OPINION:Ideals written into the UN Declaration of Human Rights continue to speak to us 60 years later, writes Colm O'Gorman
OUT OF the horror of the second World War, a unique conversation began.
The realisation of just how barbaric the human race can be drove the need for a declaration of how valuable each person is. The Holocaust demanded a new conversation about the need for every person to be treated with dignity and respect.
On December 10th, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It took three years of painstaking drafting.
Beginning with the brave premise that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights", the declaration sets out in 30 articles the rights inherent within every one of us.
In stances on fair trials and freedom through to torture and the need for water and housing, the declaration gave the world the principles from which human rights law would be built. The declaration is an expression of great ideals, of bold principles universally accepted as true.
The power of the declaration is evident in its continuing relevance. While its framers were responding to an historic atrocity, the declaration sets out standards which have generated a code of international law to address modern obscenities such as use of child soldiers, rape as a weapon of war and trafficking in people.
It is possible that, 60 years on, we are on the cusp of another unique conversation. Certainties framing our modern world are coming unstuck. The global economic crisis and the inevitability of environmental degradation are reshaping our world, and will, if unchecked, force millions more people into the most pervasive human rights violation of all, abject poverty.
In the last year Amnesty International has documented how the global food crisis impacted on millions of already impoverished people, and how authorities in Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Israel have used control of food to control people.
Our respect for human rights must be strongest at times of great challenge, but our recent history reveals grave failures. In the climate of fear after 9/11, world leaders lost sight of this. The subsequent legalisation of torture, systematic use of abduction and abuse of boys as young as 13 by the most powerful country changed the world in ways we could not have imagined.
Can human rights provide solutions? The successes of the human rights framework over the past 60 years are undeniable. We have seen the creation of the International Criminal Court and prosecutions for atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. We have seen huge progress towards control of arms. We expect that tomorrow the UN General Assembly will adopt a new protocol on economic and social rights.
We have seen the emergence of a global community reaching across borders to demand change. Their success is evident not only in a body of law, but in lives saved, prisoners of conscience released and atrocities named and ended. It is in the small places - the homes and communities of individuals - where we see the best evidence of the declaration's success.
I believe we need to renew our commitment to values we hold as universally true. Far too often, Governments, including our own, externalise human rights. They are seen as aspirational, but not in fact attainable.
Ireland's failure to enshrine in Irish law the human rights commitments we made have made internationally is evidence of this.
Global challenges are enormous; our vision in meeting them must start with the individual. It is incumbent on each of us to recognise our own inherent dignity and humanity, and to recognise these elements as inherent to all.
• Colm O'Gorman is executive director of Amnesty International Ireland. See also From the Republic of Conscience, a special magazine supplement with today's paper containing reflections on the UN declaration by 31 leading Irish writers, introduced by Seamus Heaney