What’s left of human rights

Each year on this day, December 10, the world is expected to mark Human Rights Day, and this year is special as it is the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. Regrettably, this day, this year, will be commemorated in the midst of the most flagrant violations of human rights taking place in Gaza and even in Ukraine, and in Africa. Relentless, unapologetic shelling of civilians, reducing cities to the stone age particularly in Gaza with the approval of the government of the United States of America alone and a United Nations powerless to stop the carnage, make observing such a day a joke. Just that it is no laughing matter.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a groundbreaking document. Yet, the UN Secretary General's words in today's context, that the Declaration shows the way to "common values and approaches that can help resolve tensions and create the security and stability the world craves for" are as hollow as a drum.

His brave call for an emergency session of the Security Council on Friday to push for a ceasefire in Gaza flopped by a sole veto by the USA.

The fault is not with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was a great success in multilateralism after World War II. It was based on the principle that a human being born to this world had inalienable rights—whether a child, a disabled person, a member of a minority community—and that no Government could, or should, take those rights away.

The problem was, as Dr. Henry Kissinger would argue, the world is an imperfect place. These human rights had to exist in the real world, with all its flaws, with its realpolitik, holding those rights to ransom, flouting them with an unimaginable scale of impunity as we witness in the double standards practised by the superpowers.

This Universal Declaration came to be tested very early in the 'cold war' years during a clash of ideologies between the West and the East; the West being the US and Western Alliance and the East being the then Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe, which the West saw, correctly, as totalitarian regimes trampling human rights to dust. It was Europe-centric, mostly.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states gravitating towards the Western Alliance, the focus on human rights shifted to an economic North-South divide. The searchlight fell on small countries like Sri Lanka that were in the global South and impudent enough not to align themselves with the Western Alliance. It was India, though, that first dragged Sri Lanka before the UN Human Rights Commission, the predecessor of the UN Human Rights Council.

The advanced economies of the West, now known as the Global North, began weaponising of human rights and targeting its opponents (while protecting its allies—such as Israel) to try out international mechanisms such as the imposition of sanctions against individuals, on the lines of the Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 (USA) and Canada's ex-parte orders. Sri Lanka became a guinea-pig nation for these laboratories.

Domestically, sections of the Sri Lankan Diaspora saw this new trajectory of the Global North as a means to be exploited by exerting pressure on the homelands they deserted through the elected representatives in their newfound countries who rely on these vote banks for victory.

Successive Governments have warded off external pressure, especially coming via the UNHRC by taking the position that international mechanisms are not necessary either for accountability or reconciliation; that domestic mechanisms are more than adequate.

It has been pointed out that a lot of headway has been made postconflict (2009). Connectivity between the North and South of the country has been re-established, normal economic life and democracy with elections restored, child soldiers reintegrated into society, displaced persons resettled, and lands acquired during the conflict almost entirely returned. The Office of Missing Persons (OMP) has its work cut out, but is grinding away and the laborious demining of the onetime battlefields is a work in progress. Devolution of further power is a sticking point, but under discussion.

Moves to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to cool down the heat at the UNHRC. Clearly, a Secretariat is required to oversee the mopping-up operations of a three-decade-old armed conflict that caused misery all around, but the nagging question is whether the TRC is going to engage in Retributive Justice or Restorative Justice. In South Africa, they opted for the latter. Very few prosecutions took place. It was a very ‘Christian approach' to treat old wounds. Will this satisfy the 'wolves' behind the UNHRC baying for blood?

One question that begs an answer is why the Government hasn't yet set in motion, machinery to fast-track the recommendations of the LLRC (Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission) that were largely accepted internationally, and domestically. The President this week made another attempt at reconciliation having talks with the Global Tamil Forum and urged the Security Forces to cooperate in the process of reconciliation as interested parties were fanning trouble once again in the North and East.

The President has said Sri Lanka must go with "clean hands" to Geneva. Blatant double standards by the sponsors of the UNHRC Resolution against Sri Lanka may not be enough an argument to meet the gauntlet thrown down. And charges against the country cannot be met merely by counter charges. In practical, almost cynical terms, the exit route for Sri Lanka needs the support of the West; on a ‘help them to help us’ principle.

This Resolution expires in September next year, but calls have already commenced overseas to renew it with added strictures such as imposing individual sanctions and taking the issue to the UN in New York. It has now added elements being hung like bells on what has become a Christmas tree Resolution ranging from economic issues to the right to protest and to new legislation.

It is not only due to pressure from Geneva that Sri Lanka must have 'clean hands'. It needs clean hands domestically as well for the betterment of its own human rights record.

Never mind the blatant double standards of the Global North, Sri Lanka must have its own standards keeping as close as possible to the ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, however "universal" it doesn't seem to be in the real, imperfect world.