August 1, 2022

PHNOM PENH – After the end of World War II, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was the pioneering legal document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 1948 to define basic human rights that require universal coverage.

Unfortunately, universality has been exploited as an immoral excuse to “expose and humiliate, politicize and ingest” by some actors in the service of their political motives and interests, rather than upholding “a level playing field and the same emphasis on human rights” and “international cooperation”, contradicting the fundamental principles of the declaration itself, the Charter of the United Nations and many internationally agreed texts.

UNGA resolutions 60/251 and Human Rights Council resolutions 5/1 and 47/9 emphasize the importance of ensuring universality, objectivity and non-selectivity in addressing issues human rights, as well as the elimination of double standards and politicization.

The long-standing calls prove that the politicization of human rights is concretely real but counterproductive to the real test of human rights development. Concretely, politicization can be checked through different modes of manifestation such as the selective treatment of human rights issues, double standards in evaluation, confrontation instead of dialogue and/or the exercise of coercion. unilateral instead of multilateral cooperation.

For state actors, the fact that this misbehavior continues unabated is due to costly political interests in the pursuit of global hegemony. For example, during the Cold War, the United States imposed “human rights diplomacy” as a political tool to attack the other side.

Subsequently, the Western allies arrogantly imposed on other countries of different political systems their own human rights and political values, despite their own imperfection, in an effort to maintain their dominance, by various means, including attacking the legitimacy of those ‘ governments, establishing hierarchies of human rights categories, carrying out military interference and assistance, imposing economic assistance and sanctions and labeling the performance of other countries, causing internal unrest and an uprising under the pretext of their unfounded allegation against a corrupt government, electoral fraud, restriction on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, etc.

The glaring irony emerges from these self-proclaimed human rights defenders and preachers as they close their eyes to see and solve their own problems at home and further whitewash images of themselves and their torture allies. , murder and the myriad systematic and flagrant violations of human rights at home and abroad. Their data is drawn unilaterally and exclusively to support their biased and non-standardized methodology and prejudicial conclusion without incorporating authoritative factual and legal foundations and efforts, and without considering the particularities of each country’s context.

This negligence cannot establish the truth, but the malicious act of disinformation. It is even worse when recipients of public funding, including some civil society organizations and media agencies, engage in these ill-conceived campaigns. It deserves incredibility and doublespeak when some countries point the finger at others in the annual human rights report, for example on human trafficking (TP), when it does not include its own problem in the report.

Is the reporting country exempt from the human rights obligation or is there just too much to tell about itself?

When justice is not served, it surely invites backlash. Recall the more than 13,000 people who were victims of commercial sex trafficking in Sacramento County in the US state of California between 2015 and 2020, with police brutality and torture leaving at least 1,124 people killed in 2021, and 40 million alive in poverty in its territory. , not to mention the shocking toll of war crimes committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

The human right is not a sprint, but a long distance race. The release of classification reports not only demotivates and undermines states’ efforts, but also paints the damning obvious images of politicization and double standards by perpetrators and their allies, which in turn results in self-destruction and distrust in the relations between states. The ultimate test is not the catharsis of public criticism or the ranking of a champion, but its success is measured by the meaningful change in people’s lives that every government has strived for.

Therefore, politicization and double standards in human rights must end and genuine cooperation must be maintained to promote mutual trust and collective betterment on Earth.

A Gladiator arena where governments have made an allegation against each other is not necessary, but joint efforts to identify the root causes of problems and find workable solutions are.

The true essence of the universality of human rights begins at home and is measured by internationally agreed mechanisms to monitor and advise human rights obligation. If one is obliged to defend human rights abroad with domestic credibility, one must first examine the number of international human rights treaties, optional protocols and reservations that their countries have ratified, and concretize their genuine commitment to cooperate with the United Nations human rights mechanisms.

The above criteria also apply to the audience to consider before believing, referencing or echoing any human rights report.