What is happening in Zimbabwe belies the hopeful mission of the United Nations and points to the inherent fallacy of its founding, the permanent membership of dictatorships on the United Nations Security Council and their ability to veto anything threatening their position; seriously impeding the responsibility to protect human rights, the principle informing the idealistic core of the UN mission.
A very important book—by Mary Ann Glendon, US Ambassador to the Holy See—about the animating principle of the United Nations, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, notes how a sickened American president, a relentless Soviet ruler, and a British leader protective of their colonial rights, struggled against the human rights ideals, insisting on the veto, which has essentially negated the effectiveness of the revolutionary Declaration since; but yet, as the author notes, there were significant results:
“The growing hostility between the United States and the USSR was only one of many daunting obstacles confronted by the Declaration’s drafters. They had to surmount linguistic, cultural, and political differences and overcome personal animosities as they strove to articulate a clear set of principles with worldwide applicability. Their final product, they all acknowledged, was imperfect, yet they succeeded well enough to give the lie to claims that peoples with drastically opposed worldviews cannot agree upon a few common standards of decency.
“For everyone who is tempted to despair of the possibility of crossing today’s ideological divides, there is still much to learn from Eleanor Roosevelt’s firm but irenic manner of dealing with her Soviet antagonists; and from the serious but respectful philosophical rivalry between Lebanon’s Charles Malik and China’s Peng-chun Chang. There is much to ponder in the working relationship between Malik, a chief spokesman for the Arab League, and Rene Cassin, an ardent supporter of a Jewish homeland, who lost twenty-nine relatives in concentration camps. When one considers that two world wars and mass slaughters of innocents had given the framers every reason to despair about the human condition, it is hard to remain unmoved by their determination to help make the postwar world a better and safer place…
“The story of the parent document of the modern human rights movement is the story of a group of men and women who learned to cooperate effectively despite political differences, cultural barriers, and personal rivalries. It is an account of their attempt to bring forth from the ashes of unspeakable wrongs a new era in the history of rights. It is an unfinished story, whose course will be influenced, for better or worse, by actions and decisions being taken today. (pp. xix-xxi)
Lampstand Foundation website, http://www.lampstandfoundation.org/
"The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint." Charles Peguy (1873-1914)
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.