedy-a-million-a-statistic, something that looks like an abuse of the agreed upon idea of ‘Human Rights’.
Nobody wants to challenge me about denigrating the push to create an Australian Bill of Rights?
Is this really an all-or-nothing issue?
Incrementalism, anyone?
Oh no, spellcheck (which I don’t effing need to use anyhow, it never catches more than one or two spelling mistakes) has mutilated my handle from ‘Nickws’ to ‘News’.
Please, people, don’t send any personal abuse the way of this ‘News’.
Oops, Mark and Nickws, sorry for the prickles; but by yesterday, when no media had “done its homework” (or, perhaps, when all had obeyed their editors) and recognised the work Australia (and Evatt, Frank Ford etc) put into the DHR, I was more than a tad annoyed that all these decades later, Santamaria’s spite and Menzies’ post1949 obsession with holding on to power no matter what, still rule supreme.
If I remember the documentation correctly (but I can’t confirm it without research), Evatt’s election for UNO president for that particular term, when it was known that the DHR and “rights to nationhood” recognition of Israel and Indonesia would come up for ratification, was an internaional tribute to Australia’s and his roles in those particular Charters.
When ignorance of Australia’s early critical role in the UNO’s Foundation has so obviously been “extinguished”, then we, as a nation, have to ask why. It was still a major topic in any Oz History, OzPolitics, OzPolicy, International Relations studies into the 80s. Australia’s (& Evatt’s and Forde’s) achievements still celebrated during the Hawke-Keating (& Gareth Evans) Era. But the Golden Anniversary fell in Howard’s 2nd term, and Howard was dedicated to trashing our World’s Best labour laws as well as the UNO.
BTW 1: The Hasluck book includes an appendix on the Australia Firsters, of which Howard’s father was a member.
BTW 2: Research into the documentation of Santamaria, his CA “Movement” & “Groupers”, NCC etc reveals the dark side of this charasmatic (& very well funded) politician, including the letter he conned Mannix into writing to request his exemption from WW II military service during WW II because “he was too important to Australia to risk” (can’t remember the exact words, but that’s the gist), details of his gushing over the two 1930-45 great RW dictators, use of Leninist tactics inc the Big Lie / “guilt by assertion” & association, and of his minions’ spying on their fellow ALPers, unionists, neighbours etc for ASIO.
I applaud Menzies’ scholarship (his “Central Power in the Australian Commonwealth” is almost as good as Evatt’s “The King and his Dominion Governors”), respect his support for Curtin & his key ministers during WW II, and his achievements after 1949, and make allowances for his mental degeneration in the 1960s, as I do for Evatt’s very similar case (rumoured to be “the same”) – without Santamaria, Evatt would have been out of parliament & into the High Court, probably by the end of 1955. I would be just as annoyed if the ALP did the same job on Menzies as Santamaria & Howard did on Evatt.
Mark – Adrien, the post was careful, in my reading of it, to say “part”. I don’t think there’s any denying that human rights issues – related to refugees in particular – did play a part in Howard’s defeat.
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Yes it was careful. I think it can be argued however that Howard’s defeat was due to WorkChoices. The refugee thing had already alineated a lot of people. I’m not saying you’re wrong I’m just not sure it’s that certain.
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Nobody wants to challenge me about denigrating the push to create an Australian Bill of Rights?
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I will. I think that the Republic should be a slow cooked meal and that human rights – certain basic ones – should be writ into the new constitution.
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See Mark that’s the way to create Tory hysteria. :)
Nickws at 2 said:
This is not going require a constitutional amendment – that has explicitly been ruled out already by the federal government. If it happens, it will simply be another Act of Parliament, like existing anti-discriminations laws and the like.
Of course we have to keep fighting for better rights for refugees, banning of cluster bombs etc – a Bill of Rights, no matter how good, will never fix everything, but it will at least enable these overarching principles to be enshrined in law and provide a focus for those principles, rather than have them scattered across a bunch of different laws, ir weaker things like declarations, assertions, commitements, etc.
The speech of the Evatt Foundation’s president Chris Sheil I linked to above makes the case that Evatt’s greatest achievement at San Francisco was to empower the General Assembly in the ’45 constitution–although the Doc was outspoken on the UNDHR, Sheil doesn’t think him the only mid-wife of that landmark achievment. (Before this subject came up I knew perhaps a hundred times more about Evatt’s domestic politics than I did about his work overseas. Now I’m a little less ignorant about his foreign policy.)
