![]() ![]() When urban electric power distribution became ubiquitous in developed countries in the 20th century, lights for urban streets followed, or sometimes led.ĭetail of a street light from Paris Detail of a street light with Cupid, at the Austrian Parliament Building ( Vienna) ![]() Similar lights may be found on a railway platform. What would it take to move human rights from the margins to the mainstream? Although a comprehensive answer and strategy is beyond the scope of this article, below I assess the policy landscape, particularly in the Euro-Atlantic context, and suggest implications for the Obama administration and the nongovernmental community in an effort to provoke debate more widely.A street light, light pole, lamp pole, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road or path. Now, human rights mandarins argue that ‘‘we need a new strategy.’’ Drawing on interviews with several leaders in the movement as well as with critics and scholars, the sixtieth anniversary of the UDHR is an opportune time to reflect on the movement’s achievements, obstacles, and challenges. Meanwhile, the long-term prospects for human rights beyond Europe and the United States are dim as younger generations in China and Russia find authoritarian rule appealing. ![]() abuses as facilitating the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects from justice. Evidence suggests that some European states played a role in such U.S. The departures from international law seem to have been enabled by other states. policies are by no means the only serious human rights challenge currently. government’s measures, without knowing what exactly, were necessary for national security. It was even suggested that some may have felt that the U.S. ![]() They argue that their colleagues were skeptical or disbelieved that what had been built (the presumed consensus that torture was taboo) could be swept away with such stunning ease and rapidity. government but of the movement itself, arguing it was slow to react to the impact of the Septemattacks and U.S. Some human rights leaders are critical not only of the U.S. Rightly or wrongly, many of those interviewed define this recent bleak period by the relative ease with which the prohibition against torture was abandoned not by dictators in the far corners of the earth, but by policymakers in the U.S. Today, terror, torture, and a backlash against human rights and democracy have replaced triumph. In academia, scholarship touted the “power of human rights.” We thought we were winning.’’ In policy journals, pundits wrote about a ‘‘power shift,’’ where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly set agendas and challenged state action. We had the end of apartheid in South Africa and, of course, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism. In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, it seemed more than plausible that ‘‘the age of human rights upon us.” Activists could point to ‘‘the collapse of military dictatorships in Latin American and East Asian societies. called the human rights revolution has, like all revolutions, met its counterrevolution.’’ As one member of the movement put it, ‘‘e are in a period of constriction.’’ Another human rights leader stated simply, ‘‘hat Martin Luther King Jr. Many lamented its still-aspirational quality and the continued marginality of human rights. In nearly two dozen interviews conducted from September to November 2008 with activists, scholars, and critics of the human rights movement, several contended that the UDHR in 2008 would never have been adopted by 48 states as it was in 1948. leadership in human rights and international law. Obama’s election comes after eight years of declining U.S. civil rights movement, a struggle that relied as much on the UDHR as on the courage of the men and women who for decades fought to make the United States a ‘‘more perfect union.’’ For human rights defenders around the world, its significance cannot be overstated.ĭespite this singular achievement, the mood in the secular temple of human rights these days is generally somber and introspective. Obama’s election fulfills a dream of the U.S. This historic event, a fitting milestone, brings to life that declaration, which human rights activists and legal scholars regard as the sacred text. About a month before the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the United States elected its first African-American president, Barack Obama. ![]()
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