Betraying the UDHR

"For 60 years, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR] has been treated with contempt by tyrants from Pyongyang to Darfur... [T]he anniversary of its adoption by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, is an occasion to mourn the organization's many failures as much as a licence to celebrate... Sadly... the UN has been an irresponsible and careless steward of those fine ideals." (An ideal betrayed: The UN has failed to protect universal human rights, Editorial, The Australian, 10/12/08)

So, according to The Australian, the UN has betrayed the fine ideals of the UDHR. How? Read on: "In April, the UN Human Rights Council [which "has been hijacked by some of the world's most notorious human rights abusers"] will hold Durban II, its second World Conference against Racism in Geneva. Durban I, held in South Africa 7 years ago, was a festival of anti-Semitism... Durban II* promises more of the same with a draft declaration condemning Israel's Palestinian policy as 'a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security'." (ibid)

[*See my 18/1/08 post Working Out the Mechanics of Our Relationship.]

References to the UDHR and all points east and west notwithstanding, for The Australian it's always about Israel. Were it not for the UN Human Rights Council's true and accurate characterisation of the Jewish state, quoted above (and misconstrued as anti-Semitism), the 60th anniversary of the UDHR would most likely have gone unremarked in the paper's editorial column. In fact, the UDHR anniversary constitutes just another opportunity for the editorialist to smear the UN as it goes about its perfectly legitimate and necessary business of calling a spade a spade in preparation for Durban II. Zionist chutzpah at The Australian being what it is, the editorialist would have the reader believe, absent the knowledge that Zionist Israel "is an abomination in terms of the UDHR and a crime under the standards of international law" (Apartheid Israel, Uri Davis, 2003, p5), that the UDHR and Israel, like love and marriage, go together like the proverbial horse and carriage. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, as any objective analysis of the role of the UDHR in informing Palestinian rights will tell us:-

"The displaced [Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948] and their descendants claim a right to return to their home areas [in Israel]... Israel denies that a state in its situation is obliged to repatriate. In its view the displaced left voluntarily and thereby forfeited their rights. Moreover, Israel disputes that any right of repatriation for wartime displaced persons can be found in customary international law, in particular when a new state comes into being in the territory. Palestine argues for a right of repatriation for the wartime displaced, a right it finds in customary international law, applicable to the displaced Palestinians regardless of their reason for departing, although the voluntariness of their departure is denied. Israel's appearance as a new state does not in the Palestinian view negate a right of repatriation...

"The Palestinian view starts from the generally accepted proposition that a state may not exclude nationals who are, for whatever reason, resident abroad but who seek to return. Other states are under no obligation to accept a non-national permanently... Additionally, the displaced person has a claim for repatriation, as a matter of personal rights. 'Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own', proclaims the UDHR, 'and to return to his country'. When a treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, was drafted to implement the UDHR, comparable language was used: 'no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country'.

"Israel defined Israeli nationality in a way that excluded the Palestinians displaced in 1948. An Israeli lawyer has argued that since Israel doesn't recognize the nationality of these persons, they have no right to return; 'the right [of repatriation] probably belongs only to nationals of the State, and at most to permanent residents. The Palestinian Arab refugees have never been nationals or permanent residents of Israel'. The UDHR and International Covenant, however, both use the term 'country' rather than 'state of nationality' to make clear that the right of entry does not depend on whether the state holding the territory recognises the person as a national. Anyone who was a national or habitually resident before a change in sovereignty is entitled to the nationality of the successor state. A country's 'population follows the change of sovereignty in matters of nationality'." (The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective, John Quigley, 1990, pp 230-231)

The editorialist's gripe is really that Palestinian rights have not yet completely dropped off the UN's agenda.