Human rights-readings for September 19

After reading the different declarations pertaining to human rights, the first thing that came to mind was a certain sense of evolution. At the beginning, the concept of protecting individual rights was rather broad and generalized. In fact, it could be argued that they were more guidelines than something that could be strictly enforced. As time went by, these texts became more specific, with targeted audiences in mind. Originally restrictive (limiting the absolute powers of feudal lords, kings, colonizing powers, etc.), they began reaching out to englobe the protection of individual rights. In this, the UN charter is extremely comprehensive, zoning in on different groups, and rights, that need protecting. Further texts go into further details on specific groups, such as racial minorities or indigenous groups.

In all, the texts were clearly comprehensive and showed a clear evolution through time. What was interesting to me was to see how certain things, that I often take for granted, came into being, and how these rights are protected by law. However, despite all the good intentions, there are certain obvious and well know loop holes, especially pertaining to the United Nations; how does one prevent, or punish, a violation of rights? You can't exactly grab a country and drag it to jail, and change is almost never possible without internal political will. This is why genocides are still being committed today, why Indigenous rights are far from being universally respected. On a smaller scale, such as within a country, charters and texts go further in protecting human rights because they are more easily enforcable. When the scale widens to the International level, things become vastly different, and implementation becomes a problem. At that scale, one must also deal with differing cultures and world views that cannot always come into line with each other. I do still believe, however, that great strides have been taken to protect universal human rights. Equally true is the fact that despondency at this point is not an option, and there is still much work to be done.