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UNU Update: Human rights seminar in NYThe newsletter of United Nations University and its internationalnetwork of research and training centres/programmesIssue30: March-April 2004FRONT PAGEGlobalization and human rightsfocus of UNU discussion

Panelists at the seminar included (from left) Jean-Marc

Coicaud, Philip Alston, Michael Doyle and Simon Munzu.Governments have failed to strike a balance between fighting terrorism andprotecting human rights, according to a leading US authority oninternational law.Many Governments had exploited the opportunity to restrict and derogatefrom human rights in order to achieve objectives which had all too littleto do with rights, Philip Alston, Professor of International Law at NewYork University Law School told a UN University seminar in New York."We seem to have forgotten the lessons of efforts in Latin America toestablish national security states premised on the argument that all measures, no matter how brutal or dirty were justified in order to defeatthe enemies of the State," Alston said. "Such policies had faileddisastrously, and the risk is that we are moving down a similar path again

in some countries."The seminar, held at UN headquarters on International Human Rights Day(December 10), marked the New York launch of the UNU Press book TheGlobalization of Human Rights, co-edited by Jean-Marc Coicaud, MichaelDoyle, and Amy Gardner and written under the auspices of the UnitedNations University s Peace and Governance Programme.Opening the event, Mr. Coicaud said that although the projection ofWestern power worldwide had left many victims throughout the world, theWest had also been instrumental in developing the modern discourse andpractice of human rights.The international community, although it feels both the moral and legalneed to enforce human rights, has not "expressed a decisive and consistentcommitment that goes beyond lip service," he said.

Michael Doyle, who is Harold Brown Professor at Columbia University andanother co-editor of the book, told the audience that under the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, the human rights discourse has evolved inthree generations. The first focused on civil and political rights suchas free speech, the second on economic and social rights such as educationand employment and the third generation on rights of language andrepresentation for minority groups within a state.He argued that the recognition that human rights are universal,interrelated, indivisible and interdependent has been a significantlandmark of human rights education.Mr. Munzu said that the development activities of the UN were helping topromote economic and social rights globally but much remained to be done."In many failed or weak states and low-income countries the state is

unable effectively to secure the economic, social and other rights of itscitizens, raising the question of whether human rights are 'citizen'rights to be claimed from the country of citizenship or truly 'human'rights to be claimed from the global human community.DOWNLOAD EVENT SUMMARYMORE INFORMATION

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