Ref. HRA 1999/2
©1999 Human Rights Awareness
ARE
HUMAN RIGHTS TRULY UNIVERSAL?
The UDHR can serve as a "magna carta" to set
the basis for an Human (and individual) Rights-centered society.
The year 1999 has been the date of an import anniversary: the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) emanated on Dec. 19, 1948, has become more
than 50 years old. Approved by the UN general assembly just a few years after
Europe’s worst human right disaster of the century – W. W. II – the UDHR
has become since then a reference and source of inspiration for human rights
activists worldwide (including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and
ourselves), and part of its text has been literally “cut and pasted” into
the constitutions of countries born since that time. Yet, the UDHR general
validity is being challenged from several sources, some of them within Western
Europe. Some see the UDHR a reformulation of Western “cultural imperialism.”
Others see in the UDHR a re-edition of moral absolutism. A dilemma human rights
activists often face – in front of complaints of “interference with internal
affairs” of a nation – is how far one can go in applying the UDHR
principles. Is it coercing into compliance of a tradition alien to extra-European countries, whose customs are being tramped upon? Can we
legitimately defend the rights of women in Afghanistan and at the same time
avoid the charge of “cultural imperialism”, since we are criticizing
consolidated traditions which are so different from our own? This issue is not
unlike the issue about the boundary between education and indoctrination of
children. Is education imposing norms and rules which are relative to a
particular culture and social system, and that may hamper the free expression
and unfettered development of the child? Where is the limit between liberating
and empowering learning – and the inculcation of burdensome
notions yielding to the uncritical acceptation of a misleading cultural system?
Where an educational system – yet to come – that sets “human rights” in
its center, may step into a dogmatic, freedom-quenching sets of rules? To address these
questions it is perhaps helpful to consider two extreme
situations.
- a
young woman in a Western country becoming,
by her choice, a nun – going to live in a monastery under the vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience. Many would see
this choice as limitative, even self-destructive and nihilistic. Yet, this
choice may be highly praised within that girl's social environment.
- The
second situation is the one of members of a Bondage – Domination – Sado
– Masochistic (BDSM) group. A young woman submits to the tortures and
“punishments” that are inflicted her by the “dominants” in the group
– who openly enjoy and are sexually aroused by the practice. Does this
membership or even the existence of BDSM groups pose an ethical challenge?
As human rights activists we should be bound to fight any form of slavery
(explicitly condemned by the UDHR). Should thus we regard the BDSM group
members as the worst form of “monsters”? Even if not, should we see
these BDSM practices as a form of mockery with respect to the many people
that are still being tortured around the world?
While
the first example may be a familiar example especially even among old-fashioned
“volterrians,” the second example may evoke
anger and dismay even in “open-minded” readers of this essay. It is an
example that involves social groups whose existence is yet barely appreciated
in many Western countries and whose activities, albeit almost
private, are still violently ostracized. In other words, there is yet no
widespread cognitive culture on the BDSM sexual orientation. The two examples
are enlightening because one is objectionable under conventional moral wisdom,
but its consideration is likely to change in the near future, and the other has
gone from a socially-accepted choice often imposed by economic and social conditions to a free
choice which is objectionable because it is limitative. Yet, is it legitimate to
condemn them on the basis of the UDHR?
The conundrum may be solved if it is
taken into account that the UDHR is the reaffirmation of individual rights
(or of the right of minorities) in front of
powerful organized groups like the state, and any consolidated
institution. Every individual has
the right to choose his or her own condition – as well as to
back away from any previous choice. Some innocuous choices will appear perforce
limitative or outrageous to many. Yet, there should be no ostracism.
In
a world that is becoming more and more “homogeneous” because of
globalization, human diversity should re-emerge from the acceptance and the
encouragement of diverse individual behaviors.
In the first example, the girl may take vows because that choice is consistent
with her education, her religious inclinations and her aversion for material
life. We may not share these feelings or the same personal history, but the
choice must be felt as perfectly acceptable. Similar considerations hold for the
BDSM case. Diversity cannot be understood only in terms of religious or
political beliefs. Sexual orientation plays a role as well. “Sex governs
everything”, to cite Walt Whitman. A consensual BDSM relationship is built for
the pleasure, empowerment of all partners involved. Both those with a truly
dominant personality and those on the submissive side are felt free to express
themselves in this framework. It should be absolutely no scandal. It is
demonstrated that those people behave among themselves and with respect to
others in a very responsible way. On the contrary, the inability to liberate
this side of personality generate frustration and dissatisfaction. It is the
principal tenet of psycho-analysis that repression of sexual instinct generates
psychosis. Keeping such inclination
hidden and sublimating it in societal behaviors may
be more stressful and even dangerous.
People which are well adjusted within themselves and can freely express
themselves may not be prone to seek
scapegoats for their problems. Tortures must be removed from law enforcement and
from real life – and the only realm where they can or survive is as a sexual
play between consenting adults.
Assigning
highest priority to individual choice does not necessarily mean that
consolidated institutions would suddenly disappear,
a fear that has brought such institutions
to take a violently repressive stand to preserve themselves. Some of them –
like all the main churches – are closely linked to the well being of people
and satisfy needs which are anthropologically rooted. In a “relaxed”
individual rights centered society, human diversity and mores
will recreate themselves in an endless and dynamic way in different
communities according to the orientations and the exigencies
best suited to everyone.
Thus the “ingerence” must be in the sense of individual right to
choice – not in favor of any political system or religious belief or system of
values. This is why the activity of Amnesty International is ethically coherent
with the UDHR. An endless variety
of political systems is possible
given that constraint.
There
are several conditions yet to be met to make this HR centered society possible.
Unfortunately, too many in the EU and in the USA ostracized simply because
“what they are, they cannot be.” We live in a world in which minority
behavior are often stigmatized. The smaller the minority the sharper the stigma.
In general, “compact
majority” members share the same form of behavior, feel that they are
ethically right, and attack minorities claiming that the target minorities are
attacking or mocking the most cherished, pro-life values of the community. This
may be the case, in present days,
of the BDSM minority. This is a danger most Western democracy face. Emma Goldman
pointed it out at the beginning of the century, and we have called it “the
paradox of the sacred tree”.
The
premises to make an individual rights centered society real are based on:
1.
education
emphasizing the spontaneous acceptation
of human diversity and of individual rights starting from early
childhood.
Instinctive behavior drives toward aggression of the weaker and of the
different. Therefore, efficient education must become empowerment,
and leave everyone with inner deep,
bad feelings if any instinctive reaction pushes against harmless but different
behavior.
2.
absence
of any structured group imposing with force particular, time- or
location-dependent norms. Society must create organized groups to create opportunity – but limit
enforcement of rules to the strict necessary, i. e. against behaviors that are
violent and harmful toward others, and ensure that such enforcement is
not biased and is carried out in an efficient way.
These
expectations are not met, and are not far from utopia (we consider that
the present-day society that come closer (but which is still not close) to the
“relaxed society” is the American one). It may be sufficient to think that
tens of millions of people lost their life in wars during the last year.
However, acceptance of diversity is a present necessity. BDSM is not mockery of
torture. Otherwise, claims of mockery should apply to gambling, for example, as
a mockery of deep poverty, and henceforth to any wide majority ignoring a
disadvantaged minority. This hypocrisy is too often not obvious as it should be.
A “relaxed society” is a society in which every person has equal
opportunity – and in which everyone is prepared to recognize and accept
different individual behavior that is transgressive but harmless. Considering
that the current trend toward globalization seems unstoppable, a “relaxed
society” is the only conceivable alternative to a dull, uniform world, where
globalization would ultimately mean “conformation” loss of diversity and of
originality, and may, in the forthcoming century, bring a sole system of though,
a sole political system, and ultimately an endless
dictatorship, more powerful and thought controlling than every
dictatorship ever known on earth.
Ref. HRA 1999/2
©1999 Human Rights Awareness