The United Nations and Human Rights – A Foundation That Doesn’t Hold Up
The United Nations (UN) has been a useless entity since its inception on October 24, 1945. It has never prevented a conflict in its history, it exacerbates global crisis, and as the topic for this article, cannot identify universal Human Rights.
What Human Rights should be, or ought to be, is the single most important task for the UN as it underpins all of the organization’s and its constituent’s actions (‘in theory’). Whether this is something they are capable of determining is an unnecessary discussion because they’ve already tried and failed.
This task is one of the great pursuits of philosophy. To recognize what each person is entitled to “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”, to quote the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Rather than argue what they should be, I want to propose what they can’t be.
The ultimate goal of philosophy is to be universal. This means any theory is true everywhere in space, and at all times. An African should have the same rights as a European, Asian, or a man on Mars. People benefit every day from the long history of human achievement, but these achievements are not all-inclusive. Our rights should be all-inclusive. A person’s rights must therefore be independent of the production value of others and of the material commodities in existence. With this statement here are two egregious examples of where the UN has got it wrong:
Education: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 (1) “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.” No person has the right to education. Education is a service provided by someone else. To be educated, someone has to teach. What obligation does any knowledgeable person have to teach someone else? Would societies force people to teach others?
Water: Resolution 64/292. The human right to water and sanitation. 1. “Recognizes the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights”. All of human ancestry, as well a 35% of today’s population is wondering where this Human Right has been hiding? It takes real understanding of science, engineering and infrastructure to provide sanitation and safe drinking water. Equally, in no way is water distributed to give all people access to safe drinking water. People even choose to live in locations devoid water. Can people forsake UN resolutions on what their rights should be?
Identifying the limitations of our reality is paramount to progress. People are making the mistake of confusing privileges created by centuries of wealth, for a right endowed by nature. And to think that I’m interpreting the UN’s definition of “Humans Rights” to exactly, that these rights are guidelines in a spirited effort towards some world utopia… Then the UN should be thanked once again, for nothing.
References: UN Declaration of Human Rights - http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ Resolution 64/192 - http://www.un.org/es/comun/docs/?symbol=A/RES/64/292&lang=E