- International law and treaty obligations are wholly on our side.
- Human rights is a political component of American foreign policy, not a humanitarian program.
- Human rights has nothing to do with our innocence or guilt as a civilization. It has to do with our survival.
- The new nations must be made to understand that our commitment to them depends on their ceasing to be agents of the totalitarian attack on democracy.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Daniel P. Moynihan
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Daniel P. Moynihan — August 1977
ReplyDeleteThe United Nations Charter imposes two obligations on members. The first, which is well-known, is to be law-abiding in their relations with other nations: not to attack them, not to subvert them, and so on. But there is a second obligation, which very simply is to be law-abiding in the treatment of one’s own citizens. The United Nations Charter requires that members govern themselves on liberal principles, as these principles have evolved and are understood in the Western democracies.
ReplyDeleteImprobable as this may sound, it happens nonetheless to be true. The Charter, in the main, was drafted by British and American constitutional lawyers. The Preamble speaks of “fundamental human rights,” of “the dignity and worth of the human person,” of “the equal rights of men and women.” Article 1 enjoins the members to promote through the UN
respect for human rights and for fundamental
freedoms for all without distinction as to
race, sex, language, or religion.
The meaning of these words, as lawyers say, is entirely discoverable. They mean just what any of us in the Western democracies would assume they mean.