What are the human rights issues facing the world today? l Inside Story

a universal declaration of human rights it's been 70 years since the milestone document was adopted to ensure equality and justice without discrimination but has it made the world a better place and what are the human rights issues facing the world today this is inside story [Music] hello and welcome to the program i'm imran khan december 10th that marks the 70th anniversary of the un's universal declaration of human rights the document outlines 30 fundamental rights that should form the basis of democratic societies the un says it's as relevant today as it has always been but with multiple examples of genocide war crimes and crimes against humanity just how enforceable is it mike hannah takes a look at the birth of the declaration and whether it still holds any influence born out of recession the devastation of war and an act of genocide executed on industrial scale the declaration was passed by the un general assembly in 1948 with the u. s ambassador eleanor roosevelt a guiding force its intention to ensure that such tragedies did not occur again but in the decades since the declaration has been marked more by transgressions than example the key problem the lack of enforcement the body established to protect these rights is a un security council an often divided body in which national agendas rather than individual rights remain supreme a syrian state that carries out chemical attacks against its own people is shielded from sanction by a russian veto which is joined by china in blocking any action against north korea and in threatening a veto to halt the myanmar military to account for what the un's own investigators call a genocide any attempt to take action against israel or even condemn it for transgressions in occupied territory is routinely blocked by a u. s veto and even former champions of the declaration do not live up to their promise the u.

s president insists the maintenance of trade is more important than seeking accountability for a murdered journalist the killing of jamal khashoggi contravened a number of articles of the declaration yet despite what many including u. s senators maintain is compelling evidence of guilt the crown prince of saudi arabia remains unsanctioned jamal khashoggi is one of those cases where you look at it and you go you know what is the point of fighting for human rights when you know a man can walk into an embassy and and be cut up into pieces and tortured and there's no accountability article 14 states everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution but in what he describes as putting america first president trump is in daily transgression of the document a u. s ambassador helped draft 70 years ago as you know multilateralism is under attack and and there are some pushbacks in human rights too it gives it it gives me the impression that sometimes when some leaders of the world speak relativizing human rights and saying that or multilateralism other feel like this license to say it also seventy years on and the world may not be the better place the draft is envisaged and yet the universal declaration of human rights remains as testament to what should be a living reminder of the philosophy that individual rights are intrinsic and cannot be endowed or taken away mike hannah al-jazeera united nations dr sema samar chairwoman of the afghan independent human rights commission thank you for joining the program not only are you a medical doctor but you're also a passionate defender of human rights i'd just like to begin by asking you when did you become such an advocate of human rights thank you very much for having me in the program uh born in afghanistan as a female and seeing all the discrimination against women and also against the different minority groups in afghanistan and continuing uh conflict in the country since 40 years as you know has put me in a position to fight for equality in human rights now it's the 70th anniversary of the un declaration on human rights that declaration gave a framework towards human rights when did you become aware of the declaration of human rights and how much of an impact has it had on your work in afghanistan i became aware of the human declaration of human rights when i was quite young maybe around 75 and i think the the equality and and put the human and the focus was a reason for me to fight for and use it as a tool for fighting for equality in human rights and i think it's a it's a document i believe that draw a clear line between aggression violence and civilized tolerance work and of course focusing on human dignity inequality between any person without recognition of their geographical position or color religion belief and language and so on so that is a tool to be used for promotion of equality everywhere and particularly in my country in afghanistan if people aren't prosecuted for war crimes for crimes against humanity in conflict zones do they feel that they can get away with doing more and more violations against human rights of course not i think that's why i'm saying that it should be a mechanism in order to deal with those things because if we really continue like this without any accountability and we see more and more commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity around the world and nobody is a keeping them accountable and i think in order to save humanity in order to save the human dignity we need access to justice and in my view access to justice is not a luxury access to justice and have living in just society it's a basic human right and everybody has the right to left that luxury dr seamus amar thank you very much for joining us on the program thank you let's bring in our panelists in bangkok we're joined by benjamin zwaki a human rights researcher in colchester jeff gilbert professor of international human rights and humanitarian law at the university of essex and in stockholm johannes moskin director of communications at the right livelihood award foundation welcome to the programme let me begin with you benjamin zowaki in bangkok first is the universal declaration uh of human rights a gold standard or is it the baseline uh the min the bare minimum countries uh should be adhering to well it was intended as a baseline minimum in uh 70 years ago in the wake of world war ii the world was perhaps more amenable than it is 70 years on to considering these rights and agreeing almost universally across the board when you look at the 18 member uh committee that drafted the declaration to accepting these rights and agreeing to adhere to them 70 years on they're being seen now as as almost intentional untenable uh it was always a declaration it was never an enforceable convention or treaty so in that sense um it would be difficult to to press a legal case to begin with although these days even conventions or treaties are not adhered to with the same sort of commitment that they were 70 years ago either let me bring in our legal expert