Feature Articles

Issue two : Autumn 2008

Back to the future: an unusual journey with(in) human rights, by Angela Melchiorre

On 10 December 2008, the world will celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Like for any other birthday, the occasion is a moment of reflection: we look back at the past in order to move forward to the future.
My reflection started a few months ago when I discussed the development of human rights with my sister Simona, an archivist very fond of maps and geography. At that time, she was writing the texts of an exhibition introducing an unusual story of distances and measures, principles and values, rights and development. Without realising it, she inspired me to look at human rights from a different perspective.

I then went to Geneva on our Annual Study Tour with the students of the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights and realised how inseparable past and future are. In my life before London, I was a governmental expert in human rights negotiations at the UN. This in itself was already a journey in the past for me. Imagine my amazement, then, when I attended a session of the UN Human Rights Council and became fully conscious of how this new body is trying to look forward and move away from the past but instead is inevitably dragged back into it.

Past and future were pushing me to travel with(in) them, to make sense of them, so I decided to develop my sister’s story further and here is the outcome: a very personal take on the recent chronology of human rights.

1792: two French astronomers leave Paris by coach. One goes northwards to Dunkerque; the other goes southwards to Barcelona. They are set on a mission to measure the distance between the two cities. Based on this distance, they will measure the quarter of the meridian that, going over Paris, joins the North Pole to the Equator. The measure of this quarter of meridian will eventually correspond to the metre, the unit of length that will replace the old Royal Foot throughout France.

What a revolutionary idea! The old Royal Foot matched different values in every region of the French reign, and only the aristocracy controlled it. The metre, instead, will be a universal unit of measure, which will become eternal and objective and will belong to everyone. Together with the two astronomers, the new vision of the world at the core of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, proclaimed in Paris three years before, is paving its way, too. The adoption of one single standard that will measure every distance will embody one of the three basic values of the Revolutionary Spirit: the principle of equality.

The two astronomers climb heights, castles and bell-towers; they set signals and turn reflecting lamps on. Still, their mission risks to fail when, after spending hours looking at the stars, drawing and noting down numbers, they descend again every day and find distances measured only by the blood and terror of the darkest years of the French Revolution. Never discouraged by reality, but rather encouraged by hopes and dreams, they bring the result of their expedition back to Paris in 1799. The length of the metre is then engraved upon a platinum bar and deposited in the new Archives of the French Republic. These are a public treasure, open to everyone, and represent the ideal home for the metre, a measure that assesses the road of the noble and the path of the beggar; the cloths of the rich and the rag of the poor; the heights and the slums.

1948: a group of 18 people of different nationalities and backgrounds is on a mission to survey the world from a new, dramatic perspective: the eyes that used to be instruments of measure have recently known the abyssal darkness of a war without measures. There are no castles to climb, neither heights nor bell-towers; travellers are now just walking in a gap, lit up only by two dimmed stars: hope and dream. This time, they have to measure the distance between freedom and fear. Based on this distance, they will measure the quarter of meridian that links life to death, going through the supreme value of the human person.

They engrave a new Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but this one will not be deposited in the Archives of the French Republic. Jaques Maritain, one of the leaders of that expedition, says that it demands to be “rooted in the nature of man and of human society… and establish, for the conscience as for the written law, the permanent principle and the elementary and universal criteria of rights and duties” (J. Maritain, Communication with regard to the Draft World Declaration on the Rights of Man, 1947).

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is thus proclaimed “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”, based on the “recognition of the inherent integrity and of equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (UDHR, preamble). After measuring the distance between what was lost and what survived to the Second World War, a new vision of the world starts travelling, accompanied by a more precise, universal metre: the inherent dignity and equality of all human beings.

1966: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights celebrates its 18th birthday, but this coming of age brings no joy. Paris is no longer fashionable; Washington and Moscow are the new poles but there is no warm place such as the Equator in a world affected by the Cold War. Those who want to travel must climb separating walls and iron curtains instead of castles and bell-towers.

The universal metre of the Declaration is split in two: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the one hand and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the other. In this new vision of the world, equality in human dignity is replaced by a hierarchy of rights; distances are covered by missiles; and archives are secret. Hope and dream persist, but the revolutionary idea of one single metre has lost lustre. The travel slows down.

1989: two centuries after the French Revolution, perhaps because of hope or maybe because of dream, the journey acquires new speed. Walls and curtains start falling down, distances shrink, the world goes global and measures need to be retaken.

2001: yet again, the mission is threatened by blood and terror. Airplanes that used to cover distances and bring people together are now used as weapons to tear people apart. Towers collapse, concrete crumbles, metal twists. Human beings fly, many jump down, only a few climb up, trying to rescue victims and survivors. The order of the world is upset: hope and dream tremble, pushed aside by what George W. Bush, the new leader of the mission, calls “disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger” (G.W. Bush, Address to the Nation, 11 September 2001). Lights go off, as if “night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack” (G.W. Bush, Address to a joint session of Congress and the American People, 20 September 2001).

Bush engraves a new unit of measure in the world’s conscience: “freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom -- the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time -- now depends on us” (Ibid.). Human freedom is the new metre, but is it so at the expense of human dignity and equality?

2008: 60 years on and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights still speaks to our conscience, and it does so in more than 360 languages. Ban Ki-moon, the man heading the UN team in the expedition of our days, reminds us that it is the standard by which “we measure respect for what we know, or should know, as right and wrong” (B. Ki-moon, Message on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2007).

More than 60 international human rights instruments are now used to identify steps and destinations of the voyage. The distance between principles and reality is no longer assessed by astronomers but by Councils, Committees and Rapporteurs. They all travel along meridians and parallels; like the metre, they measure rich and poor, good and evil, high and low.

Despite these achievements, though, the journey is not over yet and new distances demand to be measured every day. Louise Arbour, another leading figure of this mission, identifies them in “the deep divisions that oppose those who are well-off to those who are very poor, the powerful to the weak, the masters of technology to the illiterates, the aggressors to their victims” (L. Arbour, Statement on the Anniversary of the UDHR, 10 December 2007, my translation from French).

The significance of the metre remains relevant. This time, however, we can (and should) use all previous instruments and units of measure. The revolutionary idea of one standard should lead to de facto equality and respect of all human beings. Maritain’s wish of a human conscience adhering to elementary and universal rights should urge us to ban exceptions or distortions. The understanding that equality, dignity, freedom and rights go hand in hand and are indivisible should define a more coherent and comprehensive approach.

And what about the future? Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights entitles everyone to “a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized”. Daily news headlines indicate that there is still a long way to go. Like the two astronomers who started this journey, though, we should not be discouraged by reality. We can still be encouraged by hopes and dreams, and the great accomplishments of the past, to bolster our mission. However, if we want change, we must finally turn human rights into the metre of our conscience and the light that sees through, measures, and fills every distance.

Angela Melchiorre is a lecturer on the MA in Understanding & Securing Human Rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

	Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Institute of Classical Studies Institute of Commonwealth Studies Institute of English Studies Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies	Institute of Historical Research Institute of Musical Research Institute of Philosophy Institute for the Study of the Americas Warburg Institute
	Feature Articles Issue two : Autumn 2008 *Back to the future: an unusual journey with(in) human rights, by Angela Melchiorre On 10 December 2008, the world will celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights* (UDHR). Like for any other birthday, the occasion is a moment of reflection: we look back at the past in order to move forward to the future. My reflection started a few months ago when I discussed the development of human rights with my sister Simona, an archivist very fond of maps and geography. At that time, she was writing the texts of an exhibition introducing an unusual story of distances and measures, principles and values, rights and development. Without realising it, she inspired me to look at human rights from a different perspective. I then went to Geneva on our Annual Study Tour with the students of the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights and realised how inseparable past and future are. In my life before London, I was a governmental expert in human rights negotiations at the UN. This in itself was already a journey in the past for me. Imagine my amazement, then, when I attended a session of the UN Human Rights Council and became fully conscious of how this new body is trying to look forward and move away from the past but instead is inevitably dragged back into it. Past and future were pushing me to travel with(in) them, to make sense of them, so I decided to develop my sister’s story further and here is the outcome: a very personal take on the recent chronology of human rights. 1792: two French astronomers leave Paris by coach. One goes northwards to Dunkerque; the other goes southwards to Barcelona. They are set on a mission to measure the distance between the two cities. Based on this distance, they will measure the quarter of the meridian that, going over Paris, joins the North Pole to the Equator. The measure of this quarter of meridian will eventually correspond to the metre, the unit of length that will replace the old Royal Foot throughout France. What a revolutionary idea! The old Royal Foot matched different values in every region of the French reign, and only the aristocracy controlled it. The metre, instead, will be a universal unit of measure, which will become eternal and objective and will belong to everyone. Together with the two astronomers, the new vision of the world at the core of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, proclaimed in Paris three years before, is paving its way, too. The adoption of one single standard that will measure every distance will embody one of the three basic values of the Revolutionary Spirit: the principle of equality. The two astronomers climb heights, castles and bell-towers; they set signals and turn reflecting lamps on. Still, their mission risks to fail when, after spending hours looking at the stars, drawing and noting down numbers, they descend again every day and find distances measured only by the blood and terror of the darkest years of the French Revolution. Never discouraged by reality, but rather encouraged by hopes and dreams, they bring the result of their expedition back to Paris in 1799. The length of the metre is then engraved upon a platinum bar and deposited in the new Archives of the French Republic. These are a public treasure, open to everyone, and represent the ideal home for the metre, a measure that assesses the road of the noble and the path of the beggar; the cloths of the rich and the rag of the poor; the heights and the slums. 1948: a group of 18 people of different nationalities and backgrounds is on a mission to survey the world from a new, dramatic perspective: the eyes that used to be instruments of measure have recently known the abyssal darkness of a war without measures. There are no castles to climb, neither heights nor bell-towers; travellers are now just walking in a gap, lit up only by two dimmed stars: hope and dream. This time, they have to measure the distance between freedom and fear. Based on this distance, they will measure the quarter of meridian that links life to death, going through the supreme value of the human person. They engrave a new Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but this one will not be deposited in the Archives of the French Republic. Jaques Maritain, one of the leaders of that expedition, says that it demands to be “rooted in the nature of man and of human society… and establish, for the conscience as for the written law, the permanent principle and the elementary and universal criteria of rights and duties” (J. Maritain, Communication with regard to the Draft World Declaration on the Rights of Man, 1947). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is thus proclaimed “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”, based on the “recognition of the inherent integrity and of equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (UDHR, preamble). After measuring the distance between what was lost and what survived to the Second World War, a new vision of the world starts travelling, accompanied by a more precise, universal metre: the inherent dignity and equality of all human beings. 1966: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights celebrates its 18th birthday, but this coming of age brings no joy. Paris is no longer fashionable; Washington and Moscow are the new poles but there is no warm place such as the Equator in a world affected by the Cold War. Those who want to travel must climb separating walls and iron curtains instead of castles and bell-towers. The universal metre of the Declaration is split in two: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the one hand and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the other. In this new vision of the world, equality in human dignity is replaced by a hierarchy of rights; distances are covered by missiles; and archives are secret. Hope and dream persist, but the revolutionary idea of one single metre has lost lustre. The travel slows down. 1989: two centuries after the French Revolution, perhaps because of hope or maybe because of dream, the journey acquires new speed. Walls and curtains start falling down, distances shrink, the world goes global and measures need to be retaken. 2001: yet again, the mission is threatened by blood and terror. Airplanes that used to cover distances and bring people together are now used as weapons to tear people apart. Towers collapse, concrete crumbles, metal twists. Human beings fly, many jump down, only a few climb up, trying to rescue victims and survivors. The order of the world is upset: hope and dream tremble, pushed aside by what George W. Bush, the new leader of the mission, calls “disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger” (G.W. Bush, Address to the Nation, 11 September 2001). Lights go off, as if “night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack” (G.W. Bush, Address to a joint session of Congress and the American People, 20 September 2001). Bush engraves a new unit of measure in the world’s conscience: “freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom -- the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time -- now depends on us” (Ibid.). Human freedom is the new metre, but is it so at the expense of human dignity and equality? 2008: 60 years on and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights still speaks to our conscience, and it does so in more than 360 languages. Ban Ki-moon, the man heading the UN team in the expedition of our days, reminds us that it is the standard by which “we measure respect for what we know, or should know, as right and wrong” (B. Ki-moon, Message on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2007). More than 60 international human rights instruments are now used to identify steps and destinations of the voyage. The distance between principles and reality is no longer assessed by astronomers but by Councils, Committees and Rapporteurs. They all travel along meridians and parallels; like the metre, they measure rich and poor, good and evil, high and low. Despite these achievements, though, the journey is not over yet and new distances demand to be measured every day. Louise Arbour, another leading figure of this mission, identifies them in “the deep divisions that oppose those who are well-off to those who are very poor, the powerful to the weak, the masters of technology to the illiterates, the aggressors to their victims” (L. Arbour, Statement on the Anniversary of the UDHR, 10 December 2007, my translation from French). The significance of the metre remains relevant. This time, however, we can (and should) use all previous instruments and units of measure. The revolutionary idea of one standard should lead to de facto equality and respect of all human beings. Maritain’s wish of a human conscience adhering to elementary and universal rights should urge us to ban exceptions or distortions. The understanding that equality, dignity, freedom and rights go hand in hand and are indivisible should define a more coherent and comprehensive approach. And what about the future? Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights entitles everyone to “a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized”. Daily news headlines indicate that there is still a long way to go. Like the two astronomers who started this journey, though, we should not be discouraged by reality. We can still be encouraged by hopes and dreams, and the great accomplishments of the past, to bolster our mission. However, if we want change, we must finally turn human rights into the metre of our conscience and the light that sees through, measures, and fills every distance. Angela Melchiorre is a lecturer on the MA in Understanding & Securing Human Rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
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