Human Rights Day

“All human beings are born free and equal in dig­ni­ty and rights.” This is stat­ed in Arti­cle 1 of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights. This dec­la­ra­tion was enshrined on Decem­ber 10, 1948 and pro­claimed at the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly in Paris. This was the first glob­al human rights doc­u­ment and Decem­ber 10 is meant to be an annu­al reminder.

The Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights was adopt­ed short­ly after the Sec­ond World War. In this cat­a­log, fun­da­men­tal rights were defined in 30 arti­cles, which were to apply equal­ly to all peo­ple — regard­less of gen­der, nation­al­i­ty, polit­i­cal con­vic­tion or reli­gion. These are eco­nom­ic, social, cul­tur­al, civ­il and polit­i­cal rights. How­ev­er, this dec­la­ra­tion was only a dec­la­ra­tion of intent. That is, there was no treaty or oth­er safe­guards. Thus, no state was actu­al­ly required to abide by this dec­la­ra­tion. Coun­tries were only required to imple­ment and pro­tect the fun­da­men­tal rights enshrined in the document.

In order to turn the dec­la­ra­tion of intent into a legal­ly bind­ing treaty for the coun­tries, 18 years (1966) lat­er two human rights covenants were adopt­ed by the Unit­ed Nations. These entered into force 10 years (1976) lat­er. Togeth­er with the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion, the UN Civ­il Covenant and the UN Social Covenant form the inter­na­tion­al human rights code.

Human rights are not self-evi­dent, because they are still not respect­ed by all coun­tries or are dis­re­gard­ed. Thus, tor­ture, per­se­cu­tion, forced mar­riages, free­dom of expres­sion, racism, depri­va­tion of lib­er­ty, etc. still occur today. This is exact­ly what the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights is sup­posed to pro­tect us from. How­ev­er, it is dif­fi­cult for the Unit­ed Nations to enforce human rights, because due to the legal sta­tus of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, the doc­u­ment is only a rec­om­men­da­tion. More­over, the Unit­ed Nations can­not enforce the obser­vance of human rights, because this would con­tra­dict its own principles.

It is there­fore all the more impor­tant to reg­u­lar­ly draw atten­tion to the fact that not all peo­ple are treat­ed equal­ly every­where, or even have the same rights. The orga­ni­za­tion Human Rights Watch is com­mit­ted to pre­cise­ly this and points out in its reports where human rights are being disregarded.

Sources:
https://www.lpb-bw.de/menschenrechte#c63609
http://www.tagdermenschenrechte.org/hintergrund/
https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/hintergrund-aktuell/501387/tag-der-menschenrechte/
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/aussenpolitik/themen/menschenrechte/01-menschenrechte-fundament