Ghana: Universal Declaration of Human Rights - AllAfrica.com

Louise ArbourAccra

A year-long political campaign will be launched today to observe the 60th day of remembrance of the Universal Joint Declaration of Person Rights which falls on December 10, 2008.

This campaign will prosecute the whole United Nations system in promoting the Declaration's ideals and rules of justness and equality for all of us which changed the landscape of international dealings and gave matter to the aspirations to freedom and self-respect of humankind.

But the jubilations are meant not only as testimonials to an extraordinary human achievement. They will also be reminders that the end of making the Declaration a life world for everyone have got got yet to be realized.

There is no uncertainty that we have come up a long manner on a route that the UDHR framers have prefigured. Today, a complex web of international instruments have fleshed out the content of the handbaskets of rights that the Declaration spelled out, including civil, political, economic, societal and cultural rights. All States have got got ratified at least one of the core nine international human rights treaties, and 80 per cent have ratified four or more.

The procedure of adopting the Declaration's norms, translating them into law and putting them into consequence is still in progress at the international and national degrees with regional physical things increasingly involved as well.

Yet despite acknowledgment in law and in declared commitments, glaring spreads in execution of human rights criteria are establish in every state in the world. Abuse, favoritism and inequality are still pervasive. They may even be growing as a consequence of new word forms of oppression, force and economical and societal inequalities.

Nothing represents unmet outlooks better than the failure to allow justness to the victims of favoritism and human rights violations. Many judicial systems deficiency professionalism or have got a long history of bullying and subservience which forestalls answerability for perpetrators' actions and denies their victims proper recourse. Impunity, and the absence of a true conjunction tissue between state establishments and the people not only frustrates the demand for justice, but also promotes the prolongation of forms of exclusion and abuse.

Such profound, widespread and perennial challenges have got prompted some to inquiry the vitality, relevance, and pertinence of the Declaration's principles. However it is not the soundness of the Declarations' vision, but the committedness of authorities to implementing its norms and their direction of competing aspirations and scarce resources that should come up under scrutiny.

Clearly, legitimate, independent, and effectual establishments of administration are necessary to ran into the human rights demands of justice, effectual engagement and echt accountability. Feasible establishments also guarantee that that societal justice, including equal entree to food, education, health, proper housing, and other basic needs, is delivered in an attempt to free people from statuses of chronic poorness and discrimination.

Another word form of unfavorable judgment have targeted the very conception of catholicity on which the Declaration rests. This unfavorable judgment have been expressed by many in the misguided belief that cosmopolitan rules are inimical to the publicity of pluralistic diverseness or cultural specificity, or free enterprise.

Some skeptics reason that civil and political rights-as articulated in the Declaration-belong solely to western traditions and agendas, and are not as widely shared as their advocators believe. For their part, critics coming from broad economical places are wary of the Declaration's economical and societal rights which they see as either hampering free marketplace practices, or imposing too cumbrous duties on States or both.

Finally, some have got espoused receptionist positions and recast them into self-serving doctrines to simply continue privileges and powerfulness uniquely for themselves and a selected few, while denying the rights of everyone else.

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Far from suffocating pluralism and equally far from being a partisan concoction--suitable to some cultures, but irrelevant or even noxious to others--the Declaration was the merchandise of the considered judgement of an divine grouping of framers who came from diverse backgrounds and parts and who drew from a broad spectrum of legal, religious, and political traditions. They sought a "common criterion of achievement" for all to share. The balance they attained 60 old age ago is an chemical equilibrium we should never discontinue to endeavor for, irrespective of how our attacks may vary.

As we seek to progress this country of agreement, States and all stakeholders should concentrate instead on how to take the obstructions that go on to halter the execution and fulfillment of all human rights standards.

Realizing the ends of justness and equality for all must be our pre-eminent task if we truly are to honor the spirit and the missive of the Declaration. Beyond good intent, this enterprise must be understood and carried out as a echt duty to authorise rights holders. It must be pursued with the urgency and sense of precedence that it rates as our shared duty to advance and protect human rights under the law.