here from colchester professor jeff gilbert jeff we've heard a lot in the last few minutes about accountability about enforceability um because this is a declaration it doesn't have any real legal teeth particularly in international law is that right the declaration like any other general assembly declaration does not in and of itself have binding legal qualities but over the 70 years the declaration has come to reflect customer international law which is binding on states the problem as always with international law is enforceability it's all well and good to have documents treaties or declarations that set out rights the difficulty is always trying to get those rights upheld by states and that requires states to stand up and be accountable and to hold other states to account it requires mechanisms for individuals to make complaints and it requires the international community as a whole to put in place procedures so that rights can be verified and commented upon and all those systems are now in place that were never there back in 70 years ago what i think the universal declaration on human rights has done more than anything is that it's made it unquestionable that states are held to account when those rights are seen to be violated nobody would expect silence anymore when rights are violated what we now need is of course for greater accountability greater enforceability and for mechanisms to be respected and for the rule of law to be upheld let me bring in stockholm here and johannes moskin is that right are states paying attention to the universal declaration of human rights are uh prosecutions taking place it feels like that we are in a place now where human rights violations are simply seen more because of the 24-hour news cycle because of social media because of the media landscape that we're in right now but things seem much more bleak when it comes to human rights globally than ever before perhaps well i think the the answer is not as you know black and white yes we see accountability and yes we see how important the universal declaration on human rights has been and how important is every day advancing a more just peaceful and sustainable world but of course at the same time i very much you know agree also with the picture you're painting with lots of states getting away with with the you know the most horrible violations of human rights uh within their own countries and also abroad so um i guess the major thing lacking is political willingness and courage to actually make sure that these human rights are being respected now let me bring in bangkok here and benjamin zawaki is there a structural problem here with the way the united nations works because it doesn't have an enforcement policy or is this simply that states are paying lip service to the universal declaration of human rights but actually they're not really pushing forward uh within their own countries to prosecute those responsible well it's a combination of both the un has suffered from from a structural uh deficiency ever since the security council was founded uh in the wake of world war ii and of course 70 years on it's it's an almost anachronistic uh council when you look at its composition but i think more importantly what you have in the 21st century in contrast to the middle of the 20th century is number one a situation in the united states in which its uh executive chief executive ever since the turn of the century has either been in the case of the obama administration uh well-intentioned but extremely weak in its uh execution and prosecution of human rights and in the case of his predecessor and successor successors in bush and and trump two individuals who have been in open and demonstrable opposition to human rights on the other side of the globe literally you have china which is a vastly different country now than it was 70 years ago and which has been in opposition to human rights really from the very beginning seeing it as largely a western project and whose foreign and domestic policies both do not take human rights into account so absent leadership on either side of the world from the two largest and most powerful global powers what the united nations does and does not do becomes far less relevant when those two actors permanent members of the security council know less are unable or unwilling to enforce these these mechanisms let's bring in johannes um in stockholm here are there any successes that you can point to uh that the universal declaration of human rights has made um human rights violations prosecuted people have been sent to jail for their violations because of the act itself the declaration itself are there any successes yeah there are several of of uh such examples i'm thinking for example uh one are laureates shaking modena from chad who's you know been engaged over decades to to bring the former dictator hassan abria to uh well you know to take him to court and he was finally after for many many years he was sentenced so yeah there are many of such examples the problem is that there are too few the legal framework for all of this um suggests that there needs to be more accountability we have actually discussed that but is there a solution to this that's acceptable to the entire international community are there law are there tough enough laws that can be brought in i think let's start by saying that the universal declaration of human rights was never meant to lead to prosecutions okay criminal law is one thing international criminal law is one thing international human rights law is something else and what we are trying to do with the universal declaration is hold states accountable say to states these are the minimum standards that we expect you to employ with respect to all those within your territory subject to your jurisdiction and that's the idea behind the universal declaration of human rights it's the idea behind all the human rights treaties and we have seen since 1948 many many states held to account either before treaty bodies at the regional level or international level the human rights committee the committee against torture or through the special procedures that exist such that uh the special rapporteur on violence against women the special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons special rapporteur and torture go into states they're there what we have seen through the human rights mechanisms is states being told this far and no further of course there are going to be violations there's violations every day of domestic law and nobody says that the legal system of the united states or the united kingdom or sweden or thailand is ignored without consequence what we see with the universal declaration of human rights is the starting point for the world to acknowledge that the way states treat their own populations is now a matter of international concern it is not something that's just hidden away and one of the biggest changes that was brought about by the universal declaration of human rights it was the