I think this is history worth knowing, not some discredited myth of the Christ-Doc suffering betrayal at the hands of the Judas-Groupers for thirty pieces of silver whilst Pontius Pig Iron looked on.
Adrien–I see that you, Bartlett and his commenters all lean towards putting a human rights amendment into the constitution when we become a republic, naturally.
Kim, Mark et al, what’s going on with the Rudd govt’s opposition to the movement to ban cluster bombs? Does anyone know? I can’t find any reference to their policy from after May, yet just a week ago a convention of NGO’s in Oslo along with the Norwegian government sought to revive the process.
The speech of the Evatt Foundation’s president Chris Sheil I linked to above makes the case that Evatt’s greatest achievement at San Francisco was to empower the General Assembly in the ’45 constitution–although the Doc was outspoken on the UNDHR, Sheil doesn’t think him the only mid-wife of that landmark achievment. (Before this subject came up I knew perhaps a hundred times more about Evatt’s domestic politics than I did about his work overseas. Now I’m a little less ignorant about his foreign policy.)
I think this is history worth knowing, not some discredited myth of the Christ-Doc suffering betrayal at the hands of the Judas-Groupers for thirty pieces of silver whilst Pontius Pig Iron looked on.
Adrien–I see that you, Bartlett and his commenters all lean towards putting a human rights amendment into the constitution when we become a republic, naturally.
Kim, Mark et al, what’s going on with the Rudd govt’s opposition to the movement to ban cluster bombs? Does anyone know? I can’t find any reference to their policy from after May, yet just a week ago a convention of NGO’s in Oslo along with the Norwegian government sought to revive the process.
And I might also say it hadn’t really struck me until very recently how strange it is that the legacy of Doc Evatt is not widely recognised and acknowledged. Given the need of the media (and the general public more generally) to claim an ‘Aussie hero’ every time an Australian wins a bronze medal at nose picking, it is rather disconcerting that Evatt’s pivotal role in such a globally significant document was so little remarked on in most of the pieces written for the 60th anniversary of the UDHR. So it’s good to see some recognition of Evatt’s record here.
Most commentary I’ve seen about Evatt over the years mentions either his mental illness (usually in a fairly derogatory or dismissive way) or his role regarding the efforts to ban the Communist Party (which was a major triumph for true liberal democrats and I imagine would have been like standing up arguing for the rights Australian Muslims accused of terrorism today).
Perhaps unless you’re a Prime Minister, your contribution doesn’t rate a mention (and even then we have clowns like Downer who try to degrade the record of people like John Curtin – who not totally coincidentally worked through significant mental health issues of his own).
I think our comments crossed over Nickws, but just to make clear, I don’t support putting a human rights amendment into Australia’s Constitution at any stage in the forseeable future.
I’d love to see Australia become a Republic, and I’d love to see some clearer recognition in the Constitution of Aboriginal and Torres Straity Islander peoples being the original inhabitants of the land. I’d also love to see a Treaty (not in the Constitution though). But I don’t think we should have a Bill of Rights or broader rights based items in the Constitution – not for many many years anyway. Try out a legislative based one first and see how it goes.
Much as there is a lot about the US system of democracy and rights that I admire, I do think some of the criticisms of the way their Bill of Rights is interpreted by the Courts has validity (in my view ironically compounded rather than mitigated by the fact that most of the Judges are not “unelected” and even the appointed ones can have a politicised appointment process)
Nick and Andrew – I see that you, Bartlett and his commenters all lean towards putting a human rights amendment into the constitution when we become a republic, naturally.
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Well as Andrew said he’s cautious.
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I don’t think we should have a Bill of Rights or broader rights based items in the Constitution – not for many many years anyway.
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I know I’m barking Utopian here, but I believe two things about the republic. 1. It’s inevitable. Even if we drag our feet I can’t see the UK meaningfully hanging on to the monarchy too much longer. Sooner or later we will be forced to become a republic because of the EU. That is assuming the UK doesn’t drop out. In any event support for the monarchy withers as you ask younger and younger people. I doubt many people born since 1980 give a rat’s arse about the Queen.
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The second thing I believe about the rebulblic is that it would be a good thing to wait for a while and debate the shape of it. It requires a different constitution and that is an opportunity to address constitutional reform. I am concerned that large egos with their eyes on the history books (Kevvie and Malcolm this means you) will rush thru a republic becase they want to be associated with it – historically. That isn’t a good enough reason to change.
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Assuming a long, rational, constructive transideological and bipartisan approach to constructing a republic (ha ha ha) we might be able to generate one that’s updated for new challenges posed by globalization, technology, the environment etc. We could also put fundamental rights (those we all agree on) in the constitution which would make it much harder for governments to get around or ignore. A bill of rights can be rolled back or eliminated by parliament (I would think I could wrong) but if it’s in the constitution we would have to approve such a rollback.
Andrew, I know little about the push for a CoA Human Rights Charter, but this legal opinion you mention sounds to me like a constitutional minimalist Bill of Rights. As night follows day this must mean that there’s a Phil Cleary/Ted Mack type faction advocating a BoR be inserted into the constitution, right? (As per what Adrien wants.)
As to Evatt, his reputation is still pretty visible. I’d only forgotten his contributions to foreign negotiations (which I must have at least pretended to pay attention to in high school & uni) because it’s a subject neither as sexy as local partisan fights or true international shenanigans e.g. Churchill giving Stalin the Balkans on a paper napkin.
Pop Quiz: Who was Percy Spender and why is he actually Australia’s most important forgotten minister for foreign policy?
Ncikws
ALl I’m saying is that any Bill or Charter (assuming it happens, which is still a big if, given the over the top scare campaigns that have been and are being run) won’t involve any Constitutional amendment. At best, it will be legislation of its own – a la the Race Discrimination Act – at worst it will be a Victorian style thing or even just a Parliamentary Committee reviewing every new law for its impact on rights (which is not overly different to what already happens at a federal level and is regularly ignored whenever it is politically expedient).
As I read the terms of reference of the Committee headed by Frank Brennan which the govenrment has just set up, the option of any sort of Constitutional amendment has already been ruled out.
Andrew Bartlett: “…better rights for refugees…”
??? “Better” rights? Rights exist, or else they don’t. Is there such a thing as “better” nitrogen? (And I don’t mean nitrous oxide).
Perhaps instead of “better ‘rights’”, what you really meant to say was better *stuff*.
It seems to me that by using such a slippery understanding of what “rights” are that you think they can be “better,” you are opening the door to a whole zany arbitrary world of legislative nuttiness. This stuff always starts out with the best intentions; next comes the stammered claims of, “but that giant mountain of skulls is not what I meant!”
j_p_z
hey, don’t pick on our Andrew. Until recently he was one of our legislators here in Oz. He knows a lot, has seen a lot.
Andrew B, agree on Doc Evatt’s legacy: he was flawed as are all human beings, it seems he was mentally ill around the Petrov hearings time; but his work with the nascent UN has stood the test of time.
I must cavil with your tone in one regard though: “a bronze medal for nose picking”???? It was a SILVER!! And our little Aussie Nose Battler was edged out of first place [Gold, GOLD, GOLD to Australia!!! in Nose Picking] by some dodgy judges from former Soviet Bloc nations; completely unfair, the winner obviously used banned nasal sprays, and if you look here at the visdeo, you can see that the Czech…; I must write to Mr Molotov and get this sorted out.
Doc
j_p_z, when you write,
you’re of course referring to that potent mixture of boring legalese and three-hundred-year-old French enlightenment theories that always creates the average genocide, right?
‘Coz I don’t doubt your allusion to Frank Brennan being the next Pol Pot is legit, it’s just I’d hate to see the poor man round us up and move us out to the countryside only to stop dead in his tracks and say, “Shit, I’ve forgotten my cliffnotes book about three-hundred-year-old French enlightenment theories. Oh well, have to put off starting Year Zero for another day.”
That’d be awkward[Hitler smiley face]//:=)
Ambigulous, Nickws — You’re quite right, I apologize for my overly flippant and snarky tone. The point, though a bit recondite, is however a serious one. There are plenty of ways to address the legitimate needs of under-served populations using the conceptual vocabulary at hand; adjusting the source code, as it were, of politics, is something I think should be approached with caution. Which doesn’t invalidate Andrew B.’s primary intention above, which is to better serve a population in need. But I do apologize to Andrew for my unnecessary tone.
Nickws @ 14 – unfortunately I’m as much in the dark as you are on the progress of the cluster bomb ban.