TTF Staff
TF Moderator Joseph Loconte has an op-ed with Nile Gardiner in the Boston Globe of 16 June 2005.
In “A new vision for human rights”, Loconte and Gardiner call for a fundamental reform of the U.N. human rights apparatus—or for its replacement if no reform can be made to happen.
Part of the problem is the structure of the UN itself—a body with no standards for membership that gives equal voice to dictatorships and democracies. Thus, states such as China, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, and even Sudan serve as members in good standing on the commission. As Shashi Tharoor, UN undersecretary general for communications, explains it: ‘’You don’t advance human rights by preaching only to the converted.”
Therein lies the flawed idealism of the UN’s human-rights apparatus. The commitment to ‘’multiculturalism,” useful in other contexts, assaults the concept of moral norms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It thus undercuts the goal of pressuring regimes to abandon policies of violence and terror.
Exploited by the unconverted, this ethos has brought disgrace upon the entire UN system. As Sean Penn quips to Nicole Kidman, who plays an idealistic UN translator in the movie ’The Interpreter: ‘’You’ve had a tough year, lady.” That’s putting it gently. Genocide in Sudan, unchecked violence in Congo, the widespread sexual abuse of refugees by UN peacekeepers, the epic oil-for-food scandal—all these failures owe a debt to the UN creed.
Sightings, Good and Evil, Religious Liberty, Thu 16 Jun 2005
As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
Václav Havel