stepping stone to gre to speedier decolonization or by western powers it's part of all that process yes we now see with the international criminal court the opportunity to prosecute people who commit war crimes crimes against humanity uh genocide but that's a parallel path to holding states accountable for their human rights violations and that's much better now than it was 70 years ago it's a stalagmite and stalactite approach if one's if you've must steady drip drip that improves things is it perfect no why have i got a job because it isn't perfect and i am going to keep on trying as long as i keep working to improve human rights around the world as are all the other people speaking in this discussion but dr jeff gilbert is it is it a strong enough mechanism for you to do what you just said to try and improve human rights around the world or is it a flawed document um could it be better yes of course it could it it's the best i have got no uh the universal declaration of human rights was the starting point we've had a series of treaties since then but treaties have to be ratified what the universal declaration of human rights does is say to every state around the world this is the bare minimum this is what you've got to try and uphold and of course in the past 10 to 15 years we've seen universal periodic review where on a regular basis states are brought before the human rights council and have to account for their human rights record to other states in the global community this is now something that is so much for so much that was unimaginable in 1948 that states all states have to come and account for their human rights treatment uh record the human rights record on a regular basis i mean yes could it be better am i going would i like it to be better of course and keep on trying to improve things but all states aren't equal benjamin as you mentioned china and the us there let me just get back into that are some states deliberately either bending the rules or uh simply ignoring uh the universal declaration of human rights for their own interests yes i think that's that's clear that that's that's the case not uh not all human rights violators are the same but by the same token not all human rights violations are the same i think one of the reasons that i would disagree with the former panelists about things uh improving as opposed to the trend moving in the in a more negative direction is that when you look at human rights too often both state actors and non-state actors the international uh organizations ngos etc often see human rights as being equal across the board and they they are not they are universal and they are indivisible yes but there are certain human rights violations that are considered the most egregious of all and you mentioned them earlier in the program genocide crimes against humanity ethnic cleansing and too often we see states deal with those crimes in the same way that they might deal with for example attacks against the media or arbitrary detention or something of that nature which again are are unacceptable violations and yet in a world of finite human and financial resources unless there is a more concerted effort at going after the most egregious violations first and foremost we're going to see states openly flout these laws and indeed get away with it let me bring in uh johannes moskin here you've heard what our guests have had to say is it time then for a refreshing of the universal declaration of human rights or is the document itself profound enough to last another 70 years well um it's quite astonishing how well it was formulated it was mentioned yeah there are probably room for improvements but thinking of other things written 70 years ago it's quite amazing how well it's it can be used to adopt also to new challenges and um i think the major problem is not changing any and or do making any amendments to the to the universal declaration of human rights it really comes down to the political willingness we have heard about you know the u.

n security council as one of the major obstacles moving ahead and yeah i think it really comes down to to states to show another type of courage and political willingness to actually respect the rights we have rather than a great need to sit down everyone together and reformulate it uh professor jeff gilbert in in colchester political willingness that we seem to keep coming back to that but without enforceability political willingness just will never be there but political political willingness only comes about by people campaigning and keep on holding states to account even if there isn't a place a forum by in which you can try and get these rights upheld so that states are held accountable what you can have and what this program is all about at one level is saying to the world these rights exist these rights need to be remembered at all times and governments need to be reminded that they have to live up to these standards what is interesting is that states very rarely say we are violating human rights who cares what they actually say is we are not violating human rights what we are doing falls within the standards that we are meant to meet that is what has to be challenged and it is challenged not just by other states it's challenged by activists and by academics and by the general people saying this document exists how are you fulfilling its obligations i'm just going to ask each of you the same question if you can keep it short because we are coming to the end of the program the start with you uh benjamin zoaki in bangkok universal declaration of human rights is it a flawed document or is it simply a document that is absolutely necessary in this day and age i'm going to ask all three of you the same question if you could just answer very quickly it is absolutely necessary but it is inherently flawed in that it does not have an enforcement mechanism and in an era in which trying to name and shame states as the first and foremost uh ways and means of holding states accountable it's simply insufficient 70 years on after it's uh after its draft professor jeff gilbert what are your thoughts it was never intended to be the end of the line and yes we've had much better documents in terms of drafting and in terms of enforceability since but the universal declaration of human rights is the one that we can always turn to and always holds all states accountable to that those standards because it's universal in its application uh johannes moscone finally we'll end with you what are your thoughts um yeah i would definitely i would say um we should look at it also as a living document it can be used to to uh to meet new challenges and even though they're yeah the major problem is it's the political willingness i'll end with that many thanks to all our guests benjamin zwaraki jeff gilbert and yanaganis moskin and thank you two for watching you can see the program again anytime by visiting our website aljazeera. com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook.