In this Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014 photo, an effigy of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III holding a mock U.S. flag is burned by Filpino activists as they mark International Human Rights Day outside the presidential Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines. (Aaron Favila/AP)
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon imparted a brief message to commemorate International Human Rights Day on Wednesday — a day he used to attribute false characteristics to the international organization.
His short speech reflected the irrelevance of human rights to the United Nations and the manner in which the organization uses human rights violations to prop up its corrupt structure.
Starting with a clichéd “On Human Rights Day we speak out,” Ki-moon attempted to extend the illusion of international protection for humanity.
“The United Nations protects human rights because that is our proud mission – and because when people enjoy rights, economies flourish and countries are at peace,” he continued.
Concluding with another fitting tribute to the hypocritical organization, he said: “Let us respond to the cries of the exploited, and uphold the right to human dignity for all.”
Since the first proclamation of International Human Rights Day by the U.N. on Dec. 10, 1950, strategic significance has triumphed over human rights protection. Strategic significance — a term applied frequently by powerful countries to assert their power over other nations or regions — has resulted in imperialist strongholds around the globe serving U.S. interests.
A dangerous body
Against the backdrop of the aftermath of World War II, the creation of the U.N. on Oct. 24, 1945 signalled the commencement of a scheme that would facilitate the exploitation of land, people and resources to the benefit of the U.S. behind a facade of freedom.
Focusing on the collective and the international, the rhetoric espoused by the organization has helped to create false notions of equality and independence. Yet the reality is an expectation of absolute subjugation to imperialism — a process whereby, through the U.N., powerful countries continue to assert their right to dominance and indoctrination in the name of freedom, while oppressed countries attempt to highlight their plight within the very parameters that instigated and supported their oppression.
This recurring process is consolidated through the U.N. Security Council — the body within the U.N. that has the power to determine the fates of countries and peoples with absolute impunity. Armed with legislation read through an imperialist lens, the trend of supporting foreign intervention in the name of democracy has become characteristic of the organization.
In this recurring process, the U.N. has become a dangerous body — one that has legitimized oppression and ensnared resistance movements within diplomatic cycles that highlight human rights violations from within a limited humanitarian framework. Briefly put: The U.N. provides a restricted platform for the oppressed that gives way to the organization’s intentional elimination of the political framework for addressing human rights violations, which in turn isolates the humanitarian from the political.
Indigenous struggles against colonialism, for example, are restricted to nation-state legislation that determines the fate of indigenous populations. In this recurring phenomenon, international frameworks that allegedly attempt to resolve the conflicts regarding land and resources are an extension of the colonial violence that created the usurpation in the first place.
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples continues to fail to define “indigenous,” yet the processes that led to the colonization of land and people have been identified by the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations. The so-called international protection afforded to indigenous populations, therefore, is an extension of colonial violence and a suppression of autonomy that derives its main strength from the application of conventional human rights frameworks that aren’t applicable to the indigenous, whose own traditional cultural and legal systems were forced into oblivion.
The convenient terminology of “human rights”
From the above example of the deterioration of indigenous peoples’ rights, several observations are particularly worth discussing: First, the issue of “human rights” is convenient terminology that determines the oppression of the masses. Second, the U.N.’s alleged helplessness in enforcing international law, as in the case of “non-binding” resolutions, is proof of the organization’s existence as a non-democratic, ruthless body promoting U.S. dominance through its allegedly non-partisan platform. Finally, and particularly in the case of Palestine, the U.N. provides evidence of ongoing international support for colonialism as a step toward imperialist domination, thus willingly embracing a cycle financed by the superpower — an example of this would be the insufficient funding given to UNRWA to safeguard the rights of Palestinian refugees.
Commencing with the issue of “human rights,” the U.N. agenda in promoting human rights constitutes the correlation of human rights abuses and human rights rhetoric. (Similar rhetoric is also used by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which likewise tend to claim “impartial” perspectives that translate into misrepresentations of the oppressor and the oppressed.)
Taking equality as a jumping off point, human rights and its international defenders negate the reality of inequality, thus simplifying the role of the aggressor by portraying the oppressor and the oppressed as equal forces. This is best seen through U.S. support for Israel’s existence, its self-proclaimed right to defend itself and the erroneous insistence that Israel is a democracy — all in stark contrast to the depiction of Palestinians as terrorists. Yet Palestinians are presented as an equal force in references to colonial violence, in order to maintain not only the injustice of Israel’s colonial project, but also to invalidate the Palestinian narrative of resistance.
The illusion of equality maintained by the notion of the universality of human rights in turn allows the U.S., via the U.N. Security Council, to determine the global agenda according to its imperialist interests. Contrary to the propaganda disseminated by the organization, the U.N. is not a helpless bystander, but rather a willing participant, through its various affiliated organizations, in the maintenance of imperialist dominance. All the U.N. needs to remain functional is constant turmoil that generates human rights violations, thus enabling the body to continue to justify its existence.
With the U.N. Security Council determining the course of foreign intervention with the aim of furthering instability, the U.N.’s existence is guaranteed and ready to replicate its humanitarian pretense generated by its sanctioning of human rights violations as desired by the U.S., whose interests in the Middle East, for example, provide Israel’s settler-colonial project with military and financial assistance. After all, Israel’s existence in the Middle East extend imperialism into the region, hence the excessive funding of the Israeli military and support for massacres such as Operation Protective Edge — the ultimate aim of which is Israel’s complete expansion.
As with other countries seeking freedom from oppression, the U.N. remains hostile to Palestine and its legitimate resistance against colonial and imperialist violence. Israel’s settler-colonialism is evidence of the U.N.’s role in maintaining the colonial structures that have dispossessed the indigenous Palestinian population. The upholding of Israel’s self-professed right to defend itself renders the imperialist organization complicit in the oppression experienced by Palestinians for decades. Further, the U.N’s endorsement of settler-colonialism continues to reinforce the dominant narrative upon the subjugated population, with the danger of interpreting the history of the oppressed through the colonial lens.
If International Human Rights Day is to achieve any tangible significance, its elimination from the anniversary calendar should be advocated for as a refusal to subscribe to imperialist schemes of false remembrance.