Indivisible Human Rights: A History

Chapter 9: Indivisibility as Restoration: 1986–2009

Chapter 9 Indivisibility as Restoration: 1986–2009 The Wisdom of Moses Moskowitz In February 2009, Moses Moskowitz died at the age of eighty. For decades he had been the Secretary-General of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations (an NGO observer at the U.N.) and was closely involved in the development of human rights at the United Nations from its earliest days. In 1958, he wrote one of the first comprehensive treatments of the relationship between human rights and world order.1 Throughout his life, he was deeply committed to the cause and promise of human rights and in particular advocated a robust system of international supervision and monitoring of states’ obligations to protect and promote human rights. By the late 1970s, however, Moskowitz was profoundly dismayed by the turn the U.N. had taken in adopting Resolution 32/130: Of the present state of international implementation of human rights it may be said that it provides neither comfort not remedy; the term has become a slogan wrapped in language that had long ago surrendered its ability to describe reality. . . . The United Nations . . . has too often become hostage to the meanminded and prejudiced to summon the moral power and prestige to compel compliance with international rules of conduct and conscience. When texts are wrenched out of their orbits in order to fill ellipses shaped by governments and different criteria enter into the making of moral judgments, we cannot yield to the notion of implementation without taking deep thought.2 The preceding two chapters explored the emergence and consolidation of indivisibility as revisionism, the spirit of which Moskowitz remarked “was abroad at the United Nations.”3 In his analysis of the debates leading to Resolution 32/130, he argued unapologetically that they “revealed a deep-seated desire for revision of all traditional thinking ” of the U.N. on human rights.4 Moskowitz’s analysis points to a subtlety in the meaning of the resolution that goes much deeper than the Restoration 177 North versus South impasse over economic and social versus civil and political rights, in terms of the way 32/130 turned the question of implementation completely inside out.5 The Universal Declaration model, upon which the Covenants are built, envisioned that the U.N. would take the lead in further developing international human rights law and establish procedures and institutions for monitoring and implementing that law. But the real work—meeting obligations—was for states-parties to give effect to or implement the rights in their own national contexts. This was the compromise between universal standards and state sovereignty. The 32/130 formulation, however, was inspired by the original position advocated by the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, now updated for a postcolonial world of developing states: since implementation of human rights is a domestic matter, the United Nations has no right to interfere in the domestic affairs of states—as stated in Article 2(7) of the U.N. Charter. The numerous references in 32/130 to ending colonial domination and foreign occupation are a reflection of this view: that interference in the form of ongoing colonial practices and rapacious global capitalism was, itself, a human rights violation. The violators were developed states— the West. According to Resolution 32/130, these practices constituted “mass and flagrant” violations of human rights, and as such, did require international action, because they threatened international peace and security and thus fell within the proper authority of the U.N. Thus, the problem of economic underdevelopment had nothing to do with the relationship between governments and their citizens—that would be a domestic matter , and thus Article 2(7) of the U.N. Charter applied. The issue over economic and social rights was really about achieving global economic justice—and 32/130 recast global economic injustice as a massive violation of human rights. Moskowitz concluded that Resolution 32/130 was “symptomatic of the intellectual chaos which pervades the international human rights field. . . . The great task before the United Nations is to restore intellectual discipline to its work on human rights, to draw clear distinctions between fashionable fads and critical causes, and to cleanse the human rights programme of all cant and pretense” (emphasis mine).6 He counseled us to “leave the Covenants on Human Rights to work out their own historical dialectics and contribute their just share to the growth of an international human rights jurisprudence as a reliable and predictable guardian of the liberties of man.”7 This chapter...