AMMAN, 9 December 2003 — Five years ago the United Nations Department of Public Information celebrated the triumphs and reflected on the challenges still facing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights decades after its formation. “Since 1948, the Universal Declaration has been translated into more than 200 languages,” it said in a commentary.
When the declaration was first published on Dec. 10, 1948, the United Nations was still a fresh organization that aspired to lead the world out of the quagmire created by World War II.
A brighter future awaited the postwar generation, it was hoped, a future alive with the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family (as) the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Yet while the declaration may have exemplified the end of a nightmare for some, for others it was and remains merely ink on paper.
Stripped of its political context — and despite the fact that it is everywhere ignored — the declaration nonetheless delineates a future, as most of humanity would prefer it, most ardently those who were not “born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
Schools in many countries stress the value of the declaration. But Palestinian school kids, born into military occupation, incarcerated in refugee camps and bounded (even branded) by their identity as Palestinians are likely to commemorate the anniversary of the declaration by roaming around the streets of the Occupied Territories, holding hands, carrying flags and laboriously hauling a giant banner inscribed with Article 3 of the declaration: “Every one has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Those kids who roam the streets of Gaza have no first-hand experience of what these rights may mean in practice.
The recently released report by the special rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the right to food has finally attached figures to the reality all Palestinians endure but reflected most tragically in their children — over 22 percent of under five-year-olds suffer from either “acute” or “chronic” malnutrition. Most tragically, 9.3 percent suffer from irreversible brain damage, a direct result of the starvation the Israeli occupation brings with it.
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude,” proclaims Article 4 of the declaration. That might not have much use for 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli military detention (mostly victims of arbitrary arrests and political prisoners, including 350 under the age of 18), except for being an urgently needed reminder that they too are an integral part of the “human family.” But Article 6 —
“Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere before the law.” -remains a perplexing impasse for them; most of these prisoners are denied a trial, fair or otherwise, and if law is of relevance, then the “Landau Rules” of the Israeli Supreme Court, which sanction “certain types” of torture, apply.
Nonetheless, no other article in the declaration rings so close to home as Article 5: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.” Illustrations that manifest the opposite are too many to chronicle. The appalling stories I encountered while documenting the Israeli invasion of Jenin last year are reborn every day throughout the Occupied Territories. But if what took place in Jenin was “Palestinian propaganda” as some concluded, then what to make of the recently published “Checkpoints Twilight Zone”, written by former Israeli Army Staff Sergeant Liaran Ron Furer?
The Israeli Army in Gaza behaves like “animals, criminals, and thieves,” admits Furer; a common practice by the Israeli soldiers is to take photos with their Palestinian victims, beaten unconscious or wounded, a stark reminder of the infamous snapshot of smiling Israeli troops locking shoulders behind a dead Palestinian man still soaked with his blood in the West Bank. “I remember how we humiliated a dwarf who came to the checkpoint every day on his wagon. They forced him to have his picture taken on the horse, hit and degraded him for a good half hour.”
“The most moral army in the world,” as an Israeli general has called it, saw fit to urinate on a Palestinian boy’s head, according to Furer’s book, for daring to smile at one of the soldiers. The seemingly short and neatly compact universal declaration suddenly becomes augmented. “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary attacks upon his honor,” says one article; the uncounted Palestinians forced to strip naked at checkpoints and raided refugee camps throughout the territories might only comfort themselves with the knowledge of what that means in practice.
“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property,” declares another. Yet under its shadow, millions of Palestinians endure, without home, without land; thousands of them are once again dwelling in white tents provided by the United Nations.
As illegal Jewish settlements expand, thousands of Palestinians are ethnically cleansed. Not even an all-encompassing declaration of human rights is of any tangible value to them. Is it foolish of the Palestinians to parade with hastily written banners celebrating rights they never attained? I think not. It matters little, in my belief, who drafted what and why. It is the dream that lives on.
What endures is the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family (as) the foundation of freedom, justice and peace.” What is worth celebrating for those who have managed to acquire none of these values is the liberating hope, the vision and the noble idea ingrained in the declaration’s lasting tenets, even if they only subsist as ink on paper.
— Ramzy Baroud is editor in chief of the Palestine Chronicle online newspaper.
