Anyone care to defend the Universal Declaration on Human Rights?
|
|
It's come to my attention, reading ashwini's blog, that some people actually take that thing seriously. I've met few policymakers who think it's worth the paper it's printed on, and I'm inclined to agree - it's an unworkable, unrealistic, unenforceable document that's ultimately meaningless.
Does anyone here who supports it care to offer arguments in favor if its usefulness and its relevance?
Does anyone here who supports it care to offer arguments in favor if its usefulness and its relevance?
It's a basic, normative declaration that, assuming Henkin is right about international law-abiding habits, will almost always serve to protect human rights.
And if Lowe is right about interstital norms, then having something like UDHR out there, cited favorably and repeatedly by powerful states, can lead to the principles espoused in the UNDR becoming accepted almost to the point of a normative given; recognizing the normative properties of the UNDR can contribute to a longer timeline of recognition for basic human rights, simply because respecting human rights, even while not strictly adhering to UDHR, will become accepted as "the way it's done" by states.
Documents like UDHR and CEDAW were also instrumental in the post-communist transitions in Eastern Europe, as they provided legislators in newly-freed countries a normative basis for establishing/protecting the rights of women, ethnic minorities, and religious minorities.
All that is, of course, theory. I'd imagine that the policymakers you've talked to about UDHR are disproportionately American, and since we already have a Bill of Rights it means much less for us than for other states. But look at a state like Ethiopia, which wrote into its constitution that the rights of their citizens enumerated in that constitution, "shall be interpreted in conformity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
I'm siding with Reagan on this one:
This seems to be skipping a fundamental question to me -- even if it were magically enforceable as is, would it be a good thing? I'd argue not.
Assuming such a thing as human rights exists (I'm skeptical on that, but willing to entertain the thought), a lot of things in the document would not be "human rights".
This isn't a defense of the UDHR, it's a defense of normative statements of ideals in general. One could easily, in about 20 minutes, come up with a significantly better statement of normative ideals than the UDHR. Hell, one could just hand out copies of the United States constitution and say "here, copy this. It's good stuff." Probably wouldn't go over well, but hey, it's still an option.
So all Ethiopians have "the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control"?
The law protects Ethiopians against "attacks upon their honor"?
All this tells me is that Ethiopia has a bad constitution.
This may be the first time on CampusProgress that someone tries busting out Reagan quotes in order to persuade. Hopefully the last, too. ;)
And heaven knows that having no support for the document would do wonders for the credibility of domestic factions arguing for adherence to its principles.
UDHR, like the UN Charter itself, is set apart from other "normative statements of ideals" because of the broad constituency that agreed to establish it.
(And you're more than welcome to doubt whether human rights exist or not. However, since my Reagan quote didn't entertain you, how about I just say I'll side with Jefferson on the question of the existence of human rights?)
Politically, I find plenty to disagree with in both Reagan and Jefferson.
Secondly, I think you're getting tangled up between 'rights' and 'ideals'. What sort of ideals? If you're saying that the UDHR is a set of 'ideal outcomes', I disagree, but only to some degree. If you think the UDHR is a set of 'ideal rights', I strongly disagree - I think plenty of things in the UDHR shouldn't be rights at all.
Jefferson thought some truths were self-evident, and I agree with him on the ones he cited.
What in UDHR do you think shouldn't be considered a right? Would you like to just skip this step and bore us by arguing against the existence of natural rights?
And are you just going to ignore my initial point about interstital norms? Because if you are, I think we're probably done here (assuming the purpose of your initial question was in fact to find an adequate defense of the usefullness of UDHR, and not just giving you another opportunity to whine about progressivism--promoting the concept of interstital norms seems pretty useful to me, and refutes the idea that UDHR is 'meaningless').
As someone who's spent plenty of time on both right and left wing blogs, I can tell you that neither has a monopoly, or even a hegemonic dominance, of ad-hominem attacks.
As for why I ad hominemed them, it's because you didn't attach any compelling arguments for either. The Reagan quote was pure fluff, and Jefferson was just tossed in there as a name -- since all you gave were the names as if they have authority in and of themselves, I attacked their reputations.
I think his famous argument was a good one in that it persuaded the people towards a good outcome; but as far as the logic goes, I've long considered it to be little more than sophistry. He was advocating for something good, but not good for the reasons he named.
Alright then, setting the argument over the existence of natural rights aside:
The ones about dignity and honor, I'd consider not to be rights. The same with a lot of the economic ones. I can probably come up with more, but I'm in class and trying to finish this post on a tight time limit.
We've been through this already, haven't we? The promotion of interstital norms is generally good, but that's not an argument in favor of any given set of norms -- and I'd argue that plenty of the points in the UDHR shouldn't necessarily be norms at all, as mentioned above.
Also, there's a big difference between norms and ideals. "Freedom of speech" is a norm. "Everyone having a decent standard of living" is not a norm, but an ideal.