The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted 75 years ago, on 10th December, 1948, by the United Nations General Assembly, with the approval of 48 member states. It was adopted soon after the end of World War II, in which more than 12 crore people had died. It was a time when the overwhelming aspiration of the world’s people was for an end to fascism, imperialist war and colonial slavery.
Today, 75 years after the adoption of the UDHR, the world’s people are witness to an inhuman genocide being carried out by Israel, with the full political and military backing of US imperialism, against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. In just about two months, nearly 20,000 people, including women, children, doctors, relief workers and media persons, have lost their lives, while many tens of thousands have been critically wounded. With hospitals, residential buildings and vital infrastructure being devastated, the survivor victims are confined to a living hell, as refugees, with no food, water or medical supplies, and nowhere to escape from the incessant bombings.
Every resolution put forward in the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, by member states demanding a ceasefire to the genocidal war and the restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people, has been systematically voted against by the US and its Western imperialist allies.
Lakhs of people all over the world, including in the US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, etc. have been coming out on to the streets in massive demonstrations, demanding an end to the genocide and in defence of the rights of the Palestinian people. Despite the anger and opposition of the world’s peoples, US imperialism and its allies continue to sponsor this most barbaric and blatant violation of human rights, to justify and give full support to the expansionist designs of Israel and the denial of the national rights of the Palestinian people.
Violation of human rights – general rule rather than an exception
When the UNDHR was adopted, the imperialist states of Britain, France and the USA, which signed the declaration, were creating the impression that the violation of human rights during World War II had been an exception. They claimed that human rights will not be violated again since the fascist axis of Germany, Italy and Japan had been defeated. However, life experience during the past 75 years has exposed the reality that it was not an exception. Human rights have been repeatedly violated by these very powers.
US imperialism and its allies have launched one war of aggression after another, occupied and devastated one nation after another, and engineered regime change in numerous independent states. They have blatantly violated the sovereignty of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries, all in the name of upholding ‘democracy and human rights’. Millions of people have been turned into refugees.
According to a recent United Nations report, more than 114 million people are currently forcibly displaced worldwide. More than 35 million are refugees forced to flee from their own countries and seek refuge in other countries.
The imperialist plunder of the land, labour and rich mineral resources of various countries, the unleashing of civil wars in these countries, as well as wars of conquest aimed at subjugating these countries, are responsible for this. However, people seeking refuge in the US, Britain and other European countries are subjected to the most inhuman treatment. At the US-Mexican border, people seeking refuge in the US are brutally attacked and herded into cages like animals. The British government is currently debating a law to deport asylum seekers in Britain to Rwanda in East Africa, a small poverty-stricken country devastated by colonialism and imperialism.
In the so-called democracies of Europe and North America, the rulers systematically carry out racist and fascist attacks against immigrants and minorities. People are jailed under fascist laws for daring to criticize the state and for demanding their rights. Unemployment, poverty and homelessness are all growing in these countries, exposing the lie that all members of these so-called advanced societies enjoy a standard of living fit for human beings.
India is a signatory to the UDHR. However, the Indian state does not defend the right of crores of toiling people to a secure livelihood, to wages capable of ensuring a dignified human existence. It does not guarantee the right to education, health care and adequate nutrition. It does not defend people from discrimination and violence on the basis of religion, caste or gender. It does not defend people’s right to conscience or even the right to life.
Onward with the struggle for the realisation of human rights
All human beings born into society have rights by virtue of being members of this society. The definition of what constitutes human rights has evolved and advanced, with the level of advancement of society. Apart from adequate and nutritious food, clothing and housing, these include the right to a secure livelihood, right to education and health care and wages that can ensure a dignified human existence in this day and age.
The immense development of productive forces in our country and worldwide provides the possibility for society to guarantee human rights. What stands in the way is the prevalent economic and political system. The realisation of human rights is incompatible with capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder. For human rights to become a reality in the world today, US imperialism and other imperialist powers have to be deprived of the “right” to aggress upon and to impose their economic and political systems on other countries, in order to facilitate their loot and plunder. The people of every country must have the right to pursue the economic and political system of their choice, free from imperialist interference and wars of aggression.
For human rights to be affirmed in practice, the monopoly capitalists have to be deprived of the “right” to extract maximum profits through the exploitation of the working class, peasants and other toiling people and the plunder of our natural resources.
Only by putting an end to capitalist exploitation and placing the vast resources of the country in the hands of the working people can society fulfil the claims of all its members. Only in such a society can the modern definition of human rights be affirmed, as belonging to all members of society, universal and inviolable.
Let us advance the struggle for the affirmation of human rights with this perspective of replacing the capitalist-imperialist system with a modern socialist system, in each country and on the world scale.