Fifty Years-But Who's Counting

Reading

This week we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the day the United Nations adopted a human rights position. It was called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and never before in the history of humankind had all the people of earth agreed to such a thing. The reading today is a poem that sets the stage for that momentous event. It was written by a woman recalling her 12th summer.

SERMON

This poem is harsh because the Second World War was harsh. We, on the home front in United States, had to survive only air raid drills; blackouts; scarcity of meat, gasoline, and rubber; learning how to remove black marks from linoleum floors as substitutes for rubber-soled shoes were invented; the horror of seeing a gold or silver star in our neighbor's window; and the pain of receiving a telegram with the words, "The United States Department of War regrets to inform you" knowing our loved one would never return.

The movie Saving Private Ryan gives some idea of what men and women who fought the war experienced. In one brief scene it also documents the horror of war for those whose homes, villages, and cities were bombed. Schindler's List is the film which captures the abomination of the Holocaust for the present generation. The A-Bomb Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and the Dachau memorial present their stories with "sledgehammer force."

In 1945 the world reeled as World War II ended. As refugees by the millions began to rebuild their lives, a select group of men and women met in San Francisco to create the United Nations. I grew up in San Francisco. I remember the vision of the time ­ create a world body which would prevent the atrocities we had just experienced from ever happening again.

It was the non-governmental organizations which counseled their governments to salt the United Nations Charter heavily with a human rights vision. From their insistence came the UN Human Rights Commission. The United States delegate was Eleanor Roosevelt, the new widow of the late president.

Had Mrs. Roosevelt not been the first President's wife to hold press conferences, write a newspaper column, and serve as the President's justice advisor, she would never have had the stature needed to serve in this position. That she was elected chair of the Commission by her peers is testimony to her greatness. Adlai Stevenson, US Ambassador to the United Nations, said that after her husband's death Eleanor Roosevelt became the world's First Lady. Ladybird Johnson said of her White House predecessor, "Great was her goodness, and it was her goodness that made her so great."

Mrs. Roosevelt was not only good, she was competent. Elena Dodd has created a one-woman show based on Eleanor Roosevelt's life. She gives us a brief description of her work chairing the Human Rights Commission:

We can picture Mrs. Roosevelt addressing her task ­ in Geneva, New York and Paris ­ presiding over long, grueling sessions; apologizing for arriving five minutes late; disciplining long-winded speakers; despairing when it seemed the Commission would have to traverse the same ground all over again because a new delegate had joined the group; negotiating the cultural and ideological differences represented by members from China, Lebanon, Soviet Russia and Australia. She had to conduct an intense dialogue surrounded by a swarm of translators, policy advisors and secretaries. Occasionally she took over the French translation herself.

It took 1,400 rounds of voting before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted at 4:00 am on December 10, 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.

When you leave here today, be sure to take the copy of the Declaration which is in your order of service. Post it somewhere in your home. Celebrate the miracle that this document even exists. Although written fifty years ago, it lives with as much vitality today as it did fifty years ago. It continues to serve as a beacon for the entire human race.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a remarkable document, declaring that all humans have inherent worth and dignity regardless of their biological origins or status; that everyone has a right to life, liberty and security; that we all have a right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; a right to education; a right to work; a right to a standard of living adequate for our own health and well-being and that of our families; a right to enjoy and participate in the arts and share in scientific advancements and benefits; and a solemn duty to our communities to make actual our own human potential and that of our sisters and brothers.

Of course we all know many humans never reach their potential and many humans impede the potential of their sisters and brothers. In fact, at times we may despair that we have gone backward rather than forward since that early December morning in Paris 50 years ago.

John Shattuck, the outgoing assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor has been nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. He characterizes the period since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a huge paradox. He points to the UDHR itself and the United Nations, as collective global efforts to say "Never again!"

Yet during this same time we've seen human rights abuses all over the globe ­ in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era; in parts of Asia, especially China; in Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia, and South Africa. In our own country we've struggled with the aftermath of slavery and of persecution of our first peoples, the Native Americans. We've also identified large disenfranchised sectors of our population whose voices are not yet heard with the same authority as the dominant culture ­ the voices of those people who are poor, the voices of children, the voices of women, and the voices of people who are disabled.

Friday morning's News-Journal included an article about a report from the largest United States-based human right group -- Human Rights Watch. The report focused as much on United States failings as those of Mexico, Argentina, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Nigeria, Angola, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Russia and China. In particular, the report indicates "the U.S. government today poses a threat to the universality of human rights." This latter has to do with our reluctance to push for Chilean General Augusto Pinochet's trial, as well as incidents of police abuse, mistreatment of prisoners, unjust rejection of asylum seekers, reliance on the death penalty when other countries are rejecting it, and racial inequality.

Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights declares the world's human rights achievements of the last fifty years "underwhelming."

We still have widespread discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, religious belief and sexual orientation, and there is still genocide ­ twice in this decade alone. There are 48 countries with more than one-fifth of the population living in what we have grown used to calling "absolute poverty."

While people have endured much suffering since the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, suffering has also been alleviated. John Shattuck tells us:

The human rights movement has achieved greater and greater legitimacy over these 50 years. It's a movement that reflects the growing positive forces of globalization and the desire of all human beings to lead their own lives in freedom and relative peace. I think the human rights aspirations and the legitimacy given by the Universal Declaration have an impact. There is a relationship between what actually happens in a country and what the international community recognizes as legitimate.
A major event that occurred at the beginning of the Clinton Administration was the World Conference on Human Rights, the Vienna Conference. There for the first time the countries of the world actually went beyond the words of the Universal Declaration and adopted a position that human rights are a legitimate subject for international diplomacy and discussion. This was very important.

Shattuck goes on to say that countries which had previously rejected human rights scrutiny on internal matters from outside ­ like China ­ signed this accord, even though reluctantly. He also cites international coalitions coming together to address human rights crises, as in Haiti and Bosnia, and now in Kosovo. He declares a tragedy the fact the such a coalition did not jell for direct action in Rwanda to avert the genocide there.

Mary Robinson speaks of the future of the UDHR:

The Universal Declaration is a living document. To commemorate it in the closing years of this millennium, the debate must give more priority to current complex human rights issues: The right to development, the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples, the rights and empowerment of people with disabilities, gender mainstreaming, and issues of benchmarks and accountability in furtherance of these and other rights.

She goes on to say, "One lesson we need to learn and to reflect in our approach is that the essence of rights is that they are empowering"

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration, many world leaders have testified to its importance. Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic reflects:

[The UDHR] is a mirror of certain values; values we profess, we believe in, values that seem to be bestowed upon us from above, values we also in a way guarantee.

There is a difference between truth, value, ideal on one hand, and information on the other hand. Information is freely transferable, it can flit on the Internet from one computer to another through cables. Truth must be guaranteed; it is guaranteed by human beings.

Finally, let me quote Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Human Rights Watch reports he has shown "a greater commitment to human rights than any other UN secretary-general." Secretary-General Annan defends the UDHR when those who say it is too Western or too Northern speak. These are his words:

When we talk of human rights being a Western concept, doesn't the Iranian mother or the African mother cry when their son or daughter is tortured? Don't we all feel when one of our leaders is unjustly imprisoned? Don't we all suffer from the lack of the rule of law and from arbitrariness? What is foreign about that? What is Western about that? And when we talk of the right to development, the need to live their lives to the fullest and to be able to live their dreams, it is universal. When you talk to the individuals, have you ever come across a victim, somebody who has been tortured, talking against human rights? Do you hear the people generally rejecting human rights which are intended to protect them? Everything we do, whether it is economic development, whether it is security it is a human being that is at the center. And that is what we mean when we talk about human rights, when we talk about cultural expression, political rights, economic rights.

The Declaration of Human Rights, then, is not a dead instrument. It lives today, as much or more so than it did 50 years ago. How shall we celebrate it? How shall we make it a living document her in Volusia County?

Eleanor Roosevelt spoke of how to live out the UDHR ideals 50 years ago. She said,

Where do human rights begin? In small places, close to home ­ so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in the factory, farm or office where she works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.

Let me speak of three ways here are Community Church we might celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first will take place in this very room on Thursday night. Our youth will sponsor and present a worship service on the actual 50th anniversary of the UDHR. The service will begin at 6:30 PM. You are invited to attend and to bring friends.

On Sunday, January 10th the Reverend Bill Gardiner, from the Faith in Action Department of the Unitarian Universalist Association will be our guest speaker. After our service, we will enjoy soup and bread at our Souper Sunday lunch, moved up to the second Sunday just for the month of January. And after lunch Rev. Gardiner will lead us in a workshop to help us determine how we want to put our mission statement and our faith into action here in Southeast Volusia County.

The third possibility for putting the Universal Declaration of Human rights into action is to join with others to form a coalition to create a Human Rights Commission in Daytona Beach or, possibly, Volusia County. This is a dream of some people ­ Mayor Bud Asher, City Commissioner Yvonne Scarlett-Golden, and Dr. Jno Frink, the Executive Vice-President of Bethune-Cookman College. My hope is that their dream may become a reality. A Human Rights Commission could be the venue where solutions to conflict relating to Black College Reunion could be worked out. A Human Rights Commission might be the place where employees forced to become contributors to United Way could appeal their situation. A Human Rights Commission might provide a forum for teaching how to resolve identity-based conflicts.

I intend to support all three of these celebrations ­ the youth lead worship service, the Rev. Bill Gardiner's appearance as a pulpit guest and workshop leader, and the creation of a local human rights commission where the 30 UDHR articles may be aired and supported at the local level.

Fifty years-but who's counting?
The Burmese mother without enough food for her children.
She's counting.
The Indian father living in a shack with an open sewage system.
He's counting.
The Mexican children orphaned because graduates of the
School of the Americas killed their parents.
They're counting.

Hungry men, children and women in Romania, who wonder if they weren't better off under the Communist regime. They're counting.

Doctors treating infants with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. They're counting.

Children detained in Kigali prison with their parents awaiting trials which may not happen before they die from the inhumane conditions in the prison. They're counting.

Working men and women in the United States with medical needs and without health benefits. They're counting.

Florida parents on welfare who have exhausted their benefits and yet do not have jobs.
They're counting.

United Nations leadership trying to deliver services without the United States paying its arrears. They're counting.

Good men and women who perceive in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights an opportunity to create a global just society. They're counting.

May we count with them. May we count on the side of justice.

I've chosen an advent hymn for us to sing to close this part of our service. As you sing think of advent not only as a prelude to Christmas. Think of advent as a time of preparing for the realm of justice that is the dream of every common child, woman and man. Love, the Guest; Love, the Rose; Love, the Star is on the way that all may flourish. So be it. YES!