| | |  Editorials | Issues | December 2008 
On Human Rights Day, U.N. Declaration Is "Alive and Well", in Theory at Least
 Wolfgang Kerler - Inter Press Service
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United Nations - Despite a motley record of government respect for the 60-year-old U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, a new poll of citizens in 25 countries around the world shows strong support for the broad principles of freedom and equality it champions.
"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is alive and well," Steven Kull, director of the research consortium WorldPublicOpinion.org, told IPS.
Majorities or pluralities in all participating nations agreed that the promotion of human rights in its member states is part of the United Nation's obligation, according to the study released Tuesday. An overall of 78 percent of 47,000 respondents shared this opinion.
Moreover, an overall majority of 65 percent want the United Nations, whose members affirmed the Declaration exactly 60 years ago, to make even greater efforts to promote human rights - even if that means giving the U.N. the authority to go into countries to investigate human rights violations.
"The UDHR does get support around the world and it is not by any means fading, as younger people are even more responsive," Kull said.
A number of principles were endorsed by majorities in all nations polled, among them freedom of expression, even when it is used to criticise the government; the right to demonstrate peacefully; freedom of the media; and equal treatment for all citizens regardless their religion, gender, race or ethnicity.
"The accusation that [UDHR] is a Western invention being imposed on other countries doesn't hold up to when you actually ask people," Kull said.
"You do not find any evidence that there is a kind of counterweighing ideology in any country, you just find variation in how much they think you should make exceptions [from the principles]," he added.
Kull added that there was also no basis for concluding that the views of majority-Muslim countries differ from the dominant norm because Islam itself was a factor at odds with the principles of the Declaration, as it was sometimes said.
Facing an "unprecedented assault on the very idea of human rights", as Craig Mokhiber from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights put it, the United Nations is commemorating the Declaration's 60th anniversary - rather than celebrating it.
"With new notions being put forward that somehow security or counter-terrorism or free markets or borders and boundaries trump human rights, some people are asking whether or not the human rights movement has run its course," Mokhiber added. But the outcome of the study showed that support for these 60-year-old ideas is still robust.
However, the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll also found that people in some nations are willing to limit basic human rights when national security and political stability are threatened.
Majorities in Turkey, Kenya, Nigeria, India and South Korea and a plurality in Thailand would allow the government to torture "terrorists" if it may gain information that saves innocent lives, for example.
By majority or plurality, respondents from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Indonesia would voluntarily give their government the right to restrict the media when its coverage might be politically destabilising.
In Egypt, Ukraine and Jordan, majorities say that there are "some religions that should not be allowed" to practice freely in their country, while South Korean people were divided over this.
However, regarding all of the above critical questions, there is still a majority of nations and an overall majority that want their governments to stick to the principles as they are enunciated in the Declaration in all of these cases - even when confronted with possible political instability or security threats.
Asked about the difficulties in getting unbiased poll results from countries without guaranteed freedom of expression, Kull answered that "there is a number of countries - like China, Iran, Egypt, for example - where we have to think about whether people are fully disclosing."
"There clearly is some uncertainty whether some people might be censoring themselves," he added, but stressed that even in authoritarian countries, substantial numbers of people or even majorities felt free to implicitly or explicitly criticise their governments with their answers.
In a few countries, partnering research centres did not feel comfortable enough to ask all of the questions included in the catalogue - questions about the right to demonstrate peacefully, for example, had not been asked in China.
But there had never been any reports that respondents had gotten into trouble for taking part in a poll, Kull said. |
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