The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) celebrates its 75th anniversary on December 10th.
As the foundation stone of the entire human rights project, the UDHR is of the utmost importance for all of us. Over the course of the past 41 years, the Human Rights Centre has been engaged in world-leading research and education that collectively aims to promote the core values and objectives of the UDHR.
Many of our colleagues and alumni have made and continue to make invaluable contributions to this all-important work.
The contributions contained in this posting provide a timely testimony to the Human Rights Centre's commitment to promoting the UDHR.
The challenge of fulfilling basic human rights
“Inequality defines our time,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his 2020 Nelson Mandela Lecture.
We live in a world where the richest 10% of the world’s population take 52% of global income; in contrast, the poorest 50% of the population earn only 8.5% of it, according to the 2022 World Inequality Report.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not explicitly address economic inequality.
But, in this unequal world, can we say that all human beings are “equal in dignity and rights”? That all human beings are “equal in dignity and rights” is a fundamental idea underpinning the UDHR, as stated in Article 1.
The UDHR recognises economic, social and cultural rights on an equal footing with civil and political rights. It proclaims that food, health care, housing, education, social security, care, decent work, trade union activity and cultural life are human rights to which we are all entitled. (Articles 22-27)
We should also remember that the UDHR affirms that everyone is entitled to all these rights, regardless of social origin or property, let alone race, sex, language, or religion. (Article 2)
It is an illusion that everyone can enjoy basic human rights in this era of climate crisis, without reducing income and wealth inequality. Addressing high level of economic inequality is an inescapable challenge to fulfilling the promise of the UDHR. The vision and explicit provisions of international human rights law have the potential to help meet this challenge.
Joo-Young Lee, Member of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 2023-2026
An increasing set of demands
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has proven to be a remarkably capacious framework of freedoms that has been able to accommodate an increasing set of demands on this right over the past 75 years.
Rights claims that were initially rejected, such as conscientious objection to military service, or ignored, such as indigenous peoples’ rights, have been incorporated overtime. Moreover, Article 18 holds the promise of offering invaluable resources to address the challenges posed by rapid globalisation, unrestrained climate change, increasing digitisation, and the growing diversity of our societies, identities and ways of being.
The central position that Article 18 enjoys today in the global society is manifested also in the use of the freedoms in Article 18 in several multilateral settings and institutions to foster peace and freedoms for all. This follows from the insight that one of the best responses to the challenges posed by the instrumental use of religion is the mobilisation of the freedoms guaranteed in Article 18 as a universal human right.
The assertions made in the 1981 UN Declaration of Religion, 1995 UNESCO Declaration on Tolerance, and UN-orchestrated frameworks such as the Rabat Action Plan (2012) or the Fez Action Plan (2017) or indeed the Beirut Declaration on Faith for Rights (2017), are all grounded in a shared conviction-- that the freedoms of thought, conscience and religion or belief, when pursued in an inclusive and holistic manner, can generate the antibodies required to combat a host of global challenges that we face today.
To be sure, one must make at least two caveats to this representation of religious freedom.
The echoes of the old world linger in the continuing use of religion to trumpet bigotry, promote violent extremism, incite genocide, oppress free thinkers, exclude religious minorities, justify violation of the rights of girls and women, persecute LGBT persons, exploit the poor, and uphold racist immigration policies.
The other caveat is that it must also be recalled that the positive energies of religions have always been present, as in the work of missionaries and social reformers throughout the centuries. Perhaps a major difference now is the bottom-up approach made possible via postcolonial, decolonial, feminist, queer and other critical perspectives and theologies in the post-colonial period. These critical approaches to religious freedoms must continue.
Professor Ahmed Shaheed, former UN Special Rapporteur for Iran and for the Right to Religion or Belief
Staying true to the purpose of the UDHR
In its 75 years, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has journeyed far and near: to every corner of the earth, and into the intimacies of daily life.
That sweep and scope of human rights matters most for inclusion. It matters for those who, thanks to discrimination against their ascribed identities, are locked into the losing side of power-relations, notably: women, girls, minorities, racialized persons, and people living in poverty.
That question of “who are rights for” figured unevenly but significantly in the often-terse negotiations that gave us the UDHR’s substance: Russia, provoking the US, argued for inclusion of non-discrimination, specifically on grounds of race. Saudi Arabia, challenging the West, argued for social and economic rights. In the end, it was India’s delegate, independence activist Hansa Mehta, who successfully won a change in the wording of the Declaration’s first Article, to affirm not that “all men” but “all human beings” are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
The human rights of all, must work for all.
For women that has involved insisting – notably to others – that rights belong also in the private and intimate domains: in the home, given the prevalence of intimate partner violence, and in the intimate realm, given how sexual and reproductive rights are integral to physical and mental integrity.
Yet, right now, transnational anti-rights campaigns - well-funded, broadly coordinated and poorly scrutinised – are allowed to influence UN negotiations and for perverse purposes. Nativists promoting racist and misogynist policies on gender, sex, and reproduction, just to muscle up nationalist and ethnic privilege. Authoritarians and populists weaponizing gender, sex, and reproduction, attacking identity, voice, and choice, in order to dissemble democracy. It’s a necro-politics, with brutalist consequences for women, racialized persons and for the world’s largest generation of adolescents, 90% of whom live outside the Global North. In other words, brutalist precisely for those whom the UDHR was designed to serve best - people most exposed to power’s cruel self-interest and consequent callousness. Lest we forget.
Kate Gilmore, former United Nations Deputy High Commissioner 2015-2019
Different approaches and accountabilities
There are different ways of advancing and implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, by way of a policy approach, empowerment approach, and accountability approach. These different approaches overlap, and none is effective without the other.
A policy approach rests upon the early integration of human rights into policy making so they shape and inform policies from the outset. This approach requires interdisciplinarity, for example, health policy making requires clinicians, epidemiologists, health economists, statisticians, people with lived experience, and human rights experts.
Human rights empower communities and dignify individuals: the empowerment approach.
When people know they have a right not to be discriminated against, to equal access to services, to be treated with dignity, and that provision of essential services is a right, not an arbitrary act of charity, they can act individually or as part of groups and movements. Such action can change social norms, practices, and the distribution of power, within and between communities and countries.
When human rights are not respected, protected, or fulfilled, another approach can involve the courts, tribunals, and other judicial, quasi-judicial, and non-judicial processes: the accountability approach. Lawyers are well-versed in judicial accountability, but this is only one type of accountability. A national human rights institution worth its salt holds duty-bearers accountable.
So can civil society organisations, a free press, local councils, and parliaments, provided they explicitly assess duty-bearers’ conduct against national and international human rights standards.
Several provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights underscore the importance of accountability, such as article 8 (effective remedy), article 10 (independent and impartial tribunal), and article 19 (freedom of expression).
Accountability can address past grievances and correct systemic failures thereby preventing future harm. Without accountability, human rights obligations can become empty promises.
Accountability mechanisms provide individuals and groups (rights bearers) with an opportunity to understand how states and others with human rights obligations (duty bearers) have discharged their obligations, and it also provides duty bearers with an opportunity to explain their actions. In this way, accountability mechanisms are transparent, and they help to identify policy or programme adjustments that are necessary to realise human rights entitlements. Accountability also tends to encourage the most effective use of limited resources, as well as a shared responsibility among all parties.
Sometimes accountability is conflated with monitoring, but monitoring is only one step towards accountability.
Accountability can be understood as monitoring, review (including independent review) in relation to human rights standards, and remedial or restorative action (Williams and Hunt, 2017). Transparent, effective, and accessible accountability mechanisms are among the most crucial characteristics of human rights upon which the realisation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights depends.
Paul Hunt
Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Aotearoa New Zealand, and former UN Special Rapporteur for Health
