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Human rights: where are we heading?

By Stephen Keim - posted Wednesday, 30 November 2011


The lawyers who wrote the torture memos and the politicians who approved the torture might well find accountability in the type of holiday that Augusto Pinochet failed to enjoy in Britain in the latter years of the twentieth century when he was arrested and held for extradition to Spain for murders of Spanish nationals in his native Chile. Ill health saved Pinochet on that occasion, but the events changed politics in his native land and, at the time of his death, he was under house arrest for many of the crimes committed during his time in office. The US perpetrators may not be so lucky.

There is another factor that, despite the evidence in A Call to Courage gives me optimism. I am also reading at the moment Mary Ann Glendon's A World Made New, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It is a fascinating story of the negotiation and adoption of the Universal Declaration by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948even as the shadows of the Cold War loomed closer and longer. Reading A World Made New, however, reminds me that it is just 63 years since the UDHR was adopted. Its offspring, theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights were only opened for signature in 1966 and only came into force in 1977, a mere 34 years ago.

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In those years, the language of human rights protection has become familiar to us all. Non-government organisations around the world and, through them, the citizens of the world call on countries to honour the commitments they have made. The countries, in response, even when they commit heinous breaches defend themselves in language that acknowledges the validity of the human rights norms of which they are accused of breaching.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is recognised for its validity and fairness of its procedures even by countries like the United States who refuses to be a party and thus will not allow its own citizens to come under its jurisdiction. It has plenty of work to do as perpetrators of serious international crimes face the accountability they thought they would never face.

Human rights values and the international instruments that enshrine those values are a force to be reckoned with in the world, even by those who, for the moment, defy them. As the UDHR proclaims, in its Preamble, they remain a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.

As a human rights advocate, I am saddened by many things that happen in the world around me. But I am not discouraged.

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About the Author

Stephen Keim has been a legal practitioner for 30 years, the last 23 of which have been as a barrister. He became a Senior Counsel for the State of Queensland in 2004. Stephen is book reviews editor for the Queensland Bar Association emagazine Hearsay. Stephen is President of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and is also Chair of QPIX, a non-profit film production company that develops the skills of emerging film makers for their place in industry.

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