On 66th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Adoption.

Today is the important anniversary.

66 years ago, on December 10th, 1948, at the 183rd plenary meeting of United Nations General Assembly in Palais de Chaillot, Paris the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (hereinafter – the Declaration) was adopted: 48 members voted in favor, 8 abstained. The Declaration was translated to 360 languages, being one of the most widely translated documents in history. It provided the basis for constitutions of many countries, including the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights was formed to work on the Declaration project. During its first meeting, which took place at Lake Success from January 27th to February 10th, 1947, the Commission elected for its Chairman Eleanor Roosevelt – the “First Lady of the World”, as US President Truman, successor to President Roosevelt, called her. Almost two years world first-string lawyers worked on the Declaration project.

Finally, it was adopted. It’s rather short, only 30 articles. From such Declaration one would expect a concentrate of wisdom to memorize like multiplication table.

Let’s read the Declaration. It turns out that we are all members of the human family, that we are all equal in dignity and rights, that we should all act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood, when each has the right to high standard of living. But such words have nothing to do with facts of life. These are questionable metaphors, acceptable in hymns. These are unrealistic vain wishes, deceptive preachment, filling one with nausea even while reading, not to mention memorizing.

The rights have nothing to do with friendship and gifts. Where love rules there’s no place for rights. But there’s never been, isn’t and hardly ever will be universal love and brotherhood. Love is little islands in the ocean of competition. The rights moderate this competition. The rights are restrictions of the most dangerous acts: don’t violate, don’t threaten, don’t deceive, otherwise violence, threats and deceit will be used against you. The rights are firm and precise formulations, not some crumbly words about liberty, equality and fraternity.

What influence does the Declaration have on people’s lives? Negative, I assume, because the Declaration absorbed the most popular and, at the same time, the most naïve views on rights and politics in one document and raised it to the level of global importance. The Declaration doesn’t lead to concord. It is irresponsible.

This is not my opinion only.

This is what Friedrich A. Hayek wrote on the Declaration in his book Law, Legislation and Liberty: “The conception of a ‘universal right’ which assures to the peasant, to the Eskimo, and presumably to the Abominable Snowman, ‘periodic holidays with pay’ shows the absurdity of the whole thing. Even the slightest amount of ordinary common sense ought to have told the authors of the document that what they decreed as universal rights were for the present and for any foreseeable future utterly impossible of achievement, and that solemnly to proclaim them as rights was to play an irresponsible game with the concept of ‘right’ which could result only in destroying the respect for it”.

Even the pleonasm “human rights” in the title of the Declaration bewilders. Why is it “human rights”, if only humans can have rights? We don’t say “human science”, because there’s no other science, but human.

I believe that most of our conflicts, including wars, are related to spoiled language we all use to talk about rights and politics, while the Declaration encourages this spoiling, selling mistakes as paragon of discourse about rights and politics.