Twentieth century stands out as the century that witnessed remarkable advancement as well as abject denial of human rights. In 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted as “a common standard of achievement of all peoples and nations” there were reservations of many state governments. Virtually all states shielded behind Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter in arguing that human rights matter was strictly an internal matter of the states concerned. Due to reservations of state governments, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not presented to the General Assembly as a treaty for ratification which would be binding upon the signatory nations, but an instrument to be endorsed as “a statement of goals and aspirations – a vision of the world as the International community wanted it to be become”. The Declaration was adopted by an affirmative vote of 48 members states and 8 abstentions. While a UN Commission on Human Rights was set up, its work was entirely dominated by the governments and the role of NGOs was restricted to adhoc appearances. The commission’s mandate was confined in practice to the drafting of new treaties and other legal instruments.
However, before the twentieth century came to an end there were many remarkable and important developments in the domain of human rights. The view that human rights violations are essentially domestic rights matter receives now very little credence from the International Community. The Universal Declaration has been supplemented by a vast array of international standards; the most important of which are the six “core” human Rights treaties. The UN has also created a vast array of monitoring mechanisms.
Human Rights and Democracy
One of the important advancements of the twentieth century was the recognition of democracy as, to quote Amartya Sen, “preeminently acceptable form of governance”. Though democracy is not the only means by which improved governance could be achieved, it is perhaps the only reliable one. By providing greater public participation, democracy enhances the likelihood that national developmental goals will reflect broad societal aspirations and priorities. By establishing political legitimacy of governments, democracy strengthens their capacity to function efficiently and effectively. Thus human rights and democracy are mutually supportive.
However, history is not linear. Twentieth century also witnessed some of the worst instances of human rights violations. Only six years before the century ended, more than half a million citizens of Rwanda were murdered by their government in a state-sponsored genocide. It was expected that the end of the cold war, which saw the downfall of many totalitarian regimes, would bring about improvements in respect of human rights. It was hoped that post-cold war increase in democracy would lead to human rights advancement. However, it was found, as Helen Fein pointed out, “there had been more murder in the middle”. This means that life-integrity violations are more likely to occur in societies that lie between democracy and authoritarianism. The democratization of authoritarian political systems has sometimes proved dangerous for protection of human rights.
Nineties of twentieth century also saw that in different circumstances gross local human rights violations have catalyzed military action by outside agents acting on authority of multi-national bodies. UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, called for systematic doctrine of UN Human rights intervention. He has said that “the world cannot stand aside when gross systemic violations of human rights are taking place”... read more:
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