Promoting International Human Rights and the Rule of Law

Watch people around the world reading articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in more than 80 languages. (Photo: United Nations)

People Have No "Human Rights" Except from the UN

While people like the ideal of having human and civil rights, as citizens of their nations they actually do not have any human rights at all except those specified in their own national constitutions. Either way when their human rights or constitutional rights are violated there are no authorities where they can take their grievances except to courts that are part of the same nation that has violated them. 

It is very clear that police and military forces working for the state frequently violate the human and civil rights of their citizens in protests advocating these rights, we have seen this year in Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Ukraine, the United States, Venezuela and many other countries resulting in death and injury of their citizens that will never be addressed or accounted for because the people belong to their nations, much like cattle, chickens and pigs belong to the farmers that raise them.

When people are travelling though, they do implicitly possess international human rights when they are outside of their nation, this is because when they enter a country they do so under these universal rights as unknown civil human beings. As visitors to a country for whatever purpose they simply agree to abide by the general laws and customs of the nation they are visiting, but likewise they do not necessarily possess the constitutional rights afforded to a country's citizens. Likewise they are not obliged by all of the nations laws that are specific to their citizens like paying tax on their income, they do not qualify for the benefits of citizenship, they do not have rights like the ability to vote or to take someone to court, or in many cases even receive police protection.

US citizens and the citizens of the more developed countries are lucky because they are better respected, these countries 'try to take care' of their 'good citizens' when abroad through embassies that help to provide for their needs when travelling. These better developed countries have ambassadors, consulates, or embassies in nearly every country for business, economic development, trade and tourism, how well some of them can take care of their citizens depends on which country we are talking about. Smaller and underdeveloped countries that do not have an embassy often cannot offer any services at all to their citizens, so travellers from these country's depend on the nation they are visiting to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some of the countries that depend on tourism like Mexico have special police and services that are there specifically for tourists.

There are also countries like Dominica which have completely useless ambassadors with no experience that exist in countries like Malaysia, but do not offer services to citizens and are there only for the benefit of themselves (not even the state) according to a recent report by Al Jazeera. If you are travelling as one of their citizens don't expect much in the way of services while abroad.

The chance for a human being to take their government for a violation of their human rights to the International Court of Justice in the Hague is nil to none.

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights

Only the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and countries agreeing with the declaration provide people with basic human rights, but there are no laws or forums 'inside of a country' that can guarantee your human rights outside of those outlined under constitutional laws. According to Wikipedia the United States is in the highest category with 86 of 100 points on the human and civil liberties it provides, it is tied at number 33 in the world with Slovenia, Norway is number one on the World Freedom Index. 

Human rights are for everyone, today is the 71st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is one of the principle treaties that is supposedly respected by all of its member states. Despite this the greatest violator of these rights remains to be governments and corporations in order to protect their power and wealth. Think about it, we are here at Globcal International.