The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

28 JUNE 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Stuenkel writes in Post-Western World (2016), they take issue with the “operationalization of liberal norms” and the “implicit and explicit hierarchies of international institutions” that privi- lege Western countries. This kind of feedback leads to a cycle whereby Western condemnation helps feed a negative reaction—even in partner countries—which leads to further condemnation, more reaction, and so on. Such a pattern is apparent in the relationship between the West and the Middle East and, to a lesser degree, parts of Asia. It has also seeped into the relationship with Africa as the latter has grown rapidly and become less dependent on Western largesse. This unhealthy dynamic holds back efforts to separate legitimate cultural and contextual concerns from criticisms that merely advance the interests of self-serving leaders and governments abroad. It weakens the overall power of the human rights idea by reducing its moral authority within many communities. The Universal Declaration How did human rights—an idea once powerful enough to unify a vast range of people in struggles against totalitarianism and apartheid—become so divisive? A major factor, ironically, was the overweening dual ambition born of success: Rights advocates have broadened the scope of issues covered by human rights, and at the same time narrowed the room for differences in bringing those rights to life. In so doing, they misconstrue the original goals of human rights, most clearly embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundation for much of the post-1945 rights project. Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University and chair of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, and others have chronicled how the drafters were influ- enced by a combination of community-oriented and individu- alistic concepts that enabled them to gain support from a wide assortment of European, Middle Eastern, Latin American, Asian, communist, capitalist, developed and developing countries. The declaration’s framers believed they had adopted a pluralistic document that was flexible enough to respond to different needs in terms of emphasis and implementation, but was not mal- leable enough to permit any of the basic rights to be eclipsed or subordinated for the sake of others. Everyone—fromWest, East, North or South—could accept its tenets, and everyone could believe they were morally important. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not present the specific rights as items to be isolated from the others and propagated on their own. Indeed, one of the surest ways to misconstrue—or misuse—human rights is to think that any particular right is absolute, or that all the diverse rights can ever wholly be in harmony with each other. For example, many post-conflict countries need to balance the need for reconcilia- tion, a secure peace and economic development with the need for retribution for crimes committed; there is no universal map on how to achieve this—an overzealous attempt to accomplish the latter can easily undermine the former. In fact, every distinct right must have certain limitations and boundaries and exist within a constellation of other rights for it to have any real meaning. There is no clear blueprint for how to respond when rights conflict. Communities must balance the weight of claims of one right ver- sus another before determining the best course of action. Understanding why this flexibility was both necessary to achieve agreement and desirable is crucial to appreciating the vision of the drafters and the success of the UDHR over time. The advancement of human rights, after all, depends much more on moral authority than on legal commitments written on pieces of paper. Unless people around the world accept rights as morally binding, such that they become embedded within local values systems, they are unlikely to gain wide acceptance. Universal commitments must allow each culture to flourish as it might see fit. The drafters of the UDHR knew that human rights would only be realized when they were defended in each country “in the mind and the will of the people,” as Lebanese diplomat Charles Malik, one of the major actors on the drafting committee, put it. The only exception to this flexibility in the UDHR is for a narrow core of “primary rights” that specifies strict restrictions on things like torture, enslavement, degrading punishment and discrimination. This suggests that although all rights in the Dr. Charles Malik, at left, played a critical role in the drafting and adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as rapporteur and, following Eleanor Roosevelt, as chair of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Here, on being elected president of the 13th session of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 16, 1958, he receives the gavel from the outgoing president, Sir Leslie Monroe of New Zealand. UNITEDNATIONS/MB