Justice and Human Rights Part

Justice and Human Rights

Part 1, Topic 2: Eleanor Roosevelt and the UDHR

As first lady to the longest tenured President in United States history, Eleanor Roosevelt had a good deal of political experience to draw upon before taking a leadership role in the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in January of 1947. Before accepting the position of chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights, Mrs. Roosevelt had worked primarily in a domestic capacity, traveling the United States and taking stands on causes within the country's borders (Fromkin, 2001). She had a good deal of experience with political negotiation even prior to hear years in the White House. She was recognized worldwide as having "unparalleled humanitarian convictions" (National Coordinating Committee for UDHR50, 1998). Her political experiences and her well-known good-naturedness combined to quality her for the leadership role she played in the formulation of the UDHR.

Mrs. Roosevelt's role, as she saw it, was to lead the Commission on Human Rights into creating a universally accepted declaration "with enduring principles that would be perpetually recognized by all nations" (National Coordinating Committee for UDHR50, 1998). In this endeavor, she experienced both success and failure, but overall it can be stated that she did do a good job.

The failure in Mrs. Roosevelt's endeavor is that not all countries have accepted the declaration that that Commission finalized in 1948. In fact, not all countries who have accepted the declaration have ratified it. The United States itself did not ratify the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights until 1992, and as of 2000, still have not ratified the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Glendon, 2002). The cause of this decades-long delay in the United States is likely the same thing that has prevented some other nations from ratifying the declaration at all. The reason is that the priority of most nations is not the civil rights of their citizens.

Different nations have different priorities. These priorities change based upon current circumstances. For example, in 2001, the United States passed what is commonly referred to as the U.S.A. PATRIOT ACT. This Act justifies the suspension of Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights in the name of investigating terrorism (U.S., 2001). This is a clear case of a country reacting to the circumstances and doing what it thinks is necessary to ensure its own prosperity. If that prosperity comes at the expense of the civil rights of some people, then so be it.

Thinking along these same lines, Eleanor Roosevelt was concerned during the drafting of the UDHR about the United States having an issue with states rights, particularly states in the South. The concern stems from the Constitutional guarantee of some level of state autonomy. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" (U.S., 1791). The individual rights of states are infringed upon in a way when the Federal Government passes laws for the entire nation. Mrs. Roosevelt was concerned about southern states in this case because of the issue of segregation, which was still legal until the 1960s. Had the U.S. ratified the UDHR, southern states would have had to immediately discontinue their practice of segregation.

Another possible delay in the ratification of the declaration can be traced to the tone of the latter stages of the declaration, specifically Articles 22 through 30. These articles are said by some to have a socialist bend to them. Included in these articles are rights to free education, social protection of all children, rights to equal pay for equal work, and rights to social security (UDH$, 1948). The potentially socialist tone of these articles can explain a delay up through the Cold War, but it does not excuse delaying ratification into the twenty-first century. Upon further review, the socialist motive for delaying ratification does not stand.

Part 2, Topic 4: The Rwandan Genocide

On April 6, 1994, the plane of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali airport, the main airport for Rwanda, a small country in Central Africa.. Habyarimana was killed in the crash, as was the Burundian president, Cyprien Ntaryamira. The President was a Hutu, the majority in Rwanda. Many believe the Tutsis, the minority in Rwanda, perpetrated the shooting. Some say Hutu extremists, to give them an excuse for what happened next, committed the murder. Within hours of the president's death, angry Hutus took to the streets and sought out those who supported peace between the Hutus and the Tutsis. They did not only kill Tutsis, their rivals; they also killed conservative Hutus who supported peace between the two ethnic groups and 10 Belgian soldiers who were present as part of a UN mission (Power, 2003).

Over the next 100 days, from April until June of 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Most of the dead were Tutsis, and most of the killers were Hutus. This fits the legal definition of genocide, which is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. In this case, violent Hutus sought out, not only Tutsis, but all of those who sought to support the Tutsis (Power, 2003).

According to Power, the failure of the U.S. To intervene in the midst of this violent, bloody struggle may be another reason to classify it as genocide. Historically, the United States has been slow to action in helping countries that are faced with the problem of genocide. From the Armenian Genocide, which claimed over 1 million Armenian lives between 1915 and 1917, to the "ethnic cleansing" during the Kosovo war, which caused the displacement of close to 1 million residents of Kosovo in 1999, the United States has been either inactive or slow to action as it relates to helping the affected countries (Power, 2003). Such was the case during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